Category Archives: getting started

Writing Prompts

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Aha! thought I was going to set up a writing prompt for you, didnja?

Well, no, sorry. I mean, maybe, at the end, for the comments ….we’ll see.

There are a lot of places you find writing prompts. Writing groups use them to stimulate writers at their meetings. Workshops often include them. Now I find that some of my social media ‘starts me off’ with an (unwelcome) writing prompt. I actually don’t use them much myself— not because I don’t think they have value; I just don’t have time to devote to them because I have so much in my tbw (to-be-written) pile.

Writing prompts are good for warm-ups’—flexing the fingers and the brain to put together words on the keyboard or notepad. They’re good for when you feel like writing but don’t have an urgent project and want to start something different. They can be good for working out problems with an wip (work-in-progress), but I don’t count that as working from a writing prompt. I call that writing.

I mostly use them in groups — note: I give them out, I don’t write from them; see above— when I’m working with people who know they want to write but don’t know what they want to write about or they don’t know how to start. It’s how I get them to open up and find where to begin. The goal there is to help them discover their own process and show them they can prime the pump. Which is the only way I use writing prompts myself. Here goes.

I use a simple formula with a minimum of props. It sort of depends on the writers I’m working with. If they are totally clueless about what to write, I get very specific.

I set up 3 criteria. I tell them: Pick a color. Pick an animal. Pick a place. The writers do the picking. They write down their answers in a list for reference.

Okay, next I say: Now I want you to write a paragraph of at least 10 sentences that starts a story with those 3 things in it. Yes, you may write a second paragraph if you need to. Then, after a somewhat lengthy but sketchy explanation of what a paragraph is, why do we need them, and how do I know when to start a new one, they start writing.

Then, I say, in tones that reminisce of a game show host offering up a ‘curve ball’: Oh, by the way, you have to include a monkey in your story. Or a fire, or the Eiffel Tower, or popcorn — you get the drift.

What we’ve done is to create — with their own involvement — a set of parameters in which they must write. Far from being restrictive, these parameters challenge the writer’s creativity in meeting them while at the same time giving them fodder to chew on and feed the creative process. Plus, eventually, it’s an exercise a person can do on their own.

Why would they?

That’s when I use it. Because you can take your problem-child story, the one you can’t get started on, and line up 3 choices (maybe more, once you are used to this process, but I’d stop at 6.)

If it’s a character that’s giving you problems, you can work with that character. Use their gender (biological or psychological), their age (ditto), and a food they hate (or anything else they might have feelings or thoughts about). Now, put them in a situation, eg, Character has just arrived at a crowded restaurant and waited 45 minutes for a table. She goes to order and learns they only serve fish and seafood, which she wouldn’t touch even if she were eating with the Pope—(okay, so she’s Catholic in this instance). How would she respond? A writer kind of can’t help playing What If? with that scenario, and bending their writing to meet the parameters results in consequences the writer has to include.

It also allows (forces?) them to explore their character in a dimension different than the storyline they will ultimately inhabit, which will give the writer more insight into them. It can be a great way to build your character’s backstory and discover things about them you never planned to write. Goal met.

I said I wasn’t going to do this, but here are the parameters…

  1. Choose a color, but not a primary color
  2. Choose 1 from Earth, Wind, Fire
  3. Choose an ice cream flavor — any one that you’ve heard of

Now, write a 7-sentence paragraph to introduce a new character in a scene.

Leave a copy in the comments; I’d love to see what you write.

Latest article up on my Substack

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Thoughts on developing what you want to write about, and judging whether or not it is good enough. Plus a small tool to help you out. (click image).

You can follow me here at “Finding Robin’s Story” to learn more about the noveling process and other writing things, and subscribe to my substack, “Do You Know Where YOUR Story Is?” at robinjminnick.substack.com to hear more about Story:where it begins, where it goes, and how it gets there. It’s all still free!

Time Sure Flies When You’re Having Fun…

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…or when you’re supposed to be writing!
4–6 minutes

When I started this blog, my intent was to share knowledge about the noveling process with my readers. I work on multiple projects at a time, so progress in any one can seem to plod. The pandemic slowed me down, particularly as I had to devote much of my personal bandwidth to my part-time job. Towards the end of the pandemic, I was also preparing to leave said job, and I wanted to leave the office in good shape.

