Yes, I’ve giggled; I’ve chuckled; and I’ve even nearly fallen out of my chair bellowing in hilarity.

But I haven’t laughed.

I have this odd way of laughing when I really mean it. My friends call it the witch laugh, simply because that’s what it sounds like. High-pitched and cackling, with that sound that is just so classically witch-like. And I can’t quite put my finger on what happened, but it just disappeared somewhere over the summer. My laugh changed, mellowed out. I felt just a tiny bit betrayed… it was one of those little things, like my freckles and my curly hair, that just made me me. I didn’t care what everyone else thought about it, I liked it.

And today, I heard it again. It wasn’t over anything of importance. My brother’s friend was over, and they were playing the new Super Mario game for the Wii, and my brother’s character had my brother’s friend’s character on his shoulders, and they were shouting at each other, and then my brother’s friend got hit by a bullet bill or something. It took away his powerup, and then they couldn’t get the bonus that they’d redone the level several times trying to get.

I don’t know why, but this struck me as hilarious. And I laughed, and they laughed, and we all laughed and they made booing noises at eachother, and we laughed some more. And I started to walk up the stairs, and I was still laughing, though the shrillness was starting to fade out of it.

The reasons behing all of this are deep and would bore most of you to death. Let’s just say that I was more than just homesick, and that everything didn’t get better when I got back. The point is, everything is finally back to normal… and it feels good. I feel happy and bubbly and like I could stay up all night writing again and not run out of ideas.

Most of you probably won’t understand any of this, but I’ve just got words in my head and need to put them somewhere. So here they are. I hope some of them sounded sweet, even if they didn’t make the most sense.

Now, the prompts.

Basic Prompts:

1) If you could only ever say one sentence again, what would you say? Would it be funny? Philosophical? Where would you say it and who would you say it to? Every word would need to have more than one meaning, if you really wanted to say anything. Imagine how you arrived at these circumstances. It can be a normal thing or something specific to you; something spur of the moment or something you have time to think about. It’s up to you. What do you think? What makes the most sense? How would you manage to fit yourself in a sentence?

2) How long can you keep a conversation going with all questions? It doesn’t have to make perfect sense, but it really gets your creativity going, and it’s kind of fun. You’d be surprised what comes out. Just keep writing until you completely run out of ideas. The quicker, the better. If you’ve ever watched the “questions” segment on Whose Line is it Anyways, then that’s the idea. But you can have as many or as few characters, and if you can’t come up with something in five seconds, it’s the end of the world.

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

People can go crazy over small things. I think what phrases it best in my memory is a comic I read a long time ago. “So you’re going to waste your whole life over something that bugged you in middle school?” “Yeah. When it gets down to it, most people do.” What really gets on your character’s nerves? What do they do about it? And how could it be intensified so much that it would move them to an entire subplot? Think Hermione and the House Elves, or extreme OCD. You can always work backwards, too. Think of a funny pet peeve and reaction, or one of your own, and shape a character around it. Kind of like the whole “start your character with a flaw” thing that they teach beginning writers in every mediocre writing class or book that’s ever existed. But it’s not a cop-out. It’s a spark, a start. You need to remember that. It’s a jumpstart, something to weave in. Not a crutch for when you get stuck. (I hope some of that at the end made sense… :/)

Dare Prompts:

I dare you to invent a character with some ridiculous way of speaking.

• Bonus Points if the other characters don’t understand it at all
• Double Bonus Points if they pretend to anyways

I dare you to have a character sleep in some odd position or place.

• Bonus Points if their odd position is right out in the open where everyone passes by
• Double Bonus Points if other characters have serious whispered conversations in the same room without paying them any mind
• Triple Bonus Points if they are referenced casually in the conversation
• Quadruple Bonus Points if they move to another house or go on vacation or run away and go far out of their way to make a comfortable sleeping situation.

I dare you to casually include the phrase “Great Galloping Gourds” in a conversation.

I dare you to write a paragraph (or more, if you feel like) alternating super-short and super-long sentences. Think even and odd.

I’m trying to make this one short, especially since it’s getting late and I’m struggling to make sense in few words. So I’ll end by highlighting a blog that is my polar opposite; a regularly updated blog with short bits of poetry and poetic prose and very little commentary on them. She recently posted on her blog in response to one of my prompts; the one about homesickness.

It’s a beautiful little insight; a moment’s thoughts and musings plucked out of the air from around her head, and perserved perfectly in a shimmer of gold. Very quick and to-the-point, which probably stems from her haiku writing.

Anyways, here’s the link. Check her out, but don’t forget to write!

http://tasmith1122.wordpress.com/

I’m sounding very stiff and formal, right? Yeah… I use big words, but that up there isn’t my normal style of talking or writing… which are pretty much the same. Not enough sarcasm, not enough unexpected, not enough hidden meaning. Too straight-forward and textbook.

But the point is that I’m homesick, and I’m starting to feel very antisocial and useless. When that happens… that’s essentially what I become. And I left home in the midst of a bit of a religious slump… for those of you that are Christians, you might understand how hard it is to keep up a solid relationship with God, especially when you’re gone on Sunday. I went to church this morning… probably yesterday morning by the time I post this, but… well, it was a nice little place, but I felt really alienated. It felt… somehow disjointed to me, like it was only just getting started, even though I know better than that.

But that’s not my point. (Yes, I actually have one today. *le gasp!*) Homesickness. I’ve actually been feeling pretty at home down here, due partly to the fact that my cousin’s house reminds me a lot of the House-of-Son-of-Hudd. (Those of you that need to know will understand. For those of you that don’t know, just think of any place where you feel totally at home and relaxed outside of your home. A second home, as my friends and I like to call it.) But today, I was suddenly struck with the urge to be at church where I belong, and at the actual House-of-Son-of-Hudd. You want to know what did it? The completely innocent words of my three year-old cousin. “And when we get to church, Gramma can hold the door!”

Those that know how my church works will understand why I’m tearing up a little right now. My best friend at church is a human doorstop. He and I run around doing errands the entire time like maniacs, grabbing more things along the way and doing everybody little favors until and beyond we have no run left in us. And, somehow, we both always wind up holding the doors open fifty times along the way. Even though they have the little doorstops that you kick down, it’s just not the same… and then I actually got to sit through the sermon… and I missed the little kids and helping out and all of that. My whole family’s here and I can talk to a lot of my friends, so it’s hard for me to feel homesick for my actual house… but I am desperately church-sick. I even miss Mr. Louis’s over-energetic, “it’s way too early for this” Sunday School lessons. And Pastor Shan’s… well, his Shan-ness.

