Improbable Press Blog — Writing Prompts
A Broken Porch Light (writing prompt)
Today's post is brought to you by a freakin' genius idea attributed to John Swartzwelder, a writer for the Simpsons. I almost scrolled past this on Tumblr because Tired™ and also Surely I've Read Most Writing Advice, especially the pithy stuff that can be fit into one paragraph. I WAS WRONG I WAS IMMEDIATELY WRONG. His brilliant answer was to the question: How much time and attention did you spend on these scripts? SWARTZWELDER: All of my time and all of my attention. It's the only way I know how to write, darn it. But I do have a trick...
They Gather (writing prompt)
When in doubt just write anything. I see you sitting over there squinting at this prompt. Something about it…it's…it's just…it's not singing. Or you're looking at that temp gauge and remembering you wanted an iced coffee. Or neither. Or both. Or some secret third thing. The point is, this writing prompt is causing writing of no sort whatsoever in your fingers, heart, or brain and yeah that coffee sounds pretty good right now but before you go — cause yeah, I agree, a brew would be ideal — STOP WHERE YOU ARE. If Writing Is Hard CHEW IT By that...
Smashed China (writing prompt)
Writing stories is like harnessing yourself to a chaos engine and ain't that the whole entire best? Yes, absolutely, the answer is totally yes and let me tell you why. Look at This Writing Prompt You look at it and you nod and you think, "Huh. Those weird light elements kinda remind me of that play I saw a couple years ago. The one that used light effects to signify time skips. Maybeeee, maybe I'll write a little sci-fi thingy." And you frown and try and dig about for a sci-fi thingy and then. Then you look at the words...
A Dark Tunnel (writing prompt)
Hello from a soon-to-be hot week. Though I am not fond of 99F° (37°C) days, this does not stop such days from happening anyway, WHICH OF COURSE I CAN TIE TO WRITING YOU JUST WATCH ME. So it's like this: if we haven't written in awhile and we have this itchy inkling feeling we no longer can and so we don't… Well. Well would you look at that, the-not-writing happened, so hey, what exactly have we got to lose by kicking our doubts to the curb, biting the bit, and writing something now anyway. It couldn't possibly be worse than...
Where's There's Smoke (writing prompt)
Sometimes you just need a push to get yourself writing. Or a pull maybe. (Hey! Do you remember the push-me-pull-you from Dr Doolittle? That creature both unnerved me as a kid and…yeah, no, they just unnerved me. They're unnerving me as we speak. (Is me bringing this up going to help you write? Who is to say?)) So anyway, sometimes we need a pull up or a push forward to get words on the page, and Improbable's going to aim to offer a prompt every other week (or weekly if anyone expresses interest in that frequency) to help you do...