Thanks for sharing this. I suck at prompts and to your point rarely get anything worth keeping from them. It all feels a bit contrived. It's good to know that experienced writers don't all think they're so helpful either! I guess I've just assumed it's "practice" and is there such a thing as bad practice?
I thought I answered this. I'll try again: Yes, I think there is such a thing as bad practice. Any practice that keeps writers from using their own intellect and imagination while crafting their work is a timewaster. As writers, it's all we have going for us. At some point we have to go out on our own. Anything that stops us from getting there, or slows us down, is working against us.
Learning to do it someone else's way means we'll have to unlearn it at some point if we're going to move on.
Seven national best sellers, zero prompts. My advice to young writers is to study history, biography, psychology, anthropology, but not writing. Read everything: classics, crap, airport thrillers, literary fiction, every genre that interests you. Learn what keeps you turning pages and analyze why you stalled on page 38 and never pick it up again. Don't write what you already know; write what you want to understand. Also: marry an engineer. They are, as a group, funny, creative, and eager to fix things (including relationships). And they get good benefits at work.
"My advice to young writers is to study history, biography, psychology, anthropology, but not writing." I'm with you there, Mary. The older I get the more I'm sure writing can't be taught. I'm not convinced there's an exercise out there that will make anyone a better writer. It's all in observation and thought and our own innate talent. What we do with it is what makes us unique.
I love that you've written seven national best sellers without a single prompt. I'm smiling over that one. I feel vindicated! 😏
I married a psychologist who helped me with character motivation and plot when I was stuck, especially in my crime novels. As for wide reading, that's crucial and the best advice I got in college from my writing mentor was "Read Everything!"
I don't need them for myself since over the past 4 years I've had ideas for what turned into 95 publications of personal essays and short stories. That's a career record for me and the pandemic played a major role.
I've used what some people call prompts but for me are more like choices when teaching CW at MSU and Regents College in London, teaching master classes, and teaching online workshops. Many prompts I see seem mechanical or curt. I like to give writers a full paragraph for each possibility.
I agree that some of the best inspiration comes from reading and studying other writers, and not just in your own genre. My college mentor said "Read everything!"
While you may see 'choices', if they're coming from you, they're prompts. So with that, I'll ask, why are they useful? Do you think your students grow from them or are they simply writing what they think will keep you happy? What would take their place if you stopped using them? How would you work at making them use their own creative minds without prompts?
And finally, does every writing instructor you know use prompts?
I hate the word "prompt." It's too directive and limiting. I always told people to play with the ideas I gave them, invert them, subvert them, whatever they wanted to do. My classes were very loose in those terms and relaxed--we had fun (neighboring profs would sometimes complain we were too noisy).
And I was lucky because there were people ready to write in each class and they inspired each other. I never had complaints about the assignments in the end-of-term evals. As a longtime (now-retired) teacher of CW, I found that students wanted ideas that they could bounce off of and I never felt people were writing to please me, the classes were usually very tight-knit and people wrote for the group as well as themselves.
Oh, and we always read several books during the semester and I used scenes or characters from them--in other words, they could do fan fiction. Sometimes they'd writ "missing scenes" or "character reveals." Already Dead by Charlie Houston, a vampire/zombie/PI novel was a consistent favorite to play with.
I have no idea what colleagues were doing and didn't care, unless a former student came to me for help or advice because their new teacher was a dud or even destructive.
I get it that you don't like "prompts" at all--but that doesn't mean they don't work in a classroom or master class setting. It depends on the teacher.
That's what I want to talk about. What makes them work? I get it that classroom settings may be different than retreats or Substack offerings. Your students expect exercises, and maybe even welcome them. But how do they benefit them in the long run? Do they come to depend on prompts, or will they easily move on and allow their own creativity to take over?
No, I'm definitely not a fan of prompts, but I'm willing to listen to reasons for them to exist.
What makes them work in a classroom? They can get students thinking/writing/laughing/arguing/you name it. But like you, I don't get why the writing world right now is obsessed with prompts instead of encouraging writers to read, read, read, and even read books that fail because you can learn a lot from one that doesn't work, whatever the reason.