I am currently sitting on my uncomfortable matress at exactly midnight, typing this and blaring Christian music through my headphones, trying to get over myself. Homesickness is a strange and powerful thing… and, I realized today, one of the few emotions I haven’t toyed with in my writing. A little bit with Cassandra… but that can hardly be called homesickness. You’d have to know her to understand. (And I’m sorry I have to say that so many times today, but if I took the time to explain everything I’m avoiding, then this post would stretch on for forever!)

And I doubt a lot of you have. I’m not saying all of you haven’t, but it’s just not something we see in books and stories much today. We see missing lovers, which is more of an “absense makes the heart grow fonder” thing, and we see people who’ve moved out and miss their parents, or who miss their old lives, but that’s just the “never know what you have ’til it’s gone” saying in action. And those are all well and good, but… homesickness? The only cases I can think of are in Harry Potter and Twilight, but you could still even categorize the Twilight as both of the similar circumstances I said above, at different times. And I guess Harry Potter misses everywhere but his actual home throughout the books, but you don’t have to be homesick of the place where you legally live. I’m “churchsick,” so I’m not going to disqualify that one.

But… well, I’m not saying that you need to write it into everything you’ve ever written right now. I’m just saying that it’s something to toy with. In a lot of Eragon-esque, journey fantasies (Eragon isn’t by any means the first or the last, just one of the more popular), they have nothing to miss, or the character has a hard personality and a “never look back” motto. These kind of people do exist, but if they’re a character that doesn’t change over the course of the story, then they can also be hard to relate to… very. You will, in the event of publishing, wind up with dozens or even hundreds of fanfics where they are portrayed contrary to your vision, as either big softies underneath–the scared little kid just acting tough–or bullies. Tread with care.

Anyways. Just a little something to munch on; to think about in the future. Next time you’re feeling a little homesick, consider writing it down. Or, at the least, just try and think about how you feel. This isn’t something a lot of us are used to doing, but give it a shot. That way, if you ever need to write anything with a tinge of homesickness in it, you can remember how it feels, and how it looks. These are things that can be kind of hard to pin down if we never think about them. If I weren’t just crossing over 1000 words, I would use this opportunity to do a little praise of people-watching, but I am.

To think that I was expecting this to be a short post! Now, before I have a chance to go off on (heh… oxymoron) another tangent, I’d better get onto the prompts.

Basic Prompts:

1) Since I’ve been talking about this for a while already, think about how you feel when you’re homesick. How do you act? What goes through your mind? When does it happen? How often? How do other people percieve it? Are there different levels? When was the time you’ve been the most homesick? Can you grow out of it, or are you always just a little bit in the back of your mind every time you travel? Does everone act the same when they’re homesick? What helps you feel less homesick? Now that I’ve got your brain working, run with it. Write.

2) What if you got to meet a famous person who you hate? A musician you don’t like, or a politician you think is an idiot? Someone that everybody else around you is swooning over, but that you don’t get the big deal about? (Think Prince Charmont and Ella, Ella Enchanted for an idea, but then forget all about them. This is about you.) Do you go with the flow and pretend you love them? Or do you badmouth them? Maybe you just ignore them, or treat them like a normal person. How do they react? How do the fans react to both of your reactions? What ensues? Would you ask any questions? And what about answers? Would a fight ensue? Verbal or physical? Do you hate them as a person, or just as famous musician/politician/actor/insert title here? Do you think you could ever come to respect them as a person, if you talked to them? (Now you are free to think Prince Charmont and Ella again.) Again, you can write about these thoughts literally, or you can use them as inspiration.

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

What if a character got lost and stumbled upon something ancient and important? Something of spiritual significance, perhaps, or something powerful that the villain is searching for? Maybe something that even turns the character into the villain. It could be anyone and anything, but the result is sure to be chaos. Deaths? Or maybe characters second-guessing their side on the main conflict? Magic granted or taken away, a fighting character crippled or made a pacifist, a sickly character granted wellness or immortality, the possibilities are endless. Perhaps it could be a place that changes people, one that is repeatedly stumbled upon and that many conflicting groups of people all want possession or control of, or perhaps another chance of visiting. The details are up to you.

Dare Prompts:

I dare you to suddenly have the major role model revealed to be a fraud or the exact opposite of what they were respected for

• Bonus Points if they never claimed to be what they were respected for

I dare you to include a dancing animal in your story

• Bonus Points if it sings, too
• Double Bonus Points if it will only dance when it’s alone in a room with one person
• Triple Bonus Points if nobody believes them
• Quadruple Bonus Points if everybody pretends to anyways, for whatever reason

I dare you to have (a) character(s) run up/down a broken escalator

• Bonus Points if it’s the opposite of the way it would usually take people
• Double Bonus Points if someone makes a comment about how escalators never really break

…Mmmkay, then. That’s it for now. I know that the dares are… strange. It’s ten to one in the morning, and my brain is running out of juice. It’s a good thing I didn’t eat dinner until 11:30, otherwise I’d be starving right now.

But I’m not going to write anything else today. It would be far too sleep deprived for you to truly get anything out of it, and this post is already over one and a half thousand words. I don’t think a lot of you have the time to read such a huge post. I’ve already adequately proved that I can’t make sense on Sundays and Monday mornings…

Woah, it’s Monday morning…

………

And if that doesn’t prove that I need to get to sleep right now, then I don’t know what does. Good night, guys… or whatever time it happens to be when you’re reading this… Somebody stop me now, please.

Bye, and hope everybody managed to get something out of my ranting.

Ah well, that’s beside the point. I only know that I have four, and I promise, Yousei, that I’ll get around to looking through your blog as soon as I’m done blogging my ridiculous 2000 word average. Sometimes it scares me that you people are willing to read all of my drivel… even if there aren’t many of you.

I think I’ll get right to the point today, since I have no critiques to make. Though I apologize if they’re a bit off today. My brain is thoroughly engrossed in thoughts of color and anatomy, currently, as I was up practically until midnight last night drawing. My little cousin fell asleep watching me. But yes, my brain is lingering in a drawing mood, which I’m sure my friends from my roleplaying site aren’t too happy about, now that people are finally posting again.

Anyways, too the point (this is why my posts are so long XP) :

Basic Prompts:

1) I’m going to go a bit away from the normal today for this one. Do you have a character that you like? An original one. If you don’t, do you have a friend or an aquaintance that has something interesting about them? Something different or quirky? A person that you think would make an interesting character in a book or a movie. Just think of one. If you’ve been to their house before, I’m going to need you to imagine that you’ve never seen their room. Now, tell me: Just based off of their personality, what does their room look like? If they were a character in a book you were writing, or a short story, or whatever, what kind of room would they have? How big or small, what kind of furnature, what color scheme? Where is it? Where is their bed and what does it look like? And what do they think of it? How much time do they spend in it? Do they love it? Hate it? Wish it was different? Is there a reason other than the way it looks? Is it neat or messy? Use the picture now in your head and write something off of it. A person’s room can tell you a lot about them, even if it’s nothing like their personality. Even if they hate it. And then, it’s what they hate about it that tells you the story. This is a good “get to know your character” exercise. Just something to think about.

