Andrew from Musings and Mullings is here with us today as a guest blogger. Make sure you check out his awesome blog, which is home to wonderful insights and original fiction.
Andrew writes:
Writing prompts are a really great way to kick-start a tired or, uncreative brain. For a few years now I’ve had a really great paperweight of a book called The Writer’s Block by Jason Rekulak, sitting on my writing desk. It is a collection of 786 different writing prompts whose sole purpose is to provide a fragment of an idea to an author. Some of the ideas are a lot better than others in the book, but the point I am trying to make is I’ve turned to it on a few occasions.
Now, naturally, if I’m hard at work on my novel or another one of my own projects my brain is already churning out ideas and material and I have no need for prompts, but I’m sure we’ve all had those moments where we sit down to write and just don’t feel like the ideas are coming. I’ve had countless times where I’m forcing myself to write and nothing is turning out in a satisfying manner. It is moments like that when I set aside my project and turn to prompts.
Monday, June 22nd was one such day. I had spent all morning working on my novel and had gotten quite a bit done, but I hit a snag and just felt exhausted with the project. I wasn’t ready to quit writing for the day, but I had reached a point where I could not go on. While I was doing my daily blogging I saw Carrie had updated her blog and when I went over to check it out I read one of her prompts “write a sentence including the phrase: ‘I can’t take the stench anymore.’”
I didn’t know why and I didn’t know how, but for some reason I liked that. Personally, I’ve noticed that with prompts, some move you and some don’t, but this particular one certainly did move me. I immediately opened a word document and put the sentence in. As I was typing it I was already asking myself who was saying it and why.
I’d like to share what I wrote based on that prompt now, and below, I’ll go a little deeper into my thought process throughout the exercise.
"I can't take the stench anymore." Dawson said as she waved the disk frantically in front of her accomplice’s face.
Trin looked nonplused. "What the hell, Daw? What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?" He looked at her for a minute, his thick blonde eyebrows knitted together as his forehead crinkled. "More importantly," he was practically screaming at her now, "what are you going to tell them?"
Dawson Gills shrugged her delicate shoulders and brushed her matted red hair away from her bright green eyes and leaned forward towards her partner in crime, Trinity Logan. She batted her long lashes and smiled sweetly; she had a pretty, slender face and it was a disarming look to most, but Trin had seen it far too many times before. He took a step back.
She used that particular tone of voice she always got when he was dangerously on the verge of pissing her off. "I'm going to tell them the truth. I'll give them the disk and get the hell outta here, that's what I'll do."
"Dammit Trin, we need that disk! There's a lot more on the line here than just our jobs ya know!" He made a grab for the disc and she spun around gracefully, miraculously keeping her footing and managing to keep it out of his reach. He fell off-balanced into one of the rooms many piles of refuse.
She scowled as she felt the heels of her own thigh-highs slip on the slime that coated the entire room, but she held her ground.
“Well we can’t stay here to rot with the rest of this trash.” She called over her shoulder as she began to beat frantically on the solid metallic door. “Hey,” she called to whatever was on the other side, “hey, let us out of here! I have what you wanted!”
Dawson had been too busy drumming upon the door with her fists to notice when Trin pulled himself out of the trash and rushed at her.
He ran at her half falling, his feet unable to find traction on the disgusting, grimy floor. They collided and his arms caught around her waist. Her feet shot straight out from under her. Her arms flew wide, and the two toppled down together rolling in a jumble of arms and legs in the muck.
They both turned to see the disc flying through the air and sink as it disappeared into the thickest pile of some particularly rotten looking substance on the other side of the room.
“Great. Just frikken great.” She said shoving him off of her. She stood up, not wanting to think about the nastiness she could feel dripping down her hair and soaking into her dress. She was sweating profusely and that alone was bad enough. It was stifling hot under the burning red lights of the room. “Nice job, you prick.” She said, giving him a sharp jab to his doughy stomach with her toe.
Trin shrugged it off and came up spitting. His face was covered in slime. Dawson looked at him in disgust and turned away retching.
“Oh, please!” He groaned. “You went through a lot worse than this that time we were on Delta-7.”
“Shut up!” She hissed, spinning around like a viper her charade quickly forgotten. “Either way we can’t stay here. Look at that,” she said pointing to something rotten in the room with them. “That used to be alive! Another few hours and we’ll look just like it! Now we’re stuck here thanks to you, Mr. Tackle-Happy!” She took a careful kick at his shin, not wanting to risk another slip to the floor. He dodged and she frowned.
Just then the door popped open behind them with a loud clunk. She pulled at the top of her dress revealing more cleavage and spun around smiling and batting her lashes. “Hiya, you--”
She fell silent as she came face to face with the most hideous, rotund and lumpy creature she had ever seen. It was barely humanoid; its gray appendages stuck out of its body like lards of fat. It stood unmoving. The lines that she guessed could only be the folds of the creatures lips were pressed into an impassive straight line. Only its beady, little red eyes kept blinking beneath the clumps of gray fat.
After an awkward silence, Dawson Gills, never one to be kept off guard for long, regained her composure. “Well, hello.” She said, clearing her throat mildly. “I guess you came to let us out of this,” she fumbled slightly, searching for the word, “this… room.”
“Compost.” The thing grunted and turned on its stubby legs faster than Dawson could have guessed possible. The door stayed open behind it.
She glanced back at Trinity who shrugged his broad shoulders and the two stepped out of the door.
So I had “I can’t take the stench anymore” written and I was asking myself, who said it. I answered the question quickly for myself because I didn’t want to interrupt any from the creation's flow. So who said it?--a cool chick, I answered as I continued to write.
Next was the obvious why is she cool? I had to show that, and I tried to do so by jumping right into her head. I decided very quickly that I wanted to portray someone tough, and headstrong and tried to demonstrate that in how she spoke and how she behaved. Already the back of my subconscious was starting to figure out more about who she was and where she came from, but for the purpose of the prompt, I ignored most of it and I kept going along with that very first thought; "I can't take the stench anymore."
I had to explain the source of the stench, and I already had a visual of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker bickering inside a trash compactor way back in “A New Hope” so I tried to write a similar situation.
I used the disk as a hook and intentionally left it open, wanting the readers to wonder what was so important about the disc and how they ended up in that room. By the time I had finished writing this single scene I had already answered a lot of the questions for myself, even if I didn’t reveal everything in that short scene.
Thanks to Carrie’s prompt I have what I feel is a really interesting idea for a short story and two rather well-fleshed out characters to work with in the future. This is just one small example of my own personal experience using prompts.
The point is prompts are nothing to feel limited by. Enjoy them and let your imagination run wild when you use them. Remember, the purpose of the exercise is to get your brain working in a direction you weren’t ever considering before. The key is to have fun and, who knows, you may find yourself like me and really impressed with the results.
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