Sorry for the late post this week friends! A great deal of
my creative energies the past couple of weeks have been spent chugging through
the first chapter of my book. It’s slow going, and slow going can be pretty
discouraging. We’ll have a post next week about feeling like a failure and how
that can actually be a good thing!
In the meantime, what better way to kick-start the sludge of
writer’s block than to visit some writing prompts? You can’t beat your head
against a wall when you come up against one and expect that to get you past the
barricade. You either have to step away (physically) for a moment to reset your
brain, or you have to just start writing anything else. Writing prompts can be
a great throw-away exercise to get your words flowing again. If the river of
creativity is dried up, you won’t get it going again by crying into the dusty
river bed. You have to destroy the dam!
This month’s prompts come from blogger Justin Mclachlan and
his page of 25 Fantasy Writing Prompts.
My novel is science fiction, and I’ve been chasing my tail for three weeks
coming up against technical issues that must be solved before I can proceed
with writing. Sometimes it’s nice to just step back and enter a world where
anything is possible and you don’t have to consider how to handle instantaneous
communication across multiple star systems. *wheeze*
So here we go! Three prompts ripe and ready for you – which
ones will you choose?
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| Sea Gate Oracle by Daniel Ljunggren |
#1. A working-dad
desperate for money to feed his family turns to robbery, only to find that he’s
chosen a wizard as his victim.
This is a very narrow prompt to work with, but it’s so
captivating that I couldn’t help but put it down. What kind of wizard has our
down-on-his-luck protagonist come up against? Is he a good or bad wizard? Is he
a bit of both? What magics does he practice – elemental, alchemical,
necromancy? Will the wizard take pity on the man and take him in as an
apprentice, or will he curse him and force magic upon him from which he has to
find an escape?
I myself am very much enamored with the idea that the wizard
would immediately see someone with passion and dedication – willing to do
anything to protect the ones he loves. Perfectly suited for magic. The
protagonist may wake up the next morning and find that his home/apartment
suddenly has an extra bedroom that wasn’t there before, and the wizard is
cooking breakfast for his children. Never mind that you didn’t have a basement
before, I needed somewhere to put my rune circles. Now eat your toast, we have
work to do.
#2. A young man must
take over his ailing father’s business—raising dragons that they sell to the
world’s wealthiest as pets.
This is actually similar to an idea that has crossed my mind
before. Dragon tamers, dragon breeders, dragon riders – it doesn’t matter,
we’re obsessed with the relationship between humans and dragons. These epic
creatures have captured mankind’s imagination for centuries. Sometimes they are
super intelligent, wise beings who must not be contended with lightly. And on
the other hand, there are the tales where they are perhaps more intelligent
than your average animal, but still animals, none the less, and can be ruled as
pets or beasts of burden.
So what’s the catch with this prompt? The young man has been
thrown into the problem, but what creates the tension of the story? Perhaps the
shop does not breed the dragons in-house, and instead receives eggs from an
outside supplier. What if this supplier wasn’t as careful as they should have
been, and a mother dragon tracks her eggs back to the shop? What kind of chaos
might reign over this young man’s life then?
Especially if dragons in this universe only develop
intelligence later in life, and where the young man has been used to dealing
with lizards, he comes face to face with an ancient being that has more anger
than he knows how to deal with.
#3. I’m so sorry,
that I can’t offer you a less dangerous solution
This would be a great quote to use in either of the above
prompts! As I have said before, I *love* quote prompts, because you can do
anything with them, and they are usually very good and giving your subconscious
a goose. You can’t really *plan* anything with a prompt like this. You just
have to sit down and let the writing happen naturally. You discover characters
who have been waiting around to be written, scenes that you didn’t know you had
in you. Starting off with a dialogue prompt can be great practice for writing
conversations, if that’s something you’re not as comfortable with.
So what’s the situation? Why is it dangerous? And who is
sorry? I’m curious. Aren’t you?
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