Writing Prompts

Writers Digest has some pretty interesting prompts to help with that nasty writer's block.  There are so many times when I have no idea what to write about, or even how to start a story.  I have been trying to improve my writing in various different ways and these prompts are very helpful and some of them are rather interesting.  Here are a few of my favorite ones:

You wake up feeling refreshed, a new day a new— wait your favorite pair of pants is missing. Darting up from bed you hear a noise outside. A woman is wearing them and looking straight at you. What do you do?

The wizard’s terror bolt lances overhead. You shout back to your party that you’re going in. Dagger held high and ice shard at the ready you tear towards the dastardly spell caster. How does your fight play out?

You’re in an epic pun off; whit is spewing out of your mouth and your opponent’s mouth with punishing purpose. What are some sweet puns you could use to really wipe the smile off your opponent’s face? Make sure not to frown on the worst of puns either—they’re all beautiful. Write this scene and battle of puns.

The last one makes me think of James Joyce's novel Finnegan's Wake because it was written in complete puns and makes completely no sense.  I have a feeling that is where my story would end up, I could come up with something interesting to myself, but would absolutely no sense what so ever. Sometimes I wonder how some of my favorite authors like Ted Dekker or Sherrilyn Kenyon have battled writer's block and made their stories into the masterpieces they are.  Did they struggle the way I do when they began writing?  How about you guys, how do you deal with writer's block?

Character Profiles

I stumbled upon and interesting blog recently: Creative Writing Now.  It was created by writing teachers as a free service to authors and poets to help hone their skills whether you are just beginning or are a seasoned writer.  There is something for everyone on this site; I found numerous things that are going to be helpful to me in expanding out of my comfort zone with my writing.

One of the posts that I found incredibly interesting and helpful was a questionnaire for writing character profiles.  There are things on the questionnaire that I didn't think about when I have written stories in the past such as "Consideration of other, how he/she views him/herself, how others view him/her"  and other things like temper and strongest/weakest personality traits are things I never really considered when I thought of my characters, but there are things that are incredibly important when developing your characters.  There are so many things that go into writing a character that people would love to read about (or love to hate) everything on this list brings those aspects out and into the character you want to develop.  It makes them more human in a sense.  The additional questions provided at the bottom are a little interesting because they are things that make up the character and who they are even if it doesn't come up in the story at all.

Any writer wants to have a character that appeals to their readers and some of the most memorable novels/stories I have read all include powerful characters in one way for another.  The helpful questionnaire provided by Creative Writing Now, helps make you think of the character you want to create and aspect of that character that are portrayed through their dialogue and actions.  It is important to have those characteristics in mind even if readers don't see it as blatantly as they would other aspects; its part of what makes reading so enjoyable.  I am definitely going to be using this questionnaire for my characters and see how that changes my writing.