Right now I am involved in a contest called The Whiitier Prize Competition. The contest started March 7 and goes to July, with the entrants having to submit a 2500 word fiction piece evey other week. The directors give 3 prompts the writers can utilize as part of their story...or not. Something as simple as:
"Stick out your tongue" was a prompt I used to create a story about street urchins in Portugal.
I've never been a fan of prompts until I read Natalie Goldberg's book "Writing Down the Bones". This book is full of great prompts, which is sometimes all a writer needs to start a story. So with that here are two prompts to get you going. See if you can write 1000 words utilizing these prompts. You'll be surprised at what comes out! Have fun!
1. All he could see through the small opening was three fingers clutching the edge of the bathtub and a chicken sitting on an old porcelin toilet.
2. Saturday afternoon was no time to realize his pants were still in the cleaners.
I actually like prompts a lot. The Janet Burroway text had tons of great ones in it. Prompts, I think, can be visual, too--like the color of the sky at a certain time of day or a picturesque strand of clouds.
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