Writing prompts are a great way to skip past that blank page hurdle. They give me an immediate direction in structure, tone or plot. They get me writing instead of overthinking how I should start. They get me to write in a way or about a thing I may not have considered before. And I really liked the results from the last couple of prompts I’ve used. I had been procrastinating writing any blog posts. Well, actually I had written a few drafts but once I had the ideas down on paper I found I didn’t particularly care for them. It’s funny how an idea can sound so great in your head but when you start working on it you realize, yah, no, this is actually quite boring. And to think all that time I spent in my head plotting things out. That’s what led me to try this writing prompt from The Writer. I wanted to just write and not be in my head so much. Specially since that wasn’t getting me anywhere. The snowball effect was fun, simple, and the kind of prompt I see myself coming back to time and again. Start with a one-letter word. The next is a two-letter word and so on until you feel you’re done. Your context and interpretation of one word naturally connects you to the next. The snowball effect creates the structure.
This was my first attempt
I
am
now
lost
among
tragic
throngs
circling
illusions
The prompt also suggests you could do this in reverse. What would that be called? Here’s what I came up with for that version
Communities
suspicious
forgotten
survived
through
photos
sepia
fade
out
I really like the effect and sound of the final word. I came back to this exercise a day or two later and came up with this
Plants
ripen
anew
for
us
And here I allowed for some rule bending, starting with a two-letter word
Us
too
afar
paths
broken
glimpse
journeys
completed
unfettered
One could also experiment in the same way beginning with one word in the first line. Then two, then three, you get the idea. The obvious brevity of the exercise requires you to be focused. The simple one, two, three structure keeps you moving forward. The letter restrictions push you to tap into that vocabulary bank right away, something I would otherwise consciously focus on much later, when revising drafts.
Mariam Sultan 