The only thing I have written from a prompt that I liked is this short, short story. The prompt was the opening line:
"She may be young but she’s not stupid. First the rescue squad arrives but when she sees the gendarmes she knows something is definitely up.
She had been walking her dogs along the beach. All morning trucks and mechanical shovels had been leveling the pebble beach. At low tide she had to skirt the barricade to reach the strip of sand along the shore.
It is a warm day in early spring, thick blue cloudless sky above tall white chalk cliffs. A light breeze blows her hair across her face. They walk on the patches of sand, avoiding the seaweed-covered rocks sharp with barnacles and mussels. She decides to head back when she notices the man talking on his cell phone. He keeps looking in the direction from where she had just come. She sees no one else on the beach.
She hurries up the slippery pebble slope to the boardwalk; the dogs follow. The rescue squad van and the car from the gendarmerie are parked on the street at the base of the cliffs. A small crowd is beginning to gather.
Another van from the rescue squad arrives and four men carrying a stretcher climb down to the beach to join their colleagues and the gendarmes. After a while, they return. The body on the stretcher is completely covered. One of the gendarmes is now carrying a purse she recognizes. She may be young but she’s certainly not that stupid."
If you're happy with what you wrote, then it worked for you. How likely would you want to work from prompts again? Could you come up with a better story on your own, or do you think you needed that push to write one you can be happy with?
I also don’t like prompts like those you shared. I like prompts like this one, that sets the scene in an open-ended way. I also did another short, short story I liked with also an open-ended prompt, otherwise I find myself avoiding writing.
Oh, that last bit! Are you saying you avoid writing that might require you to come up with something on your own? Or are you avoiding writing altogether? If you need a push with a line that sets a scene, go for it! But really, you have it in you to create your own scenes, You don't need props.
Ok this is a juicy one for me, since I am an Academic Coach! I am sure that you see the irony here because you have just given us a writing prompt!
One of the things writing prompts are good for is prepping a student for more writing prompts! Silly, I know! But even the college board exams are writing prompts. Students are given prompts all the time for short answers and essays, so they need practice tackling those.
When I work with students, I do try to be more inspirational and creative than simply offering a prompt. And we use clustering techniques to get their ideas to flow. Sometimes I play beat the clock, but only because they have to in class!
Those students who struggle with writing always want to know what to write about. So then, how do we teach them to tap into the muse? I try and work with that elusive beast as well. I don’t think that can be taught by prompt!
Working with professionals is different. Seasoned writers seem to do better with inspiration, rather than a topic or prompt. However, if a writer is feeling stuck, I will have them doodle or I even have them write things like recipes. I like writers to feel pen flowing on paper a bit—I don’t expect them to create their whole project that way, but I want them to engage the creative sites in the brain.
All of my writing sessions and camps that I do are designed to send writers home with a desire to finish what they have begun. It doesn’t have to be linear. I just want their time spent with me to propel them towards an end goal.
I thank you for this prompt and for all the excellent articles you allow me to read!
"Students who struggle with writing always want to know what to write about." That sends chills up my spine. Are we setting writers up for failure by not giving them the confidence to search for their own creative sparks?
What I'm reading from you is that academia is full of those roadblocks to uniqueness and creativity. Indeed, to bravery. There is the stench of conformity in "writing prompts are good for preparing students for more writing prompts". You may be snarking a bit but there's enough truth to it to make it both maddening and sad.
I'm glad I've opened up this conversation. When I started this I wasn't thinking of formal classes, but it could be that's where the notion of prompts got its start.
I also never saw the attraction of prompts, particularly for fiction. If what I am doing is journalling, then a question can be a sort of prompt, but I agree that the ideas that I am brainstorming as I sketch out a story outline become my prompts. As for the co-writing sessions, I am trying to use them--both as a way of being more accountable on a given day to getting writing done, and because-sort of like writing in a coffee shop--it feels less lonely to be part of a co-writing zoom group--especially since health issues means writing "in public." is not really available to me any more.
