In this video, we’ll explore how writing prompts, whether visual or textual, can serve as a catalyst, not just for initiating a story but for exploring the nuances of characters’ interactions, personalities, outlooks, beliefs, and other critical details.
I encourage you to reflect on your experiences with prompts. How do they influence your storytelling and character exploration? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments below—I’m eager to hear how prompts have shaped your creative journey.
Hello, Jane Cleland.
“Do you ever use prompts to help you get started with a story?”
I like prompts. I think prompts are a great way to fire up creativity. I don’t use them so much to start a story as I use them to get to know characters. But let me make a couple of comments about prompts, and then I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.
Prompts come as either visual or text. You can use a photograph or a piece of artwork. And there are contests—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Writer’s Digest Magazine both have contests where they show you a photograph and invite you to write a short, short story. I think Alfred Hitchcock is 250 words, and a crime has to be involved. But in any case, it has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This is getting into flash fiction, which is usually defined as under 750 words, under 1,000, and often is fired up with a prompt. I’ve had two flash fiction stories published, both in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. One was under 750 words; the other I ended up expanding, and it was, I think, 1,600 and something words—under 2,000. Those are very short.
But the way I use prompts is that I try to get to know my characters better that way. And here’s an example of one I’ve used that I think is really effective: two characters interacting with the same setting. You will get to know people by how they perceive a place and what they do with it.
For example—and this is a little case study I created—Nantasket Beach in Massachusetts. I spent summers there. And I have two characters: one, a gal who just got into graduate school and she’s so proud. She’s coming home to tell her mom, and she’s reminiscing as she passes the sandy grey—kinda beige-taupe—the beach with the tangled seaweed and the fierce near-black ocean. She’s just so excited to be coming home with such good news. She rounds the corner, and there’s the house she grew up in. It’s home—never much—but Grandma always made it home.
And wheeling down the street in the ugly rain is her mother, who rounds the corner and sees the shack. Maybe this storm will finally do it in—this dump—and she can get out of here. Two very different reactions: one evocative of happy times; the other just seeing a dump she wishes she could get rid of.
Going through that process helped me get to know those characters in a way I don’t know that I would have in any other way.
Hope it helps! How about you? Do you like using prompts? If so, where do you get them? What do you do with them? How have they helped you start a story? Put it in the comments section—I’d love to read about it.
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Thank you!
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