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Kathy fish, Writing Prompts & Craft Articles

Day 18 Prompt: Write a Letter

Kathy Fish

Dear Friends,

Years ago, I lived in Australia, long before internet and email. I missed my family and friends back home terribly and while my little ones napped, I’d sit down and write long letters. One of my friends said she kept my letters in her purse and would sometimes read parts of them to her co-workers. I should add, this was before I fully recognized that I was a writer. 

I recently received a letter from one of my writer friends. A real honest-to-goodness handwritten letter. It brought me such joy. It made me feel more “connected” to another human being than I’ve ever felt on Twitter or from an email. The letter was newsy and rambling and kind and funny and warm, filling every inch of the notecard it was written on.

Communication is so quick and easy now. Personal events and news are frequently shared, even as they’re occurring. Everyone knows our business. What’s the use of a letter anyway?

Well, that’s my prompt for you for today: Sit down with paper and pen and write someone a letter. No, I’m not asking you to write an epistolary flash fiction (though you can if you’re so moved!). Look around you. These are strange days indeed. What has changed in your community, your neighborhood, your family? Think of the odd details. The other day on my Next Door app, someone had posted: WHYYY IS THE ICE CREAM MAN STILL COMING AROUND??? 

Share your hopes and fears. Or just something funny or exasperating your kid did. Because this is a writing prompt, I’m going to nag you to employ your writerly skills of observation, include strong, concrete, specific details, and engage the senses. Does it seem like the stars are shining brighter, for example? Is the local wildlife getting bolder? 

Pretend social media doesn’t exist today and reach out to one person. And hopefully you have a stamp because I don’t want anyone going to the post office. I’d love to hear if anyone out there actually does this prompt. Let me know. 

With love & affection, ❤

~Kathy

Uncategorized, Writing Prompts & Craft Articles

Day 17: Bonus Sabbatical April 1

Nancy Stohlman

Today’s prompt is specifically for those of you feeling creatively stuck and needing to just crack the ice and get your fingers moving. And it makes for a great warm-up on a regular basis, too.

Your prompt:

Open a book by a favorite author to any page. Then retype that page, word for word.

This exercise is great for not just warming up or getting you in the chair and typing, but there is also a lovely intuitive understanding of language and style that happens on a cellular level when we’re entwined with someone else’s actual syntax. Like osmosis.

Biggest hugs!

Nancy

xoxoxo

Kathy fish, Writing Prompts & Craft Articles

Day 16 Prompt: Meander

Kathy Fish

In her excellent craft book, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, Jane Alison says:

“If a narrative naturally wants to flow toward its end but doesn’t want to get there yet—the pleasure’s in the journey—it might hold back by strewing conflicts, boulders, along the way, as an adventure story might. But it might be bored by classic conflict, so instead lingers by flowing along an extravagant arabesque of detours: this is what meandering narratives do. A meander begins at one point and moves toward a final one, but with digressive loops. Italo Calvino says that “digression is a strategy for putting off the ending, a multiplying of time within the work, a perpetual evasion or flight. Flight from what? From death of course.”

Read “Friday Night” by Gwen E. Kirby, published in Wigleaf. This narrative is all over the place, yet focused like a laser at the same time. Take note of the breathless structure. It’s actually one looping sentence, spilling over with emotion, yet banal in its attention to, well, that pizza. It’s funny, angry, sad, desperate, tender, real. And it’s a wonderful example of the power of meandering.

So you guessed it. Your prompt for today is to write a story that meanders in this way, keeping the central conflict on low hum the whole time. Write a first person POV breathless paragraph or sentence like this Gwen Kirby did here OR do your own thing, but don’t write in a straight line. Take detours.

Uncategorized, Writing Prompts & Craft Articles

Day 15: Bonus Unexpected Sabbatical March 30

Nancy Stohlman

We are halfway through our month of prompts–thank you so much for letting us serve you this far–and today in our writing we are going to name the elephant in the room:

Often when we are developing a character, getting to “know” and understand a character, we do exercises like “put that character in a bar/grocery store and see what they buy” or “make a list of all the things in that character’s refrigerator.” Whether you like these exercises and use them or not, the impetus behind them is the same: our characters are different from us, and we have to get to know them, as we would a new friend.

Well, my friends, there is a new character in town and it’s time to talk to them.

elephant sitting on chair

Your prompt:

Allow Coronavirus to become a character. If Coronavirus were a character, what would they say and do? Talk to Coronavirus; ask them for their wisdom.

P.S. Your prompt today might be better done in a journal, at least at first. I wouldn’t limit yourself to 1,000 words, and I wouldn’t insist on writing a story, unless one naturally arises. You and Coronavirus might have a lot to say to each other.

In solidarity,

xoxo Nancy

Kathy fish, Writing Prompts & Craft Articles

Day 14 Prompt: Make a List

Kathy Fish

I love creating lists. Especially when under duress, making a list gives me a feeling of control. There’s often a lot of subtext living in the contents of a list. I’ve come across old lists and though, whoa, what was going on when I wrote this? 

Think of how much “story” you can convey, with very few words, in a simple list. Flash fiction, a form that lends itself so beautifully to innovation of form, allows you to do just that. 

So that is your prompt for today: Create a story entirely or almost entirely in the form of a list. Then send it off to McSweeney’s because they love a good list story. 😉

Here are a few ideas to get your going:

  • What would a Google search list tell you about a character and his predicament? (Yesterday I googled “health benefits of whiskey” for instance.)
  • What would a packing list suggest to a reader about a character’s plans? (i.e., a bikini, suntan lotion, camera, condoms vs. $1000 cash, a wig, a photo, and a revolver).
  • You could convey quite a lot of story in a character’s to-do list. Maybe give two characters’ to-do lists and have them play off each other.
  • Your list may be annotated for an extra layer of pathos or humor. A glossary is a kind of a list. My “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” is a list story.