Thanks so much for your thoughts, especially on your co-writing zoom group. I'm glad it's working out for you. Interesting that you compare it to writing in a coffee shop. I've never been able to do that, either. Too many distractions, and I'm much too nosy. I spend all my time trying to listen in or figure out who my co-coffee-shoppers are and what they're doing while they're sitting there. 😆
Writing on a timer is guaranteed to freeze me. On the other hand, prompts and themes free something in my head. Not prompts like: what did you do on vacation. That's also a freeze guaranteed, but a first line, yes, I've done that and shrugged off the first line later because its use was only as a starting spark. The prompts/themes of Stone's Throw, the Rock and a Hard Place monthly challenge are incredibly inspiring. They're far from being directive and writers interpret them at will. Month after month they deliver incredible writing. I'm all for prompts like these. Take a look: https://www.rockandahardplacemag.com/stones-throw-submissions
This is the third answer I’ve tried to post today that has disappeared! I’ll try again.
Thanks for the link to A Rock and a Hard Place. I hadn’t seen it before. Looks interesting!
What you’re referring to there aren’t really the kinds of prompts I’m talking about here. They’re more like assignments, as I noted I might get from my editors long ago. They’re making suggestions about topics they want to see covered, which is certainly their right.
The prompts I’m talking about are not job requirements but are ideas thrown out to get participants to write something, anything, based on those few word prompts. There are no rewards for the writers. None of it leads to their work being published. So it’s my contention that those prompts may be of little value and not worth the effort.
I can picture class exercises designed to explore aspects of writing, like POV or tense, dialogue, exposition ... I don't have any experience with the kinds of prompts that you encountered. I could see myself tell the coach: uh, sorry, nothing comes to mind. I would also be pretty pissed off... these sessions/residences aren't cheap...
Okay, there's the distinction. I never thought of what I did in creative writing classes as offering prompts--and when students used the word I said "These are not prompts." I gave students *assignments* and tried to make them as entertaining as possible--and always offered them with the proviso that they could turn the assignments inside out.
I like prompts the way I like horoscopes—suggestive, occasionally amusing, and almost always ignored. I usually write exactly what I want, toss the prompt a wink, and leave it gasping in my rearview mirror. I’m sure it drives the poor prompt-writer absolutely bananas.
And as for the whole writer’s retreat phenomenon? Please. The idea of paying actual money to sit in a drafty lodge with other people’s literary angst, eating bland granola and pretending to be inspired by a sunrise while a woman named Margo tells me to “write from my inner womb”—no. Just no. It’s high school English with worse coffee and more performative sweaters.
Zoom classes? Don’t even try me. I don’t want to see anyone’s grainy living room or hear about “process.” I barely watch video as it is, unless it’s a cat in a shark costume on a Roomba.
I like my challenges in the form of Wordle and Connections. I do them every morning and sometimes I brag about them, if I get Wordle in two or I get purple first in Connections. 🤪
Love this conversation and your challenge about prompts Ramona. Here's my 2 cents. I think it depends on what you're using prompts for.
I've taken part in writing groups (autobiographical writing and other types) where we began with a weekly theme - the facilitator offered us Prompts or what I prefer to think of as ideas to spur our writing and thoughts, always with the idea that we could just write with or without them.
I tend not to use prompts when I write my blog posts - I rely on themes or issues that arise as a woman in midlife experiencing a new stage and yet sometimes I'm spurred on by lines from authors I read - it could be that they are a type of prompt.
And then, I created Tap and Write - a process in which I use EFT Tapping to calm our minds and bodies and connect with our creativity before writing. I use prompts in this process that match the goal of the Tap and Write Circle which is always to support the possibility of a shift in perspective or change in direction. The prompts, in many of my Circles, are questions to invite participants to explore different parts of us, feel and think in a different way, experience lightbulb moments, confirm what they already know - the writing is the vehicle to explore deeply what's underneath the challenge without worrying about getting the spelling etc. right.
I don't use prompts in my journal writing.
So, that's it for me. Thanks again for the post and inviting us to think about prompts and why we use them!
