Writing Prompts

Intro

First here's my intro. Yes it's another book. Yea I need to stop doing this to myself. Oh well. Anyway I got this book awhile back at my local 5below by hinkler books. It has a bunch (300) of prompts that I haven't even looked at yet and a really nice intro that I'm gonna summarize for you. If you want to skip all of this that's fine but I honestly suggest reading character objectives. That one helped me a lot.

"The Hardest Part About Writing Is Writing"

Essentially what this section talks about is the fact that you have to repeat the action. It's like an athlete training. It's all about the practice. The book suggests writing whenever you can for 15 minutes weather it's early in the morning, late at night, or in the middle of lunch. It also talks about how some prompts in the book might not work as well as others and that it's ok if your writing sucks. (Not in those words). Basically, what you write doesn't matter as long as your writing.

"Write What You Know"

What this is saying here is that when people say the term write what you know it's usually restricting and your story will lead nowhere. What their really saying is "write what you know emotionally" because the emotional connection you have with the character is more important. I've always heard the saying "good characters can carry a bad story but bad characters can't carry a good story." The book also says that writing is about discovery and that we have the worlds information at our fingertips. All hail google.

"Writing Styles"

Here it explains that everyone writes differently and that's how readers get so many options. There are three classic types of writers.

Plotters: plan out every detail before writing anything. List of characters and what exactly happens in the story comes first.

Pansters: "believe that knowing the end of the story before they have written a word makes the story predictable" (couldn't word it any better I had to quote it). Discover as they write. Referred to as pansters because they "fly by the seat of their pants." (he's penniless, he's flying by the seat of his pants)(sorry I had to).

Plansters: do a little bit of both. Some planning and some off the top of their heads.

After reading those three classic groupings, I can't really figure out where I sit best but I'm thinking maybe a planster leaning more towards the panster side.

"Perspectives"

This one's obvious it just explains the three main pov's that an author would use. There is of course more povs but these are the main three.

First Person: This one is either really easy for authors or really hard. It's from the perspective of the narrator of main character. "I," "me," "my."

Second Person: This puts the reader in the book and is normally used in "choose your own adventure" stories. "You," "your," "yours."

Third Person: The book uses the term "omniscient narrator" which I feel obligated to include here. Basically it's from the narrators pov who can see into every character's thoughts and feelings. "She" and "they." This is the most common pov for authors to use.

"Genres"

Everyone knows what genres are but I'm just gonna summarize the mini summaries in the book here.

Action: Fast paced stories with danger and are meant to "blow the reader away"

Adventure: A character takes a journey (chosen one goes to defeat the dragon type thing). Mostly "exploration, danger, and excitement."