Heather Wright's Blog, page 8

Writing Prompts for November 2014

November

I’m wishing lots of good luck and good writing to those who have signed up for NaNoWriMo this year. And for those of you who haven’t, I wish a creative month that brings you closer to achieving your goals.

Here are some writing prompts to help you find stories or add to the ones you already have underway.

1) Think of a story or poem that you could write using one, some or all of the following words.

Dead roses, photograph, lamp, window, card, sigh
Candle, glass, bowl, rustle, paperweight, cord, breeze

2) Here are some titles that might help you think of a story or two: Last Day of Summer, Pumpkin Patch Mystery, Lights Out, Shattered, When One Door Closes, Never Forgotten, The Crystal Throne.

3) See if these opening lines can get your story started:

“Why do you think she lied?”
The only thing I could think of saying when I woke up was, “Where am I?”
That’s it. I am done with men. Forever!
Going home should be a good thing—but not always.
I swore that I’d never start a story with someone waking up in the morning. But when you wake up in a tent with a large dog and a (pick the kind of person you want) for roommates, neither of whom you’ve ever seen before, I think you can make an exception.
Henry closed the door softly.
Moaning winds, rain and thunder. Just what I needed for my first night in the house alone.

4) Here are some lines of dialogue for you. Who are the speakers, where are they, what are they doing, what are they going to do next?

Do you think we’ll get away with it?
We did last time.
Yes, but this time we won’t have Henry with us.

 

 I’m sorry.
What for?
For telling Liz about what happened.
It’s okay. She had to know.

 

Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.
That’s easy for you to say.
You’re hurt, but I’m not giving up.
We’ll never get away now.

 

5) A lot of special holidays and family events are ahead in the next two months. What are you looking forward to most? What are you dreading? What do your characters look forward to? What do they dread? Write the diary entry your character wrote as a child about a special family or holiday event.

October 2014 Writing Prompts

Welcome to October! We’ve just finished nearly two weeks of perfect summer weather, but yesterday the rains came and today we’re facing cold winds and cloudy skies–and the furnace is on! I’m usually right on time with my writing prompts, but I’ve been laid low by the back-to-school cold/cough/flu, and lost track of time catching up, and frankly, sleeping whenever I could. Hope you and yours are having a healthy fall.

Here are the new prompts for October.

1. Use one, some, or all of these words in a story or poem.

Clouds, rope, splash, branch, jar, grey
Car, pen, lighthouse, trail, fence, never

2. Try one of these opening sentences to start your story.

Red sky at morning, sailor’s warning.
Where are the pumpkins?
The dark figure lurched through the door.
This was one of those mornings when I should have stayed in bed.
The wind dragged the dead branches against the window.
My bike jerked wildly toward the curb. Flat tire.
Unlike my sister, I think that two kittens are two too many.

3. See if one of these titles inspire a story: Bubble Trouble, The Old Cottage Mystery, Ghosts at Lunchtime, Storm Warning, Frozen Dreams, Running, Hiding Mandy, Crushed, Clean Sweep

4. Write a scene to go with these lines of dialogue.

Henry is going to be there.
What difference does that make?
Henry always wants to be the boss.
Then we need to make sure he doesn’t get what he wants.

 

I can’t go.
But you promised!
I have to babysit.
Then I’ll just go on my own.
You can’t. It’s too dangerous.

 

Did you hear that noise?
Yeah. So what?
I’ve heard it before. We’d better hide. Now.

 

Where did Mike get all that money?
That’s none of our business.
It is my business. My sister’s wallet went missing yesterday.

 

5. What do you like best about autumn? Hallowe’en? Colourful trees? Back to school? Football season starting? Baseball season ending? In Canada, Thanksgiving? Write about the things that you like about this season. Does the character in your story like autumn? What does he or she like the most? Write about the things that you and your character dislike, too.

Back to the Writing Schedule

Is your creative output in a slump at the moment? Mine certainly is. I have lots of excuses, too, such as the busyness of starting teaching again, looming freelance deadlines, house projects requiring progress, marketing tasks, and creating a website and publishing the first in a series of short story anthologies for boys. I’m busy. I’m working. I’m getting things done in all areas, so what’s the problem?

