Film & Media Edition: Writing Prompts, Week of Monday June 8th to Sunday June 14th, 2015

Writing Prompts:

• List ten things you do when you procrastinate then turn them into a television advertisement for an ADHD medication and/or products.  Use this as your tagline: I never finish what I… 

• Retell the Nativity Story in modern or urban/ghetto diatribe-language. Feel free to channel the West Coast Hip-Hop style of Tupac Shakur or if you want to be grittier, go East Coast style with Jay-Z.

• Write about what you’d say to an unexpected guest use the film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” with Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn or for Generation X-Y (Millennials) use the rebooted version, “Guess Who” with Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher and Zoë Saldaña.  What happens next? Tell us!

• Write an excuse for not working today or missing school. Think “Office Space” with Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston and the curious case of employee redundancy with the character Milton. Or “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” with Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara and perhaps elaborate further upon Ben Stein’s characters’ infamous monotone teaching soliloquy.

• Imagine your life is now a book sitting on a store shelf.  A book, you didn’t authorize!  – What does the blurb on the inside of the book cover reveal? Think “Oprah: A Biography” by Kitty Kelley or “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography” by Andrew Morton. Make it under 500 words and all of it complete fiction!

• Write a story about why Fortune 500 companies would start hiring Fortune Tellers and Astrologists.  Think of the television series, “Medium” with Patricia Arquette or James Van Praagh’s life portrayed on “The Ghost Whisperer” with Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character.

•  Create a story, script, play or poem inspired by a line in a Margret Atwood novel, film, story or poem.

Movie Plot Remixes:

• Write a story related to a holiday you had.  Think any of The National Lampoon’s Vacation movie franchise, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo with their revolving cast of kids who played their teenage son and daughter characters in these films.  This can be a creative nonfiction experience you’ve personally had or it can be complete fiction.

• A Hippie or Hipster (for Gen. X-Y) bride and groom have a way-out-there New Age wedding!  Tell us what transpires…Think “Betsy’s Wedding” with Alan Alda and Molly Ringwald or the original film version of “The In-Laws” with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.

•  A handsome college graduate student who’s working as a pizza delivery boy gets a very special tip…Think “The Graduate “ with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft or “Loverboy” with Patrick Dempsey, Kirstie Alley and Carrie Fisher.

•  A river rafting trip leads to new friends and enemies…Think “Deliverance” with Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds for a darker perspective or for Gen. X-Y try a tamer reboot of “Without a Paddle” starring Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard.

•  A good friend becomes a leader of a cult or high priest in a coven of witches…Think “Sound of My Voice” with Brit Marling, “Rosemary’s Baby” with Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon and Ralph Bellamy or for Gen. X-Y:  “The Craft” with Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk and Neve Campbell.

***If you’re feeling especially brave, mix a few of these plots and characters together and write a farcical type of story!***

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here and from Writing.com. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

[Repost]

~Sara

Writing Prompts, Week of Monday May 11th to Sunday May 18th, 2015

Writing Prompts:

1. You are walking across a bridge when you witness someone about to jump.
2. Sam had an important appointment soon, but he couldn’t find his car keys.
3. Alice finds a box in the attic that doesn’t belong to her.
4. A taxi he didn’t order arrives at his door and the driver insists that he accompanies him.
5. You pass a homeless person on the street and give him/her a $100 bill.
6. Sleepless nights cause you to fall asleep at work during the day.
7. She returned home to find her place ransacked and only one item stolen.
8. The sound of glass shattering woke him up at 3 am.
9. You find a note tucked between the pages of an old library book.
10. I was walking my dog in the park when the leash broke and I…

Writing Plots to try!

(There are two choices to choose from in each category.)

Action/Thriller
Situation:
1. You are in a small airplane.
2. You are in a laboratory.
Detail:
1. The sky outside is a strange purple color.
2. You hear the sound of dogs.
Complication:
1. You are cold [or warm] and have no weapon.
2. You have been drugged and are groggy.
Objective:
1. You must retrieve a suitcase.
2. You must deliver sensitive information.