Joan, being spurred on by other writers and their writing feels right to me. It's not on demand, it just happens. And aren't we excited when it does!
If prompts work with what you do, by all means keep doing it. My point relates to using prompts to make us better writers. I don't think it does. But if prompts can be applied for other uses, there are no complaints here!
I have written to prompts. But. When I read a prompt, it has five seconds to make an idea burst forth from my brain (or nudge loose a stuck idea - lots of those) otherwise: NEXT!
I got two poems and a chat with my wife from the prompt, “Your first kiss,” but that was because I took the “your” as second person plural (me and my wife) instead of second person singular. Most prompts? Nada.
I like that five second rule--if you're going to consider prompts anyway. It's that sitting and stewing over someone else's suggestions that becomes a huge turnoff for me.
I agree. I don't see much value in prompts and joint writing exercises. Years ago in college I took a fiction writing class even though I had only vague ideas about being a writer. As exercises, the teacher had us write 500 words or so about a person we knew, and about a setting we were familiar with. These, she said, were the fundamental elements of the story we were to complete by the end of the course. Don't try to start a story from a plot or theme, she said, these will develop naturally from the characters and settings you create. Much later, when I taught a fiction writing class in a university extension program, this teacher was my guide. Character and setting, the rest is embellishment. Not everyone agreed, of course. This has been awhile ago, but I remember one fellow instructor who always gave her classes exercises like writing about the color blue. Writing about anything can have value, of course, as an exercise for the imagination. By the way, that college teacher had a suggestion that I've followed from time to time ever since. If you're having trouble getting started, open a book by an author you like and copy a paragraph or two. Don't be afraid of falling into imitation; the sense it gives you of being a real writer can give you the nudge you need.
Everyone has different opinions about what works best when trying to teach people writing techniques. I taught adult ed classes and because I had no real, formal training I decided the best way to get them to write was to make them comfortable with their writing. I still think that’s first and foremost.
I say now that I don’t like prompts but I did, in fact, use them back then. I gave them the first few lines of a few potential stories and told them to finish any one of them. They had fun and so did I, and some of them actually built stories that made sense and were even quite good. They went away happy, with some smidgen of insight into how to move a story along, but if I were teaching a serious class, I’m not sure I’d go there.
I’m not a fan of copying famous writers’ works. I don’t think that’s how our brains work. Writing down a few sentences word for word makes us concentrate on getting the words down and that’s about it. It doesn’t teach anything about form or style or what makes those words sing. Sorry…
Me, neither, though senior members of the department I was in seemed to think that copying famous writers was the gold standard for teaching creative writing.
Ramona, I agree with you. I learned how to write by writing. I wrote daily journals starting in grade school. I wrote school assignments and both my parents went over them, Dad ferociously and Mother (a professional journalist) encouragingly. I'd spend the night rewriting before class in the morning. I read endlessly - not writing textbooks but literature. I still do. Yes, I took degrees in writing as undergraduate and graduate, but I think the traditional workshop model sucks. Working one on one with my professors helped. But still, in the end, I was on my own. I too feel prompts - for me - are a waste of time. I want to write what I want to write. When I was sending out to literary mags, I would cut and paste feedback into a fb doc - but I wouldn't jump to change what I'd written. When I had maybe four or five comments and the story/essay wasn't selling, maybe I'd look at all the comments and see if I wasn't getting something. As a lifelong writing teacher of all ages, I never used prompts either. Just encouragement.
In my experience, writing professors fall into two general groups: those like you (and me and my college mentor) who work to encourage and inspire and help writers grow--and professors who are bullies and drill sergeants because as one famous poet told me about her style: "The world is tough and writers need to know that." Of course there are some in between but I learned the most from the first kind and that was my model of teaching.
Even my writing teachers who used the group critique/writer silent model were kind when we were one on one. They never joined in on the bullying. There was a saying even among them, though, that "if you can find anything else to do, do it."
