[Writing Prompt] Descriptive Writing

These prompts are designed to help you go further with your daily story than a simple ‘idea’ might. If you’re having trouble coming up with that idea, check out the Story Sparks post.

Today we’re going to focus on your descriptive writing. Every story has some sort of description in it[1. Unless you’re writing some kind of post-modern experimental work that isn’t designed to please an audience in which case you’re excused.].

The Prompt

Write A Story in Which Every Piece Of Description Is Designed To Elicit An Emotion In The Reader

Ideally, the emotions that you are forcing the reader to feel are the ones the protagonist is experiencing.

 

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Dialogue Attributions

We’ve been focusing on dialogue – from realistic to stylized.

Today we’re going to work on the thorny issue of dialogue attribution. Should you say “he said” or “he whispered seductively”?

How about neither?

The Prompt

Write a story that is dialogue-heavy but features no dialogue attributions at all.

You know what this looks like, right? Picture a fast-paced thriller where the protagonist and his boss are talking about the probability that the volcano will explode, or the Russians will invade. The conversation pings back and forth, snaking its way down the page without a ‘he said’ in sight. Or maybe it’s a romance where, one hopes, it’ll be pretty clear who’s saying what and to whom. But you never know…

Tips

  • This is easiest to do if only two people are involved in an exchange at a time and if it doesn’t go on too long.
  • It is possible to make it clear who is speaking by having very strong characters (one curt, one longwinded; one snarky, one sweet)

How long can you make the exchange run before it becomes hopelessly confusing and you have to insert a stage direction?

(Remember, this is just a fun exercise.)

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompts] Stylized Dialogue

Sometimes it can be inappropriate (or boring) to write realistic dialogue. If you are Aaron Sorkin or Shakespeare or R.A. Salvatore you probably don’t want your characters having humdrum conversations littered with everyday grammar. You’re creating a world, a fantasy kingdom, an idealized version of reality. Your characters’ speech, word choice, syntax and rhythms should reflect that.

The Prompt

Write A Story Containing Stylized Dialogue

The key to making this work is that you must remain consistent in tone through out the piece. If your main character sounds Shakespearean at the beginning, make sure he sounds that way in all his big set pieces.

Of course, you can puncture the style for comic effect but this works best if you break out of the style sparingly.

And just because everyone speaks in a formal or jargon-laden, or poetic manner, doesn’t mean that all your characters should sound the same: far from it. Even in Shakespeare, you still have people who are florid and poetic, and people who are earthy, coarse and abrupt.

Give it a try, have some fun. You may find you’re adding a style of dialogue to your repertoire that you can pull out in moments of high drama in your future writing. If it goes badly, at least you’ll have discovered some of the pitfalls of writing this way and can avoid them in future.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompts] Realistic Dialogue

I don’t know if you’ve been using little or lots of dialogue in your stories up until now. We’re going to spend the next few days looking at dialogue issues, and play with a few different aspects of it.

The Prompt

Write a story that features realistic dialogue

Tips

When writing dialogue, remember that people don’t talk in speeches, not really. And they certainly don’t listen to each other. We interrupt, talk at cross-purposes and misunderstand each other all the time. Capture some of that.

When writing colloquially don’t go overboard with misspellings and missing letters to convey how people ‘really’ talk. Using ‘gonna’ and dropping the ‘g’ from ‘ing’ is fine if you’re trying to show that someone has a really strong accent, but invented spellings risk just making the reader impatient and irritated. Much better to try to capture the rhythm of a locale’s speech or use one or two tell-tale local words, than to try to transliterate a dialect accurately.

Remember to use sentence length to reflect how someone is feeling: short, choppy sentences for someone who is agitated; long, lugubrious sentences for contented fat cats.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.