2) What if the world didn’t have color? What if, suddenly, everything was black-and-white, like an old movie? Think of the kindergarten classrooms! Or what if, in a strange twist of events, the colorblind were now the only ones that could see color? (From here on, most of these questions are different ways to take it and branch off. They may start to contradict.) What if colorblindness was more common than the ability to see it? What if every person could only see one color out of the rainbow? What would the consequences be? Think of the traffic jams, the distressed celebrities, and the poor colorblind people who have no idea what the chaos around them is all about (well, that number would probably be relatively small. Most colorblinds can see at least some color)!

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

Anything that’s happened to you can just as easily happen to a character in a story. Think of something that’s happened to you that you can’t believe, or think of something average that’s happened to you and imagine ways to blow it out of proportion. If there’s a time difference between your life and your story, think of ways you could modify it.  And pick a character, and have them go through the experience or say the snippet of dialogue or whatever it is that you picked from your own life. This is a pretty basic idea used in most storytelling, conscious or not. But, sometimes, you just need to think about it. It’s a good thing to do if you’re stuck or if your dialogue feels flat. Even if you think you’re above it, just sit down and think about it for a minute. Surely there’s something you’ve read or heard or said or done or seen today that could be a bit of humor in a serious story, or a good way to get from point A to point B… maybe it could even be your point B.

Dare Prompts:

I dare you to make a character be dared into doing something dumb.

• Bonus Points if they have to wear a ridiculous article of clothing
• Double Bonus Points if it’s a frilly dress

I dare you to have a character suddenly understand something pivitol from reading a book.

• Bonus Points if it’s the book that they’re in
• Double Bonus Points if they don’t realize it
• Triple Bonus Points if they screw everything up because they didn’t read the ending

I dare you to fit the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” into a casual conversation that’s not about long words.

Mmmkay then. A lot of the stuff was pretty basic and can be re-used any time… other than the dares, which are just silly, as always. But that’s why you read them, no?

All right. I’ll work with the one about the room, since I actually got the idea from the process I’ve been going through of trying to develop a particular character.

I swished into my room, the once-beautiful folds of silk and lace that adorned my body now muddy and wrinkled. I couldn’t shrug out of it fast enough, and I was also immensely glad that both my nurse and my father were already asleep. They were both nice people, but neither of them approved so much of my aversion to riding side-saddle.

Once the muddy dress was on the floor where my nurse could grab it in the morning to scold me and then see if it was in any way salvageable–which I hoped it wasn’t–I started to ruffle through my drawers for something more comfortable. Dresses were nice, but I didn’t ever want to see that one in particular ever again. The reek of bad memories still hung on it, stronger than the linger of awful cologne. Loads of it. The mud and the cologne smell might wash away, but the fibers wouldn’t ever consent to give up the memories that would flood my mind if I ever saw it whole again.

After I found a nice slip and pulled it out, my fingers lingered on the brass knob as the drawer slid shut. It was carved with the image of a lion, unique from all the others on the dresser. The aged metal still showed enough of it’s color to shine dimly against the stained cherry maple.

My eyes caressed the rest of the room; always a comforting sight. For a moment, white fabric blocked my collections, and then I could see it all again. A very fancy silver inkwell on a wooden desk, the legs carved with mermaids and fanciful battlescenes. A peacock feather pen rested in the proper place of the slightly tarnished inkwell, and another laid across the top of the desk, beside an ornate candle.

A quaint chair with an embroidered pillow sat in front of it. Silk curtains of the richest blue covered a stained glass window that swung open. A soft bed covered in down pillows and piles of fluffy, warm blankets welcomed her to lay down and drift into a blissful sleep. Lace draped down around it, offering more of a serene feeling than any real privacy.

The whole thing was pretty just to be pretty. Little of the ornateness was practical. I could live without it all, but that was exactly why I loved it. One way or another, my mother had chosen the right lifestyle for her daughter. The right man. Life was simple, and I could live without much to really worry about. This was my safe haven, where no one could tell me who I needed to be; who I was or who I wasn’t, or that hoarding such ornate, frivolous things was pointless and wasteful or inconsiderate, because I simply didn’t care. This was my own room, and I liked to surround myself with beautiful things.

After spending an adequate time admiring my collection of frivilous ammenities, I slipped past the curtain of lace and into my mound of fluffy blankets, lit only by the moonlight that spread across my room, having picked up the beautiful colors of stained glass.

(Aimed specifically at Matt:) That… that was pretty awesome. That was… what, four dares and a prompt? Maybe three. But E-P-I-C. I really like how you set it up with the times. Very well done. It’s not something you want to see everyday, but it breaks up the monotony quite nicely, adding a very punctual, formalness that kind of contrasts the matter of the story. If that makes any sense at all. A few specific things, though…

• “A lizard is lighter than you” – I feel like this should be worded a bit differently. It’s stated as a fact, and the meaning behind it isn’t really hinted at so much. Replace “is” with “should be”? Or maybe “You’d think a lizard would be lighter than this.” …Unless that’s too obvious. Just suggesting. “A lizard is lighter than this?” Maybe “lizards” instead of “a lizard.”
• Then where Jill had sat was a hawk. – Where do I start? “had been sitting?” The beginning… then? Doesn’t match the tense. “Alongside him, a hawk now perched where Jill had been sitting.”  Something like that. I think you get the direction I’m going in.
• “quite true, quite true. A point you make you do.” – First of all, Capitalize the first word in a sentence. Just a typo, but I thought I’d point it out. Not the only one, but this has other things on top of it. The flow of it is rather choppy… a bit off. It might be intentional, since he did say somewhere that he was new to the rhyming thing. But Something needs to be inserted between the repeating phrases, and then to balance it out, between the two “you” phrases. Like “Quite true. Indeed, quite true. A point you make; that you do.” Again, suggestions.

But I’m nitpicking for your own good. As always, feel free to ignore. Other than that, I really liked it. See? You did something with my random gibberish babbling after all. ^^ And I don’t just mean the prompts.

(To the rest of you again:) Today, I have something to share with you guys before I start on about the prompts. I have a couple sentences that I came up with out of nowhere. Descriptions of various things. That I really like. But I don’t know where to put them. Before I run upstairs and grab the piece of paper I wrote everything down on, I want to make something clear. A lot of what I write on here, things like starting sentences (which I don’t have any of yet but I might put up later on) and the prompts, are public domain. These are not. I’m putting them up as inspiration and in the hopes of getting feedback. Not for you to use. Sorry.

