Category: Writing Prompts

Prompts are short, fun exercises that can be used to get the creative juices flowing or break the ice at a critique meeting. They start as a brief list of ingredients, forming a challenge for the writer to incorporate all of them into one self-contained piece. There are many ways to come up with prompts and each author will find a unique way to express a given prompt.

Rizollo Was Sullen

  1. Character – drug dealer with a heart of gold
  2. Setting – the catacombs
  3. Object – syringe
  4. Situation – hysterical blindness

Rizollo was sullen, but mercifully didn’t pull rank. He didn’t buy any excuses for dealing narcotics, didn’t want hear some street pusher’s side of the story, but even Rizollo could see that something odd was going on. He bagged the syringe as evidence and watched the proceedings warily.

Nobody was talking. Amplified echoes of distant dripping overlaid the charnel smell and vague, almost subsonic reverb of the city permeating these ancient tunnels.

Hemp was shivering. He was pale. Nobody had a blanket, so Williams draped his jacket over the poor guy’s shoulders. His pupils were gone. Constricted down to nothing. Which was very strange in such a dark place.

“Hemp?” Williams asked gently. “What happened back there?”

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Philip Stared Down The Barrel

  1. by jenCharacter – gay bike messenger
  2. Setting – shooting range
  3. Object – one-way plane ticket
  4. Situation – first day with the new brain

Philip stared down the barrel of his .357. Unlike the other alleys at the shooting range, his target wasn’t a human silhouette; it was a plane ticket. A one-way plane ticket to San Francisco.

BLAM!

The ticket made a very small target, and Philip missed wide to the left.

His coach, Bernard, clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Phil. Everyone has trouble their first day back. That new brain will take some breaking in, but soon enough you’ll be back to your old self.”

BLAM!

Too high, and still wide to the left.

Philip wondered whether he’d ever really be back to his old self. His old self was proudly queer and ready to move to The Castro with Jerome. He already had a job lined up as a bike messenger. But then, that horrible day as a bike cop during the riot, taking a keg to the head. The brain transplant. Philip wondered if he’d ever feel gay again.

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“Pierre, Get The Eel.”

  1. Character – French circus performer
  2. Setting – the principal’s office
  3. Object – live eel
  4. Situation – power outage

“Pierre, get the eel.”

“Oui, Monsieur Crampton.”

Jacques blundered out of the office, knowing it would make no difference if he corrected the man about his name. After all, he mused, do not all the French look the same in the dark?

Also, he decided to bring candles, as well as the eel. It was not, after all, electric, and would not be of any use to drive back the darkness.

Halfway to the supply room, he resolved to run away from the circus. The wrongness of the preposition infected the whole proposition and he abandoned his resolve. Besides, they’d track him down. Like they tracked down Crampton.

Why, oh why hadn’t they just left him to run that wretched school?

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“Can I Help You?”

  1. by jenCharacter – not-so-handy man
  2. Setting – the lost and found
  3. Object – entrails
  4. Situation – missing spectacles

“Can I help you?”

Jerry squinted at the woman behind the counter. “I lost my glasses.”

She just stood there. Jerry squinted again. She looked horrified.

“Look lady, I’m in a bit of a hurry. I was trying to build my kids a tree-house, but without my glasses something went wrong with the circular saw.” Jerry shifted his grip on his gaping gut and shoved a loop of intestines back inside. “I tried to close it up with a staple gun, but I don’t think it’s gonna hold. I need to get to the doctor. Do you have my glasses or not?”

The woman fainted. Great.

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Hank Moved Swiftly

  1. Character – Ninja, just one week from retirement
  2. Setting – shopping mall
  3. Object – large pink balloon with 25 live bees inside
  4. Situation – obscene phone call

Hank moved swiftly and silently among pleated slacks, pursuing Max through menswear, both of them unnoticed by the many shoppers despite being locked in mortal combat. Hank had learned much in the food court. He knew this was a serious thing, that he could fail. Such dishonor, just a week from retirement.

He’d carried on his pursuit relentlessly from the far end of the mall, except when he’d moved swiftly and silently to the front of the line for frozen yogurt. He knew that others of Max’s clan were present. Battle was finally getting close. Max seemed to be slowing.

Hank sensed a trap, and changed from hound to fox just in time. Leaping unseen over the tops of the racks, he fled Sears. As he’d thought, three ninjas gave chase.

He wove among the crowd, seeking a place of refuge. There! Squeak’s Boutique would be a perfect hiding spot.

Diving headlong into a bin filled with anthropomorphic inflatables, Hank used his ninja skills to make himself as light as them. His pursuers entered. Live bees careened within a pink female balloon marked “special order” and he could hear the telemarketers in the back room making lurid suggestions to retirees. The searchers began to paw through the contents of the bin.

Light and bouncy, thought Hank, forming a perfect circle with his lips. Light and bouncy…

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Eli’s Pants

  1. by jenCharacter – the chosen one
  2. Setting – haunted house
  3. Object – mood pants
  4. Situation – unplanned amputation

Eli’s pants were a subtle shade of green that was almost blue. That meant he was calm. So far, so good.