The problem is—I’m a writer. I have stories I want to tell, and they’re not getting on the page. It’s time to carve out the writing time again. I know from experience that I can find the time to write every day, but I just don’t do it. For me, the best writing time is at night before I go to bed with journal and pen—or very early in the morning, when I wake up at the crack of stupid and can’t get back to sleep.

In 2013, I participated in a couple of accountability challenges (Thanks, Kristi Holl) and they made all the difference to my creative output. Kristi organized interested writers into groups, and when each of us had finished our writing for the day, we sent a “done” email to the group. It may seem strange that sending an email to a group of strangers would be enough incentive to keep me writing every day, but it was.

I’m lucky to have a good friend, and fellow writer, whom I’m going to ask to be my accountability buddy for a while, until I get back to writing every day again. If you think that trying something like this will help you get back on track, go for it! And let me know how it works for you.

The biggest accountability challenge in the world is coming up soon—NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) The folks who run NaNo are already getting in gear for this year’s challenge: write 50,000 words in the 30 days between November 1st and 30th. Over 340,000 people met the challenge last year. Drop by the NaNo website and learn more. If you’re a teen or pre-teen writer, they have a young writers program that’s perfect for you. They also have a lot of free writing resources for any time of year, not just November. Maybe you could get a teacher to run a NaNo club at your school to help motivate you and your fellow writers to reach their goals.

If you’ve discovered some great ways to keep the writing going, please share. I’m always looking for new ways to get myself to write everyday, and I don’t think I’m alone.

Hope you have a writerly week ahead!

A September New Year’s Day

Big changes today. My son moved into residence at a local university, and even though he’s not far away, his absence will change our lives significantly. A cheerful, talkative, smart young man and talented musician, he’s leaving us with looking for ways to keep the house from feeling so quiet and so empty. It’s time for him to move on to the next part of his life, and for us to sort things out here, too. Interesting times are ahead for all of us, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. If you’re heading to school this September, as teacher or student, I wish you every success as you take more steps to grow and learn and decide what kind of person you want to be and what kind of future you want for yourself and those around you.

For my Facebook friends today, September 1st seemed more like New Year’s Day–full of plans for new projects, new directions and resolutions to make much-wanted changes. If one of your resolutions is to write more, here are some writing prompts for September.

1. Use one, some or all of these words in a story or poem:

a) Bus, trap, rain, pen, dread, grey, coin

b) Rail, gold, title, wind, surprise, empty, fall

 

2. See if one of these opening lines inspires a story:

Are you sure you’re okay on your own?
I don’t know what comes after this.
Does that car look familiar?
When the last time you saw Rick?
I thought he was going to win.
I’ve lost it. Again.

 

3. Here are some lines of dialogue that you can use to write a scene or include in a story.

Move over.
Why?
I can’t see.

 

 Have you heard from Henry lately?
No. He’s been awfully quiet.
That’s not like Henry is it?
No.

 

Are you ready to try again?
I wasn’t ready to try the first time.

4. Maybe one of these titles will give you a story idea:

Bricks and Sticks, Meeting at Sunrise, The Blue Throne, Mystery on the Red Planet, The Hunter, Open Book, Game Day.

 

5. Leo Tolstoy wrote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Think about what it would be like to live in a family different from yours. If you have lots of siblings, imagine going through a day as an only child. If you have sisters, imagine your life with brothers of vice versa. You get the idea. What kind of families have you created for the characters in your story? Make a list of the details that you thought of while imagining a different family and see if you can use them to help build the families of your characters.

Inspiring Links for Teen Writers

Sometimes the Internet just seems to throw something my way that leads me to explore even more. Today I started with one link and ended up with a series of websites about writers who were published in their teens. If you’re a young writer, you will find lots of great writers and books here to inspire you.

Here are the links to the sites I found. Enjoy! And keep writing!

Authors Who Wrote Great Books Before They were 25.

23 Writers Who Were Famous Before Age 23

List of Books Written byChildren or Teenagers

Teen Author Bookshelf: List of Published Teen Authors When you drop by this website to check out this list, take some time to explore the great resources here. An excellent site for teen writers!

Teen Writers Find Publishing Success

Yes, You Can Get Published as a Teen Another great site to explore!