Anyways, I have three, plus an older one that’s actually a line to be said by a character. I have an idea of how I might use the first, but here we go…

1. The unmistakable sound of two lines executing a to-be masterpiece traveled through the air, stinging my ears and peircing my heart.
2. The singing was like the pure essence of ringing silver bells, wrapped up in a bolt of unearthly silk, which burst open and flooded the clearing with a chorus the likes of which would never be heard again.
3. The crowded halls reeked of bleach and too much perfume.
4. “I feel that that question would be best answered in song, but I don’t happen to know one suiting this particular occasion. So pardon me while I go to the computer to start hours of grueling research.”

…So yeah. I’m thinking about starting a story that’s kind of the diary or the journal or biography or something of a high school art teacher. That’s where the first would probably be put into place. The second was invented when I was trying to imagine what the angels singing at Bethleham sounded like, the third something I came up with when walking down the school hallways (though it didn’t smell like bleach and the perfume wasn’t that bad). I had an idea of how to use it, but it sounds too plain to my ears. I don’t like it. The last one… an imagined excuse I planned up in case my mom asked me a question I didn’t want to answer… I can’t remember what my exact plans were, but I never had to use it. So now I have it running around inside my head.

This is kind of a headway to saying this; if you write something crappy, if you just start writing and nothing good comes out, if you answer a prompt and you hate what came out of your pencil, look for something good in it. A thought, an idea, a character, a snippet of dialogue, a phrase. Even if the story itself can’t be salvaged, it’s always good to have somewhere to start next time you want to write but don’t have any ideas.

If you write enough, you’ll eventually start thinking in the same style that you write (at least, I think this is normal… it’s happened to me). This is where notebooks come in handy. Sometimes, good ideas are overflowing. Sometimes, they’re few and far between. In any case, writing your ideas down, whether it’s as a synopsis or a side note or a little coded scribble or a picture or what have you, you don’t want to lose ideas. Losing ideas is not good. Not good at all. I have a pretty good memory when it comes to story ideas, but I’ve still lost my fair share of ideas. Not good.

But yeah. Notebooks, silver lining. All good. Anyways…

Basic Prompts:

1) Imagine if everything in the world was edible. Is everything made out of cake and pizza and chocolate and truffles, or is it all the same, just edible? Would crooks be able to eat their way out of jail? What would have to be done to compensate? With starvation no longer a problem and everything made out of food (or at least fit to be digested), what would happen to the culinary industry?

2) What would happen if you were suddenly struck by amnesia? How does it come about? How much do you forget? What happens as a result? Would you still get along with the same people; have the same friends, even if you can’t remember them? Would you just trust what everyone said about who you used to be? Would you care? 

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

What if something you owned was replaced with something that looked the same, but was infinitely more powerful? What does it do? Why is it powerful? Magic? Science? What was replaced? Who made it? Was it an accident, or was it done on purpose? Why was it given to you, of all people? How do you find out? What do you do with it?

Dare Prompts:

I dare you to have a character get into a conversation with a videogame character

• Bonus Points if they’re awake
• Double Bonus Points if they’re playing video games
• Triple Bonus Points if someone walks in on the conversation
• Quadruple Bonus Points if the video game characters speak and the character playing the game takes them as responses
• A Lifetime Supply of Invisible Cookies if the conversation has nothing to do with what’s going on in the game

I dare you to have a character cut/die their hair or shave their beard/mustache so that no one will recognize them

• Bonus Points if it works
• Double Bonus Points if he/she takes on a new persona and no one notices until their hair grows back

…AAAAAaaaaanyways…

Purely for my own enjoyment, here is Luke aka Timex pondering something while playing video games, which is slightly out of character.

He sat on the overstuffed couch, staring at the large TV and maniacally pressing buttons on his controller. The game systems didn’t get used much. Sometimes he and Tech would play, and sometimes Chase or Persuado would get on, but it went mostly untouched. All of the girls except for Ninjai avoided it like the plague. She always wound up playing alone, though. Her reflexes were just too good. It sucked the fun out of it, turned it into a death match for one and a friendly game of Pong for the other.

The characters danced across the screen, flashing their swords and fireballs and random other bits of paraphenellia while doing backflips and other feats of magic prowess and impossibility. It was unfair. In fiction, it was perfectly normal to have odd powers. It was cool to be invincible or be a talking fox or go around stomping on turtles and creatures that looked like mushrooms. Nobody played games about normal people. Nobody read books about normal people, or watched movies about them. Nobody worth talking to, at least.

He died yet again, and his face screwed up. For the past hour, he had been attempting to beat computers far beyond his own skill level, moving back and forth on the couch with the controller clutched in his sweaty hands. At first, the chaos of it and the concentration required had obliterated all thoughts from his head; just what he wanted. But now he had started to fall into a rhythm. He was still losing, but not as badly.

The little, red-hatted hero showed up at the top of the screen again, flashing, and dropped down. That was the thing. In video games, in fantasy, it was okay to have potentially deadly powers. If the badguys got killed, they got what was coming to them. If it was the goodguy… the worst that could happen was a game over screen. Frustration. In his world, he could die. Or, possibly worse, he could kill someone.

Goodguys, badguys… the lines were so clear in videogames. You’re on the side that’s good. You kick the butts of the side that’s bad. That’s how it always had been and how it always would be. But in real life… good people did bad things. Stupid things. Stupid mistakes. Bad guys could blur the lines. Make you think that they were good… actually DO nice things. They could reach out, comfort you… they could even cross over. And so could the goodguys.

That was the problem. He was a fantasy concept stuck in reality. One that didn’t work so well in reality. When the lines blurred, people got scared. They didn’t know who to trust, and when trust becomes a matter of life and death, people choose wrong. People die. People get scared and find ways around the whole thing.

…Obviously. He had known all of this since… well, since too late, he supposed. It was still all his fault. For a while, he’d started to think that it was a good thing that they’d been chosen… but it would be better off if no one had. They were unnatural… things that man had come up with, dreamt of. They were flawed concepts that would never really work. No one was entirely good, and no one was entirely bad. So when the “innocents” had to take sides, either choice was wrong. Was indefinite. And, in reality, the “heros” aren’t anywhere near as forgiving as in Fantasy.

He knew what he was trying to avoid thinking about. What did this make HER? She had always been a hero; the best of the best. Defender of the insolant people and detester of everything vile. Of course she’d made mistakes. But what he loved the most about it all was that she’d never claimed to have been a hero. She wasn’t that egostatistical. She just claimed to be human, to be working to fix the mess that had been set into place by him. Even if she’d never blamed him… even if she’d never known enough to blame him, rather. How could anyone NOT blame him, if they knew the facts?

