2/26/16

How to prompt: Create a Curse Word

For today's prompt you don't have to title your piece "How to ..." (though you certainly can if you'd like to) or even make it a step by step process like a recipe, the process should merely be described at some length during your piece.

How to Create a Curse Word

This could be about the actual word, why certain sounds or letters work as a curse word where others may not, it could be how something became taboo to a specific group of people/place ("We don't talk about the Packers in this house"). Or it could be about magic, why not? Lots of options.

2/25/16

How to prompt: Ruin a Good Day

For today's prompt you don't have to title your piece "How to ..." (though you certainly can if you'd like to) or even make it a step by step process like a recipe, the process should merely be described at some length during your piece.

How to Ruin a Good Day

A day that begins good and would otherwise continue that way if not for... what? This can really be seen in a whole lot of art, that precipitous cliff when rising action hits its impediment.

Be sure to describe the good day both relatively thoroughly and uniquely. Saying the ocean in Puerto Vallarta is 'blue' is not a description that someone will remember later. Be unexpected but also apt. Going off the deep end isn't always the best option, though sometimes bonkers really kicks up an otherwise OK piece to being a memorable one.

2/23/16

How to prompt: Climb into the Sky

For today's prompt you don't have to title your piece "How to ..." (though you certainly can if you'd like to) or even make it a step by step process like a recipe, the process should merely be described at some length during your piece.

How to Climb into the Sky

This could be a metaphoric climbing like taking flight in an airplane or hot air balloon, it could be about rock climbing, or climbing the trail at Mount Huashan. or it could be magic realism like Mr. Mendoza in Luis Alberto Urreas' amazing story "Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush" from his must-have collection of short fiction Six Kinds of Sky. Maybe it's a tale of learning to climb and clearing the canopy for the first time. Plenty of range to make this your own.

2/22/16

How to prompt: Build an Impregnable Fort

For today's prompt you don't have to title your piece "How to ..." (though you certainly can if you'd like to) or even make it a step by step process like a recipe, the process should merely be described at some length during your piece.

How to Build an Impregnable Fort

One thing to remember is that "fort" is both a thing for kids to play in as well as a military base in which people fight and actually die. Also the idea of an "impregnable fort" can be quite metaphoric: how to make a stand for or against something less tangible than a snowball or cannonball.

2/19/16

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