Writing Prompts by Allison Symes

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

I love writing prompts. I use a wide variety ranging from the various random generators to story cubes to picking a proverb or phrase from books and then writing a tale around this saying. They are excellent as themes. I also use books of prompts and have contributed to some too.

As I write a lot of flash fiction and short stories, I always need ways of coming up with ideas. I focus on getting the characters outlined because for me characters make or break a story. But I’ve found the prompts have been brilliant in giving me my themes (and these often trigger the ideas for the characters to service said themes well).

I enter competitions regularly too. Some have open themes but the majority I go in for have a set theme. I’ve found writing to prompts is useful practice for writing to competition themes set by someone else. 

I also like mixing up the prompts I use as this (a) keeps me on my creative toes and (b) means I never become bored. I’ve found the random numbers generator to be a surprising source of ideas. We link stories with prose rather than numbers but I’ve used a random number to be part of an address where the action happens. Another time, I turned the number into a timed countdown and had another tale from that.

A tip I’ve found useful when using the random generators is to limit how much I generate in one go. It avoids feeling swamped. So for, say, any of the random word ones, I will generate three words in one sweep. I may use one, two, or all three of these words in my story or decide I don’t like any and generate another three and maybe another set of three after that.

By the time I’ve done this, I have found ideas are forming (often from the first set of words, it is the way of it!). Away I then go with getting an outline down so I can nail that idea and see what I can do with it.  This works for me.

I use random object and picture prompts too. I usually hear my characters’ voices and then I picture them. A bit like the way my old family TV set used to work in the 1970s - sound on first, then the picture (and sometimes the telly needed a thump to bring the picture through, yes I am that old). 

With these  prompts, I get to see the pictures first. Again mixing things up like this helps me be more productive and creative. Plus I can use my own photos if I want. 

Using prompts at all means I’m not worried when set exercises at writing events. I know I can give them a good go simply because I’ve already practiced writing to different ideas set by other people/algorithms.