But now she’d left them. She had nothing left to hide and she still left. In video games, the heros never left when they were needed. He sighed, watching as he was brought back to life at the top of the screen once again.

“Mario, what do you think? What would you do if Peach decided… no, that’s not good. What would you do if Peach up and left? Wasn’t kidnapped, but left? Right when you needed her?”

He was answered by wordless grunts from the other characters and sound effects. It was a fighting game, of course. He’d been silly to expect an answer. With a sigh, he continued to play the match through. It was almost over. Only another minute left on the clock. Man, that had been a long match.

Before it was even over, another question bubbled out of his mouth, scowling from a dumb accidental death. “What if it wasn’t the first time? What if she kept on coming back to taunt you? Would you still go after her?”

Suddenly, an dea struck him. The taunts. He pressed down on the control pad, a few steps away from the main action, and Mario struck a pose. “Let’s-a-go!”

Timex smiled faintly as the timer ran out, the screen fading to black just in time. He didn’t stay long enough to see the game announce how badly he had lost. He stood up and crossed over to where the game system rested under the TV, turning the power off.

He should know better than to beleive that the taunt he had timed was the video game trying to talk to him, or God or something. That was ridiculous. But the shreds of sanity he had been clinging to had been obliterated by that kiss…

He needed a videogame that talked more.

~ ========== ~

“I’m just not sure any more… you know what I mean?” Persuado heard the familiar sound of Timex’s voice over something mumbling and quiet, resembling a badly recorded voice played through speakers much too dusty.

When he stopped, he could clearly hear the muffled noise of video game voice acting… well, as clearly as video game voice acting could be heard. “I lied. It’s hot. You haven’t been able to feel anything lately, have you? That’s why you said it didn’t hurt when…”

“You aren’t saying she lied to me, are you? I don’t think she did. She certainly acted like she felt something… is that why she keeps coming back?” Timex sounded contemplative, like he wasn’t really confused. Like he hadn’t already played the game fifty times.

In the background, there were tears and sobbing from the TV speakers.

“I know, I know… always the tears. What the heck happened to the classic ‘happily ever after?’ …I doubt you’d know, though. Your story doesn’t have the happiest ending in all of history.”

It went on like this for a few more minutes; Timex responding cryptically to whatever the video game was saying when he stopped his last reply.

Carefully, Persuado turned on his heel and walked away. This was not a conversation he wanted to have. Which was a lot, coming from him.

Yeah… that was strange. And long. Sorry, but I really got into it… haven’t done anything with these characters in a while. And, because I plan on publishing their story one day and the above contained some possible spoilers, no. I will not explain anything. Take it how you will. And note the mystery. No extraneous explanation. You want to slip what explaining you can in inconspicuously. No one who’s already read the previous book wants to feel like they’re being explained to. But those who are new need to pick up enough that they won’t be utterly confused. It’s an art. But don’t worry; you’ll get the hang of it… well, if you need to.

This only really applies to people writing serieses… serieii? Whatever the plural is. Sequences of more than one book. Trilogies, Cycles, and so on.

But that’s enough from me. I’m going 3,000 words, and that’s just excessive. So I’ll shut up and let you have your turn to write. Good luck with that.

Last night, I finished the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. It was really good, actually. I reccomend it to anyone looking for a fairly short read… I might start doing book reccomendations, if I run out of other things to talk about. Usually, I can talk forever, so it feels kind of strange for me to be all business and just give the prompts.

Right now, on the TV, there’s some sort of sports countdown show that’s counting down “Random Acts of Awesome.” …I’m wondering why they didn’t think of this sooner. If they had, I’d have started watching sports long ago… was that a kangaroo on the racetrack?

Well, I think I know what the first prompt is going to be. Heh…

Basic Prompts:

1)What would happen if an animal randomly wandered onto the field (or track or whatever you call the place where your choice of sport is played) in the midst of a game? Not something normal, but something odd. Like an ostrich getting loose from the zoo and wandering onto the football field in the middle of the halftime show.

2) What if you were in an elevator that suddenly stopped? If you had no idea how long you were there for? What would happen, and how would you entertain yourself? What do you have with you? When the elevator finally gets unstuck, is everything the same? Or do you never get out? What if you get desperate? Do you push the help button a thousand times? Or try and crawl out through the top somehow, like they always do in TV shows and movies? What caused it? Was it something normal, like a blown fuse, or something catastrophic, like a nuclear explosion that lead-embedded walls protected you from? Perhaps something supernatural, like a malfunction turning a sleeping mechanism into a time machine or a teleporter? Where and when do you wind up?

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

Imagine if your character got to somehow change one day in their life. Do they get to choose? If so, which one would they? Why? Would they think about it for a while, or would they immediately blurt out a descision? Speaking of which, how long do they have to decide? Why has this choice come about? What do they wind up changing, and how does it make their life different? How does this affect who they are or what they’ve done since? Does the future completely explode as a result?

Dare Prompts:

I dare you to have a character break out in song, and have people start drumming on their chairs or beat-boxing or sweeping in rhythm in the background

• Bonus Points if it’s in a public place and they don’t know anyone
• Double Bonus Points if no one comments afterwards
• Triple Bonus Points if the song is unrelated to anything at all in the story.
• A Lifetime Supply of Invisible cookies if the song is original (written by you)

I dare you to have a character beat a world record

I dare you to have a character with a speach quirk, like only speaking in obscure quotes or rhyming everything they say, overusing alliterations, or speaking in haiku

• Bonus Points if they respond to everything with obscure quotes from Shakespear
• Double Bonus Points if it usually makes sense
• Triple Bonus Points if no one ever realizes it, even when he quotes the most well-know lines

I dare you to have a character or group of characters that, for whatever reason, sings everything they say

And, since my brain feels like it’s about to implode, I will stop now and just give you the page-long start of a story that’s just a vague idea at the moment.

Rachel gave a venemous sigh through the needles in her teeth and somehow managed to scream “I needed those for the last operation! Where were you then?”

The nurse shied away from her wrath, and Rahcel turned back to the surgery she was performng. He had been shocked into a temporary paralysis, and now the needles needed to be inserted into the nerves first to relax his muscles and then to bring him out of his comatose state.

She knew she had to continue the surgery despite her temper and the fact that she didn’t particularly want to. She was worn-down and weary, but that was okay. She always was anymore.