Sci-Fi/Space
Location:
1. You are in a civilian orbital habitat
2. You are traveling to the location of a reported anomaly in space.
Complication:
1. Your character becomes trapped within a simulated consciousness without realizing it.
2. An incoming asteroid threatens your survival.
Character:
1. Your character is a journalist shadowing an important figure.
2. You are a miner in deep space.
Detail:
1. Genetic mutations causing telekinesis are present in 10% of humans.
2. Teleportation is possible over short distances replicating and destroying individual atoms.

Drama
Location:
1. You are in a small coffee shop.
2. You are standing on a crowded subway platform
Complication:
1. You are recovering from a severe stroke.
2. Someone close to you has gone missing.
Emotions:
1. You are feeling depressed about your situation.
2. You are feeling isolated.
Detail/Twist:
1. You receive a phone call about a job opportunity.
2. A friend asks you for a dangerous favor.

Romance
Situation:
1. A temporary fling between two strangers at a local club turns into something else.
2. The relationship begins when two people frequent the same cafe for lunch accidentally spill coffee on each other.
Complication:
1. The arrival of a previous lover makes things complicated
2. One of the persons is a single parent.
Theme:
1. Opposites attract.
2. Compromise is necessary.
Detail:
1. The first date is at an art exhibition.
2. A death in the family brings the characters closer together.

~Sara

Writing Prompts, Week of Monday May 11th to Sunday May 18th, 2015

Writing Prompts:

1. Write a short dialogue between two zoo animals about an event at the zoo that day.
2. He raised his goblet: “Cheers! Here’s to Love!” She answered: “Define Love.”
3. I was sitting at my desk, working on a case. She walked in and sat down right in front of me. Neither of us said a word.
4. Coldplay had come to town and Steven was going to do anything to get a ticket…
5. A diver’s underwater camera records an unusual event with strange creatures.
6. Write a story about an elevator repair person who, while working on a job site, finds a package taped to the top of one of the cars…
7. You pull down the mask of a robber to see that he’s a good friend of yours.
8. A recently divorced gentleman of 76 dives into the dating scene.
9. A gift is left on the back porch.
10. A stalker of beauty queens wants their tiaras…

 

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here and from Writing.com. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

~Sara

Writing Prompts, Week of Monday, April 20th to Sunday April 26th, 2015.

Writing Prompts:

1. The dentist tells you, you have one-in-a-million molars, and he’ll give you a million bucks for them.
2. A clown appears at the back of the garden during a birthday party but nobody else sees him…
3. 61, 791, 615, 22, 5 and 9.
4. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Or my ears. Or my hair. Or my toenails.
5. A story which includes the words, “That’s not what I said.”
6. Flying saucers land outside a remote countryside village and the local townspeople make first contact.
7. Just then, a mouse wearing a tuxedo stood up and asked that everyone be seated.
8. Every time one gifted toddler says boo, the weather changes for the better.
9. What did the Ouija board spell?
10. A company head finds an unexpected vice in one of his managers he thought he knew well.

 

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here and from Writing.com. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

~Sara

YouTube: I stumbled upon these helpful writing videos

So I was wandering through the dearth of documentaries and How-To videos on YouTube and I happened to come across these writing tips and Vlogs by Ellen Brock.  Usually I haven’t been able to find many high-quality visuals for writing tutorials and often find most lack decent explanations, examples and tips. If you’re like me, and struggle with a particular issue in your writing (mine is info dumping and too much telling) you may want to follow her for some very excellent information on how to improve your writing skills. You can find her here on WP at: Ellen Brock Editing and on Twitter at @EllenMBrock.

Here are some of my favorite videos I’ve found thus far from her to help you along with your writing 🙂

Enjoy and Write On!

~Sara

Week of Wednesday, April 8th to Sunday April 12th, 2015.