Add to that time spent worrying over family and working on our home, and I discovered that not only was I not making much progress on writing my novels, but I was also ignoring that facet of my blog. While I’ve kept up with sharing advice and good ideas, and I’ve continued to work in INKAS, advice specifically geared towards novel-writing has been missing. What has especially been missing are posts about finding my story.

This is partly due to a reluctance on my part to share too much of the book’s content publicly, but I think it is time to do a little of that. After all, I’ve been working on this novel for nearly 15 years!

To dive right in, let me show you the ‘cover’ I created for the work-in-progress. This is not a suggestion for the real cover, but a piece of inspiration and a cover for any hardcopy draft I might maintain.

I sometimes make up book covers as inspiration to keep me writing. When I am planning on self-publishing a book, the ‘inspiration piece’ contributes to the final cover design. Since in this case I am aiming for traditional publishing, this cover won’t make it to the bookstore, but it does keep me working.

When I write, I often have a title first. It may last, it may not; it depends on how they came about. For my MackenzieWilder/ClassicBoat mysteries, I’ve tended towards titles that have a rhythmic pattern and are reminiscent of existing songs. Something no knows is that Where the Bodies Lie Buried came to me in sing-song fashion, patterned after “Home on the Range”.

C’mon, sing it to yourself, just once….
“Where the Bodies Lie Buried all day”…..

I’ll let you figure out where Sweet Corn, Fields, Forever came from; Flying Purple People Seater is obvious.

Finding Shelley’s Shoes began life as “Who’s Gonna Die?”, a reference to a group exercise Shelley uses to block out the mysteries she writes. While a recurring scene, this title didn’t have a lot to do with the overall story. As my writing progressed, the subject of where Shelley leaves her shoes becomes a sort of running theme, symbolic of the problems she faces. So the story became “Finding *insert name here*’s Shoes”. My problem was that I couldn’t decide on her name! For reasons of the story, I was locked in on certain styles of names. I made list after list of qualifying candidates before I hit on Shelley. Hedy was one, and Vivian–although I called her Vivvie. There were several others.

All of these things may feel like window dressing, and to an extent, they are. However, titles and character names should be thought out carefully, just as carefully as baby names. A lot can be conveyed by the sound of a person’s name. You want to plant the right image in your reader’s mind so that–regardless of differences in our imagining of physical characteristics–they have a feel for the character you created. Names can affect that. While a Francis might resemble a Seymour, or a John might pinch hit for a Jim, you would likely never equate a Larry with a Benedict.

By the same token, War and Peace is not the equivalent of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, nor is it The Hunger Games. [ I’ll be posting a more focused column on creating titles in “Do You Know Where YOUR Story Is?” Please stop by and check it out.]

Writing Finding Shelley’s Shoes was well underway when I attended a workshop that featured Larry Brooks, author of Story Engineering (Writer’s Digest Books, 2011). One of the items he brought up in his presentation that day was: “What is your book’s premise?”

I was flummoxed. I needed a premise? I thought I just had to write the danged thing!

Larry explained how the premise targets what the book is about in a succinct sentence or two. Its purpose is to help you pitch and discuss your manuscript in a meaningful way with other writers and publishing professionals. It also keeps your writing focused.

I devised a tentative premise and with great trepidation shared it with the group. So, here’s my first Sally Fields moment–Brooks liked it; he really liked it! Furthermore, it really worked to serve both the purposes mentioned above.

Premise for “Finding Shelley’s Shoes“

Five sisters set out on what may be their last road trip; one of them shares that she may have a serious disease, and the resultant furor unleashes a lifetime of secrets and emotion that could upend their relationships.

As my story and my characters evolved, I’ve had to struggle with keeping it all under control. Even five fictional sisters can be hard to handle at times. My critique group has caught me out at being over-descriptive, over-enthusiastic about sharing backstories, and completely confused over the proper use of en-dashes, em-dashes, and the occasional hyphen. Like everyone else, I’m learning.

At this juncture, Finding Shelley’s Shoes has been done once, then undone, and is now being redone. I have finally solved my biggest plot problem and am incorporating new scenes into the old and handling the repercussions. There is now a deadline for completion.

In future posts, I will deal with individual problems I encountered while writing this novel, and how I handled them. I’ll also post about the grant I received and how it enabled me to recreate the road trip the sisters took. The trip was an eye-opener, and it greatly affected the writing of Finding Shelley’s Shoes.