Pausing, she looked at the shirtless boy in front of her. He was sprawled out in a slightly neat way, twelve or thirteen needles sticking out of him. Thin and wiry, he didn’t look much capable of defending himself. Delicate, or maybe starved was a better word. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine him being shocked–literally–into the state he was. But she knew better. Someone had taken the time to tap the special nerves that were surely just under his bronzed skin.

She put another needle into the nerve ending where the shoulder met the neck, and he flinched. His arms and one leg relaxed, and Rachel heaved a sigh of releif. Her gaze drifted down to his limp leg. Now that the muscles were as normal, she could clearly see, even though his hide trousers, the marks of a runner. The combination of stretched and built muscles showed that he knew what he was doing, and that he had been training.

She slipped another needle out of her teeth and poked it into another nerve ending on the other side of the neck. Three needles later, he bolted upright, tense, aware, eyes open. “Ella, no!”

Rachel jumped backwards, the remaining two needles falling to the floor with a clink and a curse rolling out of her mouth after them.

“You must be pretty resillient… You’re not supposed to have motor skills until the last prick… unless they tapped the main nerve instead of eighty-three… that is pretty close to the secondary…” Her brow creased and she looked him up and down with half-seeing eyes. Presented with a mystery, she could hardly resist pondering it a minute. Aloud for the benefit of any listening nurses.

“Who are you?” The guest on the table cut off her monalogue, sounding rather like a child. He tried to move off the table, but only one leg shifted to hang off the side. His brow furrowed as well, and the muscles on his right side tensed, trying to move his leaden leg. “Why can’t I move my leg?”

Rachel laughed once, humorlessly. “Unlucky for you, you regained consciousness in the middle of surgery. Hold still.” She kicked the needles cluttering the floor to the side, grabbed a new one, lifting his leg and pulling his trouser leg way up in one deft movement. She have a short pause, giving him the moment he wanted to ask a question.

“Who are you?” He asked again.

“A doctor.” With that, she pricked one needle into the back of his knee, which tensed and then tried to bend, but she held it in place. Once it had finally relaxed, the needle came out and clinked to the floor by the others.

She smiled and let it fall back to the table. “Better?”

He flexed it a few times before he let it fall beside the other to dangle over the table and nodded. “So how long was I out for?” he asked, conversationally. Rachel wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Not sure.” She shrugged, then proceeded to carefully place her hand to rest just below his jaw, a position intended to calm the muscles so that she could extract the needles that rested below it. The nameless boy on the table didn’t whine or complain or fidget. He was totally relaxed on the cold metal table, barely even flinching when the needles popped out and plinked to the floor one by one. “Somebody brought you in, said they found you like this in the forest. You’ve been in for about ten minutes.”

Something sparkled in his eyes, and then the spark turned to curiosity as he looked at Rachel. “You’re fast…” the way he ended, it sounded like more words were coming, but they never did. There was an indefinite awkward silence before Rachel finally picked up on the implied finality of the statement.

“So I’ve been told,” she paused, not feeling like it was enough, somehow. “I don’t know about how fast I am compared to the others, but I do strive for efficiency.” Even to her ears, the words sounded cold; plastic. One of those goal statements you made in school or in those meetings that existed solely to appease the boss that you forgot the second it was out of your mouth.

…Yeah. Not quite sure why, but I wanted to share this. Wanted an opinion on it. It’s not very much so far, but this isn’t all I have. Just all I have chronologically. I keep feeling like I should be writing it in first person, my mind keeps trying to switch, but I don’t think that that would work with where I’m going… yet another thing writers have to thing about. Point of view. I’ll talk more about that some other time, when it’s not time for me to go to bed. ‘Night.

(Aimed specifiically at Corrie:) Anyways, it was awesome. I’d love to know if you write more. I would probably put some more details in, draw out the moments on the stage between the gunshot and when Ami rushes off to Pascal’s dressing room. It was a bit short. There’s nothing wrong with short, because things can exist in and of themselves that are that long or shorter. But I feel like, since there’s a death involved, a bit more emotional tension could be put in. Maybe she hasn’t gotten to the moment of explosion yet. But she will, at some point. The floodgates have to open or she’ll turn into a Melanie-Zombie.

Things to think about if you decide to continue.

(To the rest of you again:) See? I get back to people. I praise, and I critique. Now, write and comment. Be awesome. Don’t just read, you’re not going to learn anything simply by osmosis through your eyes. You need to stretch your fingers. If you write things in a notebook, I’d still love to know at least what spin you took on the entry. In fact, writing things from these prompts in a notebook would be a great way to keep up with them. See yourself improve. And, since I’m not famous or anything like that, I have the time to get back to you. I’m not promising I always will, though. I have no way of predicting just how busy this blog is going to get… though it probably won’t ever get ridiculously busy. I don’t know how those ones get so famous, but that’s okay. Being able to reply to everybody who writes in is okay.

Anyways, that Corrie girl I was talking to? My friend? Yeah, she’s gonna be my lifeline for this thing. My phone-a-friend. Because I get busy, and some days, I get braindead. So I might need her help. She may even be a guest-blogger or something for days when I can’t get to a computer. We’ll see how things work out.

But, in the meantime, let’s see if  can get a decent post in before midnight.

Basic Prompts:

1) What if you started something, like wearing a certain kind of clothes, or making a prompt blog for example, that suddenly caught on and you got no credit for it? What if you tried to claim credit? Would your friends believe you? Would they even act like they do? What would you do to get back? How would you go about proving it? What if this is something that starts to happen often? Do you suspect government espionage? (That last one’s for my friends and the screw in the wall. But feel free to involve it?)

2) What if you lived in a world where creativity were taught in schools, pleasing the right brain in place of the left? This would mean that math, science, and the pattern-oriented, logical process approach are left to be learned in electives and as hobbies in spare time. Would the age-tired favorite saying of art teachers truly passionate about their work be proven true? Is art “the only class that’s going to teach you something truly important”? What of music and creative writing and things of the like? Think of how society would be different.

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

Imagine a place where all lost things wind up, including people. Is there a way out of this place, or does a society grow within it? What does the outside world do to prevent winding up here? If there is an ever-growing society there, what happens when someone gets lost inside the place of lost things? Where do they go then?

Dare Prompts:

I dare you to have a character who is afraid of some simple household object, such as milk or unlit lightbulbs.

• Bonus Points if there’s no reason for the fear
• Double Bonus Points if it’s something another character tends to carry around.

I dare you to suddenly have a very persistant merchant come up/telemarketer call/salesperson knock/commercial come on in the middle of an important conversation off-course.