Writing Prompts:

1. When does a breeze become a wind? When does a wind become a storm? How does this apply to relationships?
2. You try to find out why a group of criminals stole the seeds of an experimental hybrid grain from a botany lab.
3. If you are going to feed the ostrich, here’s what you have to remember…
4. A little boy really sees the tooth fairy, but he has a difficult time making adults believe him.
5. Imagine an open field on a clear day. Picture a small family visiting the field and write about their interactions.
6. The object you buy from a weird antique store makes you live in an earlier time.
7. But the butter wouldn’t stick to the bread…
8. Pick 3 random items that all have something in common and write a creative piece about that something.
9. Two animals escape from the circus and enter a school, where the PTA meeting is in progress…
10. Your temp agency sends you to the White House as a cook, not realizing you checked the wrong box and do not know how to cook.

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here and from Writing.com. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

Writing Prompts – Week of Monday, February 23rd. to Sunday March 1st., 2015.

Writing Prompts:

1. You die, only to find that heaven is only hell.
2. What do you see on the other side of the door when you look through a peephole?
3. A druid finds an ill elf in the crook of a tree.
4. Force a relationship between two seemingly different things. For example: How is friendship like a baseball game?
5. A dire warning about the end of the world appears on a computer screen during your Internet search for Nostradamus.
6. “You need three hats for a one-day outing, why?!”
7. Write a short dialogue between two political candidates about an issue you care absolutely nothing about.
8. If we get to the garage first…
9. Write about a world where 1+1 does not equal 2.
10. While climbing a mountain in the Himalayas, one climber falls into a ravine and dies, and the rest of the group…
11. Your dream job becomes a nightmare.
12. She/he climbed the tree to get a better view, but what she/he saw frightened her/him even more.
13. “Pick a card, any card!” The magician held the deck out. Cautiously, a member of the audience began to pull a card…
14. You are elected the mayor of a town you are visiting, but you don’t know the language spoken there.
15. An old friend finds you on a social networking site.

~Sara

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here and from Writing.com. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

Writing Prompts – Week of January 19th to January 25th, 2015.

Writing Prompts:

1. Paint splattered on a canvas… Think Jackson Pollock.
2. “Funny colored hat, crazy shoes, weird handbag, and dazzling hair – I’m so ready for this interview!” you think to yourself…
3. A couple helicopter to a remote island for a romantic dinner and end up being forgotten in an oncoming tropical storm.
4. Write a story in which exactly five different things go ‘click’.
5. At Target‘s customer service counter you plead with the representative, “It’s a package deal? What if I just want the package without the deal, or the deal without the package?”
6. Close your eyes, spin yourself around, then with your eyes still closed, point to something. Open your eyes and write about what you’ve pointed to.
7. Write a love poem from the perspective of a pirate writing to the woman he loves. Think kim dotcom and his wife with his dots (children) :p
8. An old man finds a coin that reminds him of a special day from his youth.
9. The bridegroom insists he wants to wear lime-green socks at his wedding, to match his tie. You have to buy the socks for him.
10. Write a poem about the number three.
11. A detective constable and his/her cat communicate telepathically while they try to stop the criminals from taking over the pet food industry.
12. Read the story of Matt DeHart at National Post, here then use these four words in a fictional story that resolves his plight: Hacker – Creeper – Soldier – Spy. (Additional information about Anonymous may be found here at Wikipedia too.)
13. You are a Roman gladiator in a strange arena and the lions are…
14. Two males pick up a female hitchhiker who makes their lives very difficult.
15. What I know about myself is…
16. An Apple employee dies during a secret business meeting in Beijing, People’s Republic of China where he had gone to investigate new malware called, WireLurker.
17. You’re a famous YouTuber on YouTube. You’ve just said, “That’s it for this edition about gaming” (or substitute this topic for another if you wish) when something happens…
18. Blue cheese or bleu cheese?

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here. And from Writing.com. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

Writing Prompts – Week of December 29th to January 5th, 2015.

