WRITING PROMPTS: Collection 2

Got writer's block? Want to experiment but don't know where to start? MMM is all about creativity, and we've put together some innovative, original writing prompts to stretch your imagination, challenge your habits, and encourage you to take risks in your writing. If you use one of these ideas, feel free to leave a link to the resulting piece in the comments section -- we'd love to see how these prompts have inspired you!

#1: Go to a public spot, such as a park or restaurant, and write down the first 5 questions that you hear passers-by ask as they talk to one another. Choose one of these questions, and write a response in the form of a poem or piece of prose. Be as creative as you wish in your interpretation of the question!

#2: Open up music software such as iTunes or Windows Media, and set your songs to shuffle. Write down the titles of the first 5-10 songs that come up: these songs will be the soundtrack to a musical that you have to invent. Choose an order for the songs, and create a storyline based upon their lyrics.

#3: Pick a poem that you don't know very well, and delete every second line (try to do this as "blindly" as possible, or get somebody to help you). Now, complete the poem using your own imagination to fill in the missing lines. How does your "collaboration" compare to the original?

#4: Randomly choose 1-3 paragraphs in any fiction book. Highlight every third word in that excerpt (you may skip names if you wish). Try to compose a poem or a piece of prose using only the highlighted words. If necessary, bring in a few "outside" words, but try to use as few of these as possible.

#5: Choose a poem that you or somebody else has written. Use an online thesaurus to look up every word in the piece and replace it with a synonym. How does the new poem compare to the original?

#6: Look out of your window for five minutes. Write about one change that happened outdoors as you watched.

#7: Choose a scene from a book or movie -- or from a story you've written -- and identify its prevailing mood. Now, choose an emotion that is different from that mood, and think of ways it could be implemented into that scene. How could you turn a gloomy scene into one that's funny, or a light-hearted scene into one that is angry?

Collection I | Collection II

Article by Oksana K.
Image credits: Stock Exchange (Lusi); Angelique; Oksana K.; and others.