I remember that warning, too, in so many words. Almost nobody bought it. The thought of becoming a famous writer—always a ‘famous’ writer—was too delicious. 😏
Encouragement is the lifeline for any writer, student or otherwise, and so is truth. If something isn't working they need to know it. WE need to know it, even if we're far along. But new writers are so tender. They already see failure in everything they do. If they're really trying there is always something worthwhile in there, and we need to point it out, even while pointing out what might not be working.
But, again, the training is in showing them the way to pull out what's already in there. Let them find their potential by allowing them to search for their own ideas. I think prompts stop that from happening.
Funnily enough, reading another writer's work stirs our own creative process. I can't tell you how many times I've been reading something wonderful and suddenly I'm moved to stop reading and start writing. Doesn't have to have a thing to do with what I've read, but something happens. That writer becomes a muse. Not a teacher.
For a time, all the way through "Collected Poems, "I read Czeslaw Mlosz, a poem a day, before I started my own writing. Just finished Robert McFarlane's "Is a River Alive" and would like to read a paragraph or so aloud each day before I start my writing. First have to wrest it away from my husband.
I have participated in some online writing workshops where we responded to prompts. I rarely felt as if the exercise benefited me. It's much more fruitful for me just to write in my journal or just start rambling about whatever comes to mind, such as seeing some lightning bugs out the window in my back yard or contemplating all the bug and bird noises I heard the other morning before sunrise. An analogy might be an occasion when you see someone when you are out and about doing errands or whatnot and the person asks, "So what's new?" That is also a prompt - I rarely know how to respond!
Lightning bugs! They seem much more populous this summer here in my mid-Michigan neighborhood than last and there are so many that I have seen them up close. Magical.
Rambling works for me, too, Polly. Just putting words down sparks something, but they have to be words that come from ME. They're my thoughts, nobody else's, and there's something magical about opening that portal, as if it had just been waiting for me to start doodling.
Thanks for sharing this. I suck at prompts and to your point rarely get anything worth keeping from them. It all feels a bit contrived. It's good to know that experienced writers don't all think they're so helpful either! I guess I've just assumed it's "practice" and is there such a thing as bad practice?
I thought I answered this. I'll try again: Yes, I think there is such a thing as bad practice. Any practice that keeps writers from using their own intellect and imagination while crafting their work is a timewaster. As writers, it's all we have going for us. At some point we have to go out on our own. Anything that stops us from getting there, or slows us down, is working against us.
Learning to do it someone else's way means we'll have to unlearn it at some point if we're going to move on.
Seven national best sellers, zero prompts. My advice to young writers is to study history, biography, psychology, anthropology, but not writing. Read everything: classics, crap, airport thrillers, literary fiction, every genre that interests you. Learn what keeps you turning pages and analyze why you stalled on page 38 and never pick it up again. Don't write what you already know; write what you want to understand. Also: marry an engineer. They are, as a group, funny, creative, and eager to fix things (including relationships). And they get good benefits at work.
"My advice to young writers is to study history, biography, psychology, anthropology, but not writing." I'm with you there, Mary. The older I get the more I'm sure writing can't be taught. I'm not convinced there's an exercise out there that will make anyone a better writer. It's all in observation and thought and our own innate talent. What we do with it is what makes us unique.
I love that you've written seven national best sellers without a single prompt. I'm smiling over that one. I feel vindicated! 😏
Writing comes from inspiration which means observe everything.
I married a psychologist who helped me with character motivation and plot when I was stuck, especially in my crime novels. As for wide reading, that's crucial and the best advice I got in college from my writing mentor was "Read Everything!"
Good writing advice and throw in marriage advice. Two for one!
I don't need them for myself since over the past 4 years I've had ideas for what turned into 95 publications of personal essays and short stories. That's a career record for me and the pandemic played a major role.
I've used what some people call prompts but for me are more like choices when teaching CW at MSU and Regents College in London, teaching master classes, and teaching online workshops. Many prompts I see seem mechanical or curt. I like to give writers a full paragraph for each possibility.
I agree that some of the best inspiration comes from reading and studying other writers, and not just in your own genre. My college mentor said "Read everything!"
While you may see 'choices', if they're coming from you, they're prompts. So with that, I'll ask, why are they useful? Do you