Writing Prompts:

1. A slice of chocolate-decadence cake was all she wanted; instead, she got Christian Grey…!
2. The phone rings. You answer and a man on the other end says…
3. An area of darkness appears in an otherwise blue and cloudless sky.
4. Cats are curious, but dogs are…
5. Dal thought it would be easy enough. He just had to get Chris to agree to go on the fishing trip so he could…
6. Something has gone wrong with the earth’s gravity, and you find yourself in…
7. If it weren’t for my pet rat, I would have never…
8. One day, your cat starts talking to you.
9. While walking on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia you find a…
10. While exploring a cave, a geologist finds a stone that is not of this earth.
11. You strike up a conversation with a stranger in the check-out line at the grocery store who, as it turns out, is not a stranger but a…
12. A monarch relinquished his/or her kingdom in a bid for lasting peace…
13. Write a short story about a cat city that exists beneath the Riegelmann Boardwalk, located in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.
14. [1] Choose a movie quote from of the ones listed below. Write a new dialogue/short story or prose/poetry around it:

• “Son, you got a panty on your head”.
  GUY IN A TRUCK (John O’Donnal) to Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona (1987)
• “As you wish”.
  THE GRANDFATHER/NARRATOR (Peter Falk) in The Princess Bride (1987)
• “I’ll have what she’s having”.
  FEMALE DINER (Estelle Reiner) in When Harry Met Sally (1989)
• “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen”.
  LLOYD DOBLER (John Cusack) in Say Anything (1989)
• “It might be a tumor”, “It’s not a tumor!” (pronounced tum-mah) 😉
  JOHN KIMBLE (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in Kindergarten Cop (1990)
• “You can’t handle the truth!”
  COLONEL JESSUP (Jack Nicholson) in A Few Good Men (1992)
• “There’s no crying in baseball!”
  JIMMY DUGAN (Tom Hanks) in A League of Their Own (1992)
• “Show me the money”, “SHOW ME THE MONEY!”
  ROD TIDWELL (Cuba Gooding Jr.) in Jerry Maguire (1996)
• “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”
  JOHNNY CASTLE (Patrick Swayze) in Dirty Dancing (1987)
• “Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”.
  IÑIGO MONTOYA (Mandy Patinkin) in The Princess Bride (1987)
• “Inconceivable!” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…”
  IÑIGO MONTOYA (Mandy Patinkin) in The Princess Bride (1987)
• “You had me at ‘hello'”.
  DOROTHY BOYD (Renee Zellweger) in Jerry Maguire (1996)

Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

[1] AMC. filmsite. Tim Dirks. Most Popular Movie Quotes. AMC, Filmsite. Unknown. Web. 29 Dec. 2014. ‹http://www.filmsite.org/greatquotes2.html›

Writing Prompts: July 24th – August 3rd, 2014.

#77380664 / gettyimages.com

Writing Prompts

 

1. While visiting Cuba, a strange event occurs…
2. Bread, milk, eggs and a hammer…
3. Pick a marketing slogan and use the individual words from the slogan in a poem.
4. Every time the nurse at the doctors office sticks you with a needle, you get a huge red spot on the injection site but this time an infection results.
5. Write about three things that really make you happy.
6. Write about three things that really make you sad.
7. A long time ago, in the days before mobile phones, we used to use…
8. In the future, we won’t use mobile phones to communicate, we’ll use…
9. A tidal wave hits the beach.
10. A photographer travels to New Mexico to photograph wild horses but ends up capturing something much more…
11. Write a letter of protest to the government about something completely absurd.
12. Write a poem or story using the following words: generations, trouble, tender, and vibrant.
13. You wake up to find yourself in a deserted Supermarket parking lot, crumpled up in a shopping cart at 4am. You have a bottle in your hand with no recollection of your life or who you even are…
14. While on a vacation in Banff, Alberta you go on a hike with a group of fellow travellers. While on the hike, the tour guide slips and falls into a ravine and dies. The rest of the group must…
15. While writing in a dark forest, cowering behind a tall pine tree…

 
~Sara @LunaElektraSMC
 
Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.