The brooding, dark shell of the once-splendid mansion came into view at the end of the winding, tree-lined lane and Eli’s heartbeat quickened. His pants shaded over the line into turquoise. Very sensitive.

Standing in the light of the full moon, breathing deeply and keeping one hand on his VW for reassurance, Eli considered whether he was doing the right thing. Claire would still respect him if he didn’t go in. But would he respect himself?

As he took slow, deliberate steps toward the stone porch, a high-pitched keening sound erupted from somewhere deep inside the house. The mood pants began darkening toward indigo. After that was violet.

Nobody knew what came after violet. No one had ever gone that far and made it back to tell the tale.

But Eli would. He knew it.

Boldly he climbed the stairs and strode through the gaping front door. The place smelled like urine and citronella. Not a pleasing combination. The door creaked closed with a bang, and Eli’s pants were definitely purple. He shone his flashlight up and down them, checking for color uniformity.

As he moved deeper into the sprawling abode, Eli’s fear grew.

A large puddle of blood covered the floor outside the billiard room, wet and glistening. His flashlight beam skittered over the surface until he saw a hand. A severed hand, still twitching.

And then Eli knew. Beyond violet, the pants turned clear.

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Instant Writing Prompts!

Back in the day, we had to pull slips of actual paper out of actual envelopes, like animals.

But now, a Four Elements writing prompt can be yours for the low-low price of just clicking your mouse! That’s right, we threatened to withhold the thing they hold most dear*, and the webcode monkeys shrieked in dismay for a minute or two before cranking out a fully automated, 21st-century, totally paperless version of our musty envelope-based system.

Take it for a spin! We’ve always found these prompts are a great way to get warmed up before doing “real” writing, not to mention fertile soil for our favorite brand of sophomoric humor. We encourage you to use the comments to share what you come up with. (Be sure to include the elements list the generator gave you!)

*Mountain Dew

Matilda Always Laughed

  1. Character – Nudist lesbian mime with wooden shoes and an attitude
  2. Setting – Peepshow
  3. Object – Bouquet of flowers, all yellow
  4. Situation – Sniper

Matilda always laughed when she thought back on it, even though it was sort of tragic.

The funny thing about it was that she could get paid for just hanging around. Naked, but that didn’t bother her, being a nudist. And the slobbering apes who dropped their quarters in the slots didn’t care about her art, the elegance of being “trapped in a box” when she was literally inside a box already, or the skill it took to be silent in wooden shoes. But why should she expect them to?

On that steamy August night a bank robber paused in his getaway to check out her act. The police sniper blew the shot, shattering the one-way glass and revealing a lovely nymph with a cluster of yellow flowers.

The robber escaped, but Chloe captured Matilda.

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The Cops Swarmed

  1. by jenCharacter – Pirate
  2. Setting – A smelly, gray beach
  3. Object – Handful of dirt
  4. Situation – Police search

The cops swarmed all over the beach. It had once been pristine, but was now gray with fingerprint powder, and stank of both sweaty detectives and wet dogs. The K-9 unit was enjoying the outing at least.

Black Kent stroked his beard with his wrist stump. Of course they had taken his hook when they’d placed him under arrest. His mood was blacker than his moniker. When were they going to admit that they had no evidence? As soon as they released him from this blasted squad car, he’d be on his ship and sailing for the southern hemisphere.

A uniformed officer ran up with a handful of dirt. “Sarge, I think I found something!”

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About 4 Elements Prompts

Before we entered into our passionate love affair with stichomancy prompts, the 4 Elements prompt was our go-to. The idea is simple, but the initial set-up takes a good bit of time.

The four elements concept turns up in many disciplines. For our purposes, the ones we are concerned with are:

  1. Character
  2. Setting
  3. Object
  4. Situation

Character is pretty obvious. You could go with “James Bond,” or “an angry child” or “the inventor of Altoids.” Challenge yourself.

Setting is where your prompted story will take place. Be as vague or specific as you like. Will it be “Canada” or will it be “the 3rd stall from the left in the women’s bathroom on the second mezzanine at Radio City Music Hall”? That’s up to you.

Object is simply an item that will appear in the scene. It doesn’t need to play a vital role, but it can. Will it be a guitar? A pair of slippers? A donut? That’s up to you, and fate.

Situation is a little more complicated. It can be the impetus of the entire plot, or it can simply be something that’s weighing on your character’s mind. “power outage” “servicing the addiction” “unplanned amputation” “new shoes today”

To prepare, you will need to spend a few hours brainstorming a list for each of these elements. You can write each on an index card or a slip of paper, or you could work with a spreadsheet. We have 4 envelopes, one for each element, each filled with little scraps of paper.

When it’s time to write, blindly choose a single entry from each element and combine all four into a perfect work of microfiction. Simple, right? Again, we tend toward humor, but there’s no rule saying you have to. There’s also no rule saying you have to keep them brief. If you’re truly inspired, you could turn these prompts into short stories or even novels.

In the coming weeks our Monday and Wednesday posts will feature the results of 4 Elements Prompts. Let us know how this method works for you.

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