Back from vacation and … mini habits

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Wow, how quickly the vacation bubble bursts. One day you’re relaxing on the deck reading a book, with nothing more challenging ahead than choosing the next book to read, and the next minute your life is back to deadlines, errands, and chores. No complaints. We had a great time. We spent some time beside Lake Huron and also headed to Cleveland to explore the sights and take our music-crazy son to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame–a nice combination of sight-seeing and lazy days.

I’ve been enjoying the work I returned to, and I picked up another smaller freelance job, as well, this week. That’s my limit now until early October. I’ve got school to prep for school soon, and I have a new course to teach, so freelancing time won’t be in great supply for the next month and a bit–just enough to finish the projects I have and enjoy my classes without going crazy.

I’ve got Writing Fiction: A Guide for Pre-Teens out to a few places for reviews. Waiting is not my happy place. And then there’s the worrying about whether I’ve actually written anything worth reading at all, and maybe it’s really awful, and … well you get the idea. Writers don’t really need critics. We can be hard on our work all by ourselves.

Thanks to Kristi Holl’s recent blog, “Not Enough Willpower to Reach Your Goals? Try Mini Habits!“, I’ve started to read Stephen Guise’s book, Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results. The concept of setting very small daily goals is really appealing, especially with school and deadlines looming large. The idea is that you set a really small goal, one that’s not bigger than your willpower, such as writing 50 words a day. If you set a goal of writing 500 words a day, you’d probably resist doing that because it seems like a lot of work, especially on those days when you’re worn thin with other stresses. However, it’s more likely that you won’t resist the challenge of writing 50 words a day. You’ll take the time to do that because you know it’s easy to do. You will have met your goal, written something, and checked off something positive (yay!) on the to-do list–all good. Aside from the self-esteem boost of reaching your goal, there’s a good chance that you will write more than those 50 words–also good. This strategy can apply to anything from eating well to exercise to thinking positive thoughts. Check out Kristi’s blog to find out more. She explains it better than I.

Hope that your writing is going well, and over the next week, that you make progress toward your goals (with or without mini habits!)

Writing Prompts for August 2014

Wow! August 1st! What’s happening to the summer? I hope you’ve been busy with the things you love to do as well as dealing with life’s necessities.

I’ve been very busy, but in a good way, and am happy to have both of my self-published books now online. The first is Writing Fiction: A Guide for Pre-Teens, and the second is my fantasy for middle readers, The Dragon’s Revenge, a sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl. You can read more about The Dragon’s Revenge here. To celebrate its release, The Dragon’s Pearl is free right now on Kindle until Sunday. Here’s the link to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Pearl-Temple-Blue-Mist-ebook/dp/B00C0C94G2/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1406805446

The other work I’ve been doing is writing business case studies for an educational publisher to go along with a new textbook, and writing a kids’ version of Frankenstein for Caramel Tree Publishing. They specialize in ESL material. Frankenstein won’t be out until next year sometime. With my friend and co-writer, I’m also working on an anthology of stories for boys that we hope to have out by early September.

And like you, I’m still looking for new stories to write.

Here are some prompts to help you find your stories this month:

1. Use one some or all of these words in a story or poem”

Blue, rain, bridge, driving, insect

Trees, sign, warning, chase, silver

 

2. Here are some titles for you to try: It’s Conditional, Dream Valley, A Piece of Sky, Lodging Exit 52, Silver Creek Adventure, Mail 346.

 

3. Try one of these opening lines and see where it leads:

How long ‘til we get there?

Looks like rain.

From here, the place didn’t look that scary.

There was only one way out.

I’d had a root canal, broken my wrist, and been kissed by Mackenzie Schmidtheimer, but all of them together weren’t worse than a family road trip.

 

4. What kind of scene can you build around these lines of dialogue?

Where are you going?

Why?

Look at the sky.

 

I want to go now.

That’s impossible.

Why?

You haven’t met Sirus yet.

 

The place has changed since I was here last.

One thing has stayed the same though.

What’s that?

It’s still dangerous.

 

5. Describe your ideal concert? Who would be playing and where? Who would you go with and what would happen that would make this experience the most important one in your life so far?

6. In your imagination, picture a street corner that you know well. In your imagination, turn that corner and find something completely surprising—a circus, the same street in the year 1850, a Roman ruin … you get the idea. What happens next?

