Writing Prompt #149: Seven Words
Use all of these words in your story.
unctuous, blunder, penchant, laborious, industrial-strength, soap, spew
May 2011
44 posts
Writing Prompt #148: That's What She Said!
Use this line of dialogue somewhere in your story:
“Harriet won’t give up until she catches one of those atomic cherry blossoms.”
Writing Prompts That Don't Suck: Writing Prompt #147: She's Goin' Bald →
awesomewritingprompts.tumblr.com
Your protagonist is a lady. One morning she wakes up to find herself bald. Deal with the aftermath or explain why the hell it happened. Or both!
“She drew her comb acrost her scalp / And brushed what she had left / I tried to salvage what I could / And threw it in a sack / She made a…
Writing Prompt #146: Pop vs. Culture
Brush up on your pop culture knowledge and incorporate these random things/people/whatever in your story.
Angelyne, a box of Hydrox cookies, the Bat Boy, the reanimated corpse of Clara Peller, a Zamfir record, an AMC Pacer
uguu
Nyoro~n :3c
“Writing a novel — actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs — is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.”
—Steve Hely, How I Became a Famous Novelist (via synecdoche)
Writing Prompt #144: This One's Kind of a Downer
A 13-year-old with big dreams of being an artist or a writer (or something else awesome) gets a glimpse of their future as a cubicle-bound office drone stuck in a dead-end job. How does this affect them, and does/can he or she do anything to change the future?
Well, I’m going to go swallow some pills now …
Writing Prompt #143: Horror at Party Beach
A monster terrorizes a beach full of partying, unsupervised teenagers in normal, ’50s B-movie style, with one caveat: it is not a literal monster. Maybe the monster is a STD that spreads like wildfire or gas prices so high no one can leave the beach or diseased cheeseburgers. Something lovely like that. Let your imagination run free like a bikini-clad blonde on the beach.
Hypersex!!!
The television in the other room is tuned to a major news station. CNN, perhaps. Experts are discussing Arnold Schwarzenneger, and how perhaps he suffers from a debilitating condition known as hypersexuality. They seem troubled. They seem genuinely worried. What if he hasn’t been using protection? What if he has more undocumented love children?
What if he’s a grope-happy Hitler appreciating crypto-fascist you fucking animals
Writing Prompt #142: Runnin' Naked But the Cat Don't Seem to Mind
What do animals think of our nudity, anyway?
Doesn’t matter. It won’t help you with today’s prompt.
Someone just shows up to work naked one day like it’s no big deal. Write about the hilarity/horror that ensues.
“And we’re buck naked now / We ain’t got no clothes / Bare assed for sure / In the eyes of God.” — “Buck Naked” by David Byrne
Writing Prompt #140: Some of My Best Friends Are Books
… because I have absolutely no social skills and debilitating halitosis …
Just kidding, bibliophiles.
But seriously. Write a story about a book that is totally evil. EVIIIIILLLLLLL!!!!!!
Writing Prompt #141: Person, Place, Thing!
a supermarket, a tabloid, an executive business-type dude
Use all of these in your story, or the Bat Boy will surely come to get you!
Summer Thoughts
suntan lotion
and sweat
and distant smoke
clumsy inhalations
and the next hour has the scent
of a sneeze
the sky is like a campfire
skin tightens around muscle
like an overdue consequence
soil washes out
from beneath questing toes
sand flows
through dried fingers
the tide is going out
the tide has been out
for quite a while
Prophecies are like scabs; picking at them only makes them worse.
