Writing Prompts

Exercising Your Writing Muscles

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One of my favorite books on writing is Beth Baruch Joselow’s “Writing Without the Muse.” You don’t read it as much as write your way through it. It’s a slim volume of sixty creative exercises that help you more closely see the world, stretch your imagination, and experiment with voice.

I’d like to share two of my favorite exercises from the book as a means of giving you a taste.

By the way, if you’ve never done writing exercises before, you’re in for a treat. The key is to approach them in the spirit of fun. As Joselow says: “Play is an important part of creativity. It’s a mistake to approach the task of writing even a serious piece without some playfulness. Wonderful things can happen when you take the risk of just fooling around.” p. 14

Exercise #1: “The Door in the Wall”

Narrow your eyes and stare across to the far end of the room. There, imagine you see a door.

What does that door look like? Is it plain or ornate? Is it constructed  from wood, metal, or another material? Does it have anything written on it?

Write about that door in detail, including the feeling you have as you approach it.

Now that you know what the door looks like, grasp its handle, open it, and step inside. What do you see?

Again, write about the experience in detail. Take ten minutes and tell us everything.

Exercise #2: “Every Day for a Week”

Every day we repeat certain activities, like brushing our teeth, drinking morning coffee, walking the dog, and the like. Your assignment: Pick one of these repeated activities, and write about it for ten minutes each day for a week.

When you’ve completed the assignment, you’ll have a seven-day log that describes a single, small aspect of your life. Look over your work:

How does your writing differ from day to day? How does it stay the same?

Look, too, at the activity you’ve been writing about. How have you  changed the way you’ve approached the activity itself, because of the scrutiny you’ve given it?

Try these two exercises on your own, or consider doing them with friends. They get the blood in your brain pumping, and can trigger some excellent conversations.

If you’d like to share the results with me, I’d be pleased to hear about them.

The Power of a Writing Prompt

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If you’ve done any freewriting before, you may have heard the term “prompt.” A prompt is a common freewriting exercise. Instead of beginning a session with whatever appears in your mind, you begin with a predetermined phrase (called a prompt) that guides the direction of your writing.

How would using a prompt work?

If you were about to loosen up with a ten-minute freewrite and wanted a prompt, I might say, “Complete the following sentence: ‘The best part of my workday is . . . ’

You’d answer that question, at least initially. You could stay on it for the entire ten minutes, or you move to another subject minutes or even seconds after beginning. Your choice.

The number of prompts you could use are endless. You can come up with them on your own. A few more examples:

“Yesterday I saw a curious thing . . . “

“If I didn’t have to work I’d . . . “

“I threw a stone and it landed . . . “

Now, I’ve used prompts many times, but have never considered them part of my regular repertoire. After speaking with Robyn Steely, though, I have a new admiration for the technique.

Steely is the executive director of a non-profit organization, “Write Around Portland,” which works with social service agencies to build community. According to its website, the organization runs no-cost writing workshops for “people living with HIV/AIDS, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, adults and youth in addiction recovery, low income seniors, people in prison, homeless youth and others who may not have access to writing in community because of income, isolation or other barriers.”

The central principle driving Write Around Portland’s workshops is freewriting.

Participants sit in a circle with pad and pen, and a facilitator begins the session by offering up two prompts, such as “The thing about you and me . . . “ and “The night smelled like . . . .”

Each participant chooses one prompt to kindle their writing. Later, they share what they’ve produced and offer feedback to other writers. In giving feedback, participants keep their comments on the parts of the writing that are strong.

Steely says prompts don’t hem thinking in, they open it up. Given the same prompt, one participant might write about what they eat for breakfast while another might write about a battle they fought in during a war.

Prompts, then, can help people approach material that they may not have thought to write about. They can give a small push in an unexpected direction.

When I asked Steely about what makes for a superior prompt, she gave the following advice: “Make your prompts short and open-ended. For instance, ‘After the storm . . . ’ is a good one. It’s only a few words, and it could be about a childhood rainstorm, a thunderstorm, a fight, or it could have nothing to do at all with storms.”

As a short exercise, why not try a writing prompt now? Choose one of these two, and do a ten-minute freewrite that starts with it:

“The project I’m proudest of is . . .” or “This sounds inconsequential, but . . . “