 

 

 

 

Writing Fiction: A Guide for Pre-Teens

Well, the day has finally come and Writing Fiction: A Guide for Pre-Teens is available at Amazon and CreateSpace. Yay! The Kindle version should be up in a day or two, and in a few weeks, it should be available on Kobo and at other on-line retailers. A labour of love, this book has kept me inspired and busy for the past several weeks, tweaking and adding final touches. The cover photo may still change, but for now I’m breathing a huge sigh of relief. You can take a peek at the Table of Contents below.

Hope you have some fun, writerly days ahead!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Getting Started  7

Joywriting           8

What do I need to be a writer?  9

Habits and Goals              11

Choosing Your Goal         11

Writing Every Day            12

Don’t Miss a Word           12

Write with a Friend or Two          12

Pantser or Plotter: Which are you?          15

The Pantser        15

The Plotter         16

Where do I get ideas for stories?              17

What if?               18

Write What You Know   18

Pick 4 Words      20

Writing Prompts               21

Plotting Tips       23

Basic Rule of Plotting      24

Story Planning   24

Plotting with the Hero’s Journey               27

How do I start my story?               31

Who should tell the story?           33

Point of View: First Person          33

Point of View: Second Person    34

Point of View: Third Person         34

How do I describe my characters?            37

Show Don’t Tell                38

Change Is Good                39

Character List     41

How do I describe the setting?  43

Think about how much you really have to describe.         43

Use Comparisons             43

Get the Senses Involved              44

Draw a Map or Use Photos          44

How do I write dialogue?              47

How do I end my story?                51

How do I make my writing better?           53

Revising and Editing        53

Words   53

Sentences           53

Combining Sentences    54

Paragraphs         55

What do I do when a story gets stuck?   59

1. Outline.           59

2. Forget about making the first draft perfect.    59

3. Write more than one story at a time.60

4. Put the story away.    60

5. Brainstorm.    60

6. Ask “What if?”              61

7. Don’t worry.  61

Last Words          63

Bibliography       65

Moving Soon

I’m in the process of upgrading my website and moving it to a new web host. I’m fairly tech savvy, but these things still make me nervous. Not everything always goes smoothly, as you know.

The new website address is http://wrightingwords.com. At least it will be when it’s set up. I hope!

Fingers crossed that this won’t be too complicated a process!

Hope to see you soon at the new location.

Storm front rolling in. This is how I feel about moving my website. Yikes!

Tagged: moving website, new web host

A Website Milestone–and Looking for Balance (again!)

Owen Sound Windows

A huge THANKS to all the people from 172 countries who drop by to visit my website! This morning, my website surpassed 100,000 page views. A big day for me! It’s a pleasure spending time with you. I hope you and/or your students and/or your children are having fun with the writing prompts and are making use of the other resources here. It’s exciting for me to see how many creative people there are out there, and how many people love to write stories. I wish you lots of fun and wonderful surprises as you pursue your writing and teaching goals.

I’ve been doing some of my own writing lately: some short stories for boys for a self-pub project, and an adaptation of Frankenstein for an ESL publisher that I’ve worked with before. I was planning a relaxing summer, but the adaptation, the stories, plus another large freelance gig, are keeping me busy–and, as it turns out, too busy. I chug along at full speed for a certain amount of time and then just hit a wall. Today is “wall” day.

Photo taken at Owen Sound marina

All I hear is the clock ticking and the worrying thoughts in my head about how I’m going to get everything done on deadline and still find some time to relax, too. Well, guess what? Part of that break is happening today. Time to take a deep breath, get the calendar out, and plan the work–and–the down time.

Plowing through, head down, shoulders up and tense as can be is my usual approach to projects and deadlines. I always want to get the job done the day it’s assigned; however, I’m learning to stop before I get too carried away. It’s time to break the work down into small bites and find a little balance.  I’m going back to a favourite blog post by Kristi Holl, “How to Recover Your Writing Energy–All Day Long!” She offers some excellent strategies for helping pace a busy day, and I definitely need to listen to that advice today.

2014 Peonies

If you have some tips for pacing a busy writing (or anything else) life, please share. I’m sure I’m not alone in needing some help with this one.

Have a great, writerly day!

PS. Lots of photos in the blog today. I got a new smartphone and have been playing with the camera. :)

 

Tagged: balance, deadlines, freelancing, Heather Wright, Kristi Holl, page views, stress, website visitors, writing, writing prompts