Prompts
Notebook Entries. Top Story - September 2025.
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise: Write one page a day. Concentrate on observation and description, not feeling. For example, if you receive a letter, the ordinary reaction is to write in the diary, “I received a letter that made me happy.” (or sad). Instead, describe the size of the envelope, the quality of the paper, and what the stamps looked like. Keep your diary without using the verb to be. Forms of the verb to be don’t create any vivid images. By avoiding its use, you get into the habit of choosing more interesting verbs. You’ll also be more accurate. For example, some people will say “John Smith is a really funny guy,” when what they really mean is “John Smith makes me laugh,” or “I like John Smith’s sense of humor.” Experiment with sentence length. Keep the diary for a week in sentences of ten words or less. Then try writing each day’s account in a single sentence. Avoid use of “and” to connect the long sentence; try out other conjunctions. Switch your diary to third person for a while, so that instead of writing I, you can write about he or she. Then, try mixing the point of view. Start the day in third person and switch into first person to comment on the action. By interspersing first and third-person points of view, you can experiment with stream of consciousness and the interior monologue. Try keeping your diary in an accent — first the accent of somebody who is learning how to write English, then the accent of somebody learning to speak English. Keep it in baby talk; Baby want. Baby hurt. Baby want food. Baby want love. Baby walk. Try making lists for a diary entry — just a record of the nouns of that day: toothbrush, coffee, subway tokens, schoolbooks, gym shoes. The Objective: To enhance your powers of observation and description without having to juggle the demands of characterization and plot.
By Denise E Lindquist4 months ago in Writers
All my Top Stories in one place
Fiction A body on the bridge 1. I remember thinking. Will this photo catch their eyes? It’s dark even though there were lights on the bridge. Then I thought, maybe the title would grab them. Something with death as a quiet wink beneath the title. There was a horrible crime in my city, what a perfect and terrible thing.
By Caitlin Charlton4 months ago in Writers
Song Of Seven - A Mikeydred September Dollar Prompt For All Vocal Creators
Introduction Each month, I set prompts in the Vocal Social Society and offer a dollar tip to five random creators who participate, asking them to share their stories in the comments and on the thread in the group.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 5 months ago in Writers
Leave No Bird Unstoned
I like to put barbeque sauce in soup broth. Not every single soup, mind you. I prefer adding the tangy flavor to beef stews and hearty vegetable blends. Something about the sweet and smoky taste of barbeque sauce mixes immaculately with a savory liquid base. Even cheese soups are enriched with a dollop of America's finest condiment.
By DJ Nuclear Winter5 months ago in Writers
Writing Down The Bones Deck #17
Hi guys, It has been a while since I completed one of these card prompts. This post series has been inspired by Denise E Lindquist. I never would have known about this deck of cards if it wasn't for her. So thank you Denise for sharing this lovely deck of cards with all of us on Vocal. I definitely have been putting this card off.
By Chloe Rose Violet 🌹5 months ago in Writers
What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise: Choose a central dramatic incident from your life. *Write about it in first person, and then write about it in third person (or try second person!) Write separate versions from the point of view of each character in the incident. *Have it happen to someone ten or twenty years older or younger than yourself. *Stage it in another country or in a radically different setting. *Use the skeleton of the plot for a whole different set of emotional reactions. *Use the visceral emotions from the experience for a whole different storyline. The Objective: To become more fluent in translating emotions and facts from truth to fiction. To help you see the components of a dramatic situation as eminently elastic and capable of transformation. To allow your fiction to take on its own life, to determine what happens and why in an artful way that is organic to the story itself. As Virginia Woolf said, "There must be great freedom from reality."
By Denise E Lindquist5 months ago in Writers
Zipho Memela Shares why Blogging Still Beats Social Media for Building Real Wealth in 2025. Content Warning. AI-Generated.
Here’s a statistic that caught my attention recently: 600 million active blogs exist today, yet only 14% of bloggers create content longer than 2,000 words. This gap represents a massive opportunity for anyone serious about building sustainable online income.
By Kin Mancook5 months ago in Writers
One Week of Pleasing and Angry Things
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise: Over the period of a week or so, write down ten things that made you angry, but don’t try to explain why. Over the same time period, do the same for ten things that pleased you. Be very specific. Statements like, “I felt good when I woke on Wednesday morning,” are too vague to carry any conviction~~ and this could have happened to anyone. “I ran into Ms. Butler, my third-grade teacher, in the Star Market, and she said hello to me by my right name” is specific and could only have happened to you. The Objective: You may not use most of what you’ve written down, but you will have practiced viewing your immediate world as a garden full of fictional seeds.
By Denise E Lindquist5 months ago in Writers