• Bonus Points if the person is trying to sell them exactly what they need to fix their problem but they’re too annoyed to realize it
• Double Bonus Points if they lose their train of thought completely and never talk finish their conversation until it’s too late to make a desicion
• Triple Bonus Points if they then have to go track down the merchant to get the object
• Quadruple Bonus Points if they’re sold out by the time that they find him/her

By the way, before I write a response for the one about the place of lost things, I want to clear something up. I say “you” in a lot of the prompts. You don’t have to write about that happening to you you. It could be an existing character, or you could just make someone up on the spot, or one of your friends, or even me. Or go on ahead and write it in the second person yourself (always an interesting POV, by the way, though often frowned upon to write entire manuscripts in in more professional circles). I word it like that to get you thinking about it personally. Trigger an immediate, human reaction. Thoughts. That, and it’s how prompts are traditionally written. Feel free to go with it.

Just thought I’d make that clear. Now…

I wove through the piles of things, a ghost with a lantern. There were many ornate gowns amongst piles of forgotten, half-broken toys, the nearly-unworn posessions of rich women who had a habit of spending too much money. I could’ve thrown one on and felt much less like some useless slave, but that was okay. Feeling like a slave was something I was used to. Swimming in puffs and fronds and bows of ornate, overly stitched fabric was not.

Instead, I wove through the piles of things, mostly junk, lantern in hand as my feet glid across the familiar, seemingly untrodden floors. In my simple white shift, full of holes just like everything around me. As always, I felt like I could curl up into a ball amongst the things and just disappear. Sometimes, it was a good feeling. Made me feel at home… like the well-worn, old pieces of junk around me were my family.

My plain, mousy brown hair was back in a sloppy, curl, messy ponytail, starting to fall out and drooping down past my shoulders. My feet were bare, but I was, by now, unafraid of stepping on anything. I knew the path too well, and my feet were calloused enough that I didn’t need to worry about stepping on strange wooden toys. People were surprisingly careful not to lose sharp things. Needles and scissors weren’t something you were ever glad to find on accident.

Not that they would. Silly people.

My gray-brown eyes gracefully glid across the piles for anything precious. Precious things and things that breathed. Those were the ones that needed to be returned, because of the value that the Found Man had placed on them. The people who were careless enough to lose things could come themselves when they realized that something nonprecious was lost. It was not something to worry about.

Currently, I did not need to fetch anything. The fetching day had yet to begin. The people who, in the clear thinking of the night, realized that they needed something that they didn’t know the position of were probably already lined up, but the Found Man imposed a strict timeline on picking up nonprecious things. Right now, that was what I was searching for.

My eyes caught on a glint of silver amongst a pile of stray buttons and the old wodden wheel to a toy train. Without missing a beat, my feet took me closer, stepping effortlessly over the nonprecious junk between me and it, and then I stooped over it. It was a shining silver locket, with two letters inscribed on the front, a small heart in-between.

The small part left of me that was human wondered what was inside; whose it was, but I knew better than to open it. So I wound the thin, delicate chain carefully around my deathly pale fingers, stood up, and turned to walk to the place where precious things were taken. But I would not rush. The stupid people who lost things did not deserve that much effort on my part.

After all, I was not new to being a lost soul. Some of the newer ones still felt the anxiousness of living outside of the walls, with the silly, forgetful humans. They rushed because they were used to putting on a show. Used to trying to feel useful and struggling to find a purpose, vying for attention and a small word of praise. Every soul was different, but the lost souls usually went through phases very much the same.

It had been a while since I had arrived, wishing to cry deep inside but knowing, even deeper, that it would do me no good. I had left most of my free will and most of my body behind. I was now just a ghost of a person, of a soul, barely tied to this world.

When I thought about it, it was kind of depressing. I tried not to, but I slipped at times. In order for something to become lost, it had to not have anyone within twenty yards of it, no one thinking about it on any level, unable to think of where it was, and have no one able to see it. The same was true for souls.

It was easy for people to lose things with busy lives as they all had, and even, to an extent, people. To lose a person, that person had to be in a place such that no one knew really where they were. Usually, they had to be alone, though there were a few exceptions that I had never really been able to understand. But to lose a soul, it had to be at such a place where no one was even thinking about the person, not just the location. I knew exactly where I was at the time. I was hiding.

But now I had a purpose, at least. For a time immeasurable by seconds or hours or even days, I had been working to find things in an ever-growing stockroom of things that no one knew the place of.

Somewhere inside, I still wished that someone would show up for me. I knew that they weren’t, but the small human part of me was a cursed, wistful, curious… alive. It made me think about things that made me want to cry, courtesy of it. I just wanted to disappear.

It wanted me to want to be alive again.

…That was strange, and it didn’t end quite the way I wanted to end it, but I like it. I hope that gives you stragners the assurance that I can write. Thanks for reading, and good luck!

Oh, and just in case this isn’t obvious, the banner at the top of the page and the excerpt I just wrote in italics are both copyright to me. The prompts are free domain writing tools, but I don’t mind credit if you get famous off of one. ;P Just kidding.

Merry writing!

But no. You see, I recently finished a yearly project called National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Thanks to a school project at the last minute, I came across the midnight mark November 30th just under 3,000 words short. And I’m seriously getting tired of saying that, so that is the last time I plan on explaining… even though the whole thing hasn’t entirely sunk in yet.

But I realized that what helped me get so close, what would’ve helped me finish a day early if it hadn’t been for a project that was actually being graded, was mostly the “dares.” From the forums and from my best friend who was in it with me. These were essentially silly little prompts that I would write for a bit of comic releif and reason to keep going. Did they move the plot along? Not all of them. But they definitely helped up the word count.

Point is, I know that there are a lot of writers out there… for now, let’s use the term “aspiring writers” (which I believe to be most of America and even beyond that, deep inside), that just need a little jump start. They need help putting their ideas on paper. They need feedback and they don’t know where to get good, honest feedback that’s not to ridiculously harsh. I would call myself a writer. Not published, but still a writer. And if you knew how many hours of my life have been spent typing away at a keyboard–a number I can’t even begin to fathom–I think you’d agree, as well.

But I was on my own for a while. I hated writing in Elementary school. I failed the fourth grade writing test. And I probably would have failed again, if I hadn’t been excused from the retake. Then I realized something, entirely on my own, with only the help of the fantasy books that I loved so. I was so bad at it because I was thinking about too much. I had tons of ideas, and I loved long chunks of dialogue, arguments, stringing words together and being overdescriptive. I wasn’t meant to be able to cram all of my ideas into five measely paragraphs. I was a novelist, at heart, and I always had been. Even after I realized this, until I met my now best-friend, who was at the time more of an aspiring writer, I was mostly on my own in terms of growing. I slowly saw that whenever I started to talk about writing, whenever I hung out with a crowd, writers sprang up. I had the golden touch… or something like that.

