August 25
Your protagonist goes to a masquerade party in which they’re completely anonymous for exactly one hour. Free from societal expectations, their true character begins to emerge. You might say they trade one mask for another.
- Before the party, how do they behave to fit into social norms?
- During the party, how does their transformation unfold?
- At the end of the party, what do they learn about themselves?
August 18
Characters find motivation when they want something they can’t have. When we can build that into our worldbuilding, our stories’ settings better reflect our characters’ struggles and accomplishments. Money, food, magic, belonging, truth, time — motivation blooms when we limit the supply and increase the need.
This week’s worldbuilding question asks: What is scarce in your fictional world? Describe the things (tangible or not) that are limited in supply and high in demand.
- What do your characters need that is also the hard to get?
- What happens to those who don’t have these things?
- Why are these things rare?
- What keeps them rare?
August 11
Getting lost in the daily grind is easy. This week’s two-part prompt asks you to take a wider view of yourself and your writing.
1. Thinking back over the past year, how has your writing changed? What have you learned or improved upon? What are you doing differently now than you were 12 months ago?
2. Imagining yourself and your writing next summer, how would you answer that question 12 months from now? What would you like to change, learn, or do? (Doesn’t have to be realistic. We write fiction, after all.)
August 4
Last week I asked what writer’s block feels like. We heard as many causes as feels:
- …more like trying to write on the chopping block!
- Thinking that conditions need to be perfect
- where it becomes more of a demand to write
- …running out of time. (But) I need deadlines to function
- I need everyone and everything else to leave me be
- Googling
- the number of things I have going on, hormones, baby brain, sleep habits …
- getting beaten down by my day job
- Not wanting to sit in front of the computer … because of digital eye strain.
- Burnout. Why write when nobody cares?
This week let’s respond to the points, and in the spirit of foolish creativity, choose from the blockers above and invent a solution. Notice that I didn’t say a logical, practical, or even realistic solution.
Our members respond to and discuss writing prompts on our Discord server.