But I want to do that for the people over the internet. I want to turn aspiring writers into writers, just like I’ve always been around to do for the people I meet face-to-face. I once read a quote that was very straightforward and that I agree with wholeheartedly.

Write. That’s what writers do. Or don’t. That’s what aspiring writers do.

No offence to those of you that I’ve been calling aspiring writers. Many of you have to admit that it’s the truth. The first step to fixing a problem is admitting that you have one. XD Sorry. That one was a bit mean. But too hard to resist.

In other words, this blog isn’t intended to be as much for my friends, though you are welcome to read it and follow along and tell your aspiring writer friends and all that shazam. But my disillusioned self is determined to make a nice hub for anyone who stumbles across this little bubble of strangeness.

I’m sure that, by now, most of you simply want me to get to the point. No? You’re probably cursing me in your heads, threatening to click the x button in the corner or go to youtube instead. I’m not stopping you. I’m long-winded. I know. It’s a writer thing… well, at least a novelist thing. Some writers are rather good at being to-the-point, but that simply isn’t something I deem nessecarry. If something, however, is keeping you here, I encourage you to stay. This will be well worth your time, I promise.

I am not going to tell you how to write here. There are zillions of writing help-books and zillions more published authors (I suppose, more accurately, thousands or millions, but I digress), and each and every one of them is going to tell you something different. Some of them have good advice. Some not so good. But that’s how the writer writes. Their preference. You just need to find a way that works for you and stick to it. I am not here to add yet another opinion, another voice to the confused jumble. I am here to help you find yours.

I’m not published, and I’m certainly not famous (at least yet, anyways), so that’s not somethin I can help you with. But if you have opinions, thoughts and a wit that you want to capture on a page in the form of words, that is what I can help you do. You can write whatever you feel comfortable with, in whatever form you feel comfortable with. Essays, poems, short stories, chapter books, novels, epics… whatever. You can experiment, if you want.

But I am here to spark ideas. And that is something that I hope to accomplish through prompts. Before you leave to stare at your desktop or play minesweeper or watch senseless youtube videos (all of which have their place as stress-relievers), wait and read below.

Ideally, I would post every day. But I’m not even going to pretend that that’s going to happen. I am busy. Simple as that. But I’ll try, and when I do post, this is what you’ll (hopefully) see:

Main Prompts: Hopefully, two of them. These will usually be in “what if” or “imagine if” format. Things like “what if your computer suddenly had a personality?” or “what if we didn’t have to breathe?” …Only cooler. These are examples, so of course they’re lame. These can be applied to whatever you feel like. Any of the forms mentioned above and more, if you want. Be creative. Mix it up.

Plot/Subplot Prompt: There will usually only be one of these, but sometimes I just get really good ideas. These will usually be much larger. This is focused more towards my fellow novelists, though anyone else is welcome to get creative. These are supposed to be big enough to base a novel off of, or to at least jumpstart an existing one with an interesting subplot. As such, I will also try to make them more vague, though you are willing to tweak and run with my original prompt. Something like “What if a person could split themselves into several people, but the clones could never be taken back?” Okay… maybe that was a bit too specific. Let’s try… “What if a girl/boy/woman/man in a coffin, about to be buried, suddenly comes back to life (or from a coma or something) in the middle of their funeral?” These, as you can see, are problems. Things with diverse consequences, depending on the specifics of the situation. Though it would be hard to argue that they could happen without consequences. That’s the idea. I want to give you something where you’re forced to make something bad happen, but exactly what is up to you, your writing style, and your voice. But, again, I’d love to see what people come up with, even if it’s long.

Dare Prompts: These are going to be more like the NaNo dares I mentioned earlier. In “I dare you to” format, they will usually be silly. Mostly meant for something that has already been started, but again, that doesn’t have to mean that’s how you use it. I’m trying to give you options. Something like “I dare you to spend a page describing a refrigerator in ridiculous detail.” It may or may not include bonus points, which mostly equate to bragging rights but can make things infinitely more interesting. For instance, from the last one “bonus points if it’s a crucial plot point, double bonus points if it involves a dead person…” I could go on. The one above is part of a dare that my friend and I posted on the NaNo dares thread, something that she started, I followed her lead, and then we decided everyone should try it. How many of these there are depends on how many ideas I have.

Pick your favorite for the day, and write. I’ll do the same, and post my example of the day with the prompts. Likewise, you post your results as a comment or a link. I’ll even see if I can set up a special yahoo account for this. I’ll try to get back to you with a critique either in a reply comment/email or in the next post. If it’s really good, I might even post the whole thing in my next blogpost. No, bribes and friendship tokens are not accepted.

Along with this, I hope to offer scattered writing advice and maybe book suggestions. We’ll see. But expect other things, on top of the normal. If you send me a piece of writing, I’ll do my best to get back to you with a critique, because I really am excited to help.

And one more thing before I drop my prompts and sign off for the night. These don’t have to be used in writing. If you’re more of an artist, try a sculpture or a painting or just a drawing. I also have some artistic talent, though not as much as with writing, and I would love to offer critiques and praise to art, as well. Or music. Bottom line; be creative. That’s what this is all about. And don’t lose yourself trying to live up to my expectations. Almost everything I say, with the main exceptions of grammar and spelling advice and the whole “everyone has their own style” thing, is my thoughts. Someone else might disagree.

So now… Prompt Time!

Main Prompts:

1) What if there were five seasons? What would the fifth season be like? What time of year would it fall in? What would all of this do to the space-time continuum?

2) Imagine if you could witness the creation of the very first non-vocal, purposefully made instrument. When was it? What does it sound like? What purpose did it serve other than sounding pretty? Who mastered it to the point of awesomeness?

Plot/Subplot Prompt:

What if someone writing a novel died and it was found unfinished? What if knowing the ending becomes crucial to a character’s survival/financial stability/love life/sanity?

Dare Prompt:

I dare you to turn on the news/open the newspaper/go on a news website, and twist the first positive thing you see into a similar, negative situation/another outcome to the “happily ever after,” then write about it.

I dare you to have a character’s mother beat them at video games or football or some other activity that mothers aren’t stereotypically supposed to be able to do.

• Bonus Points if the mother has never done said activity before
• Double Bonus Points if the character was really good at said activity
• Triple Bonus Points if the character is with friends
• Quadruple Bonus Points if, once the character is finally ready for a rematch, it turned out to all be a fluke and beginner’s luck.
• All of the above and a cookie if the friends are not around to witness the character beating their mother at said activity the second time around, and never believe them.

…Okay, there you go. I don’t have time to write a response to any of the prompts today because I have work to do making the blog all shiny and cool-looking. That is something I intend to try and fit into future posts.

Adios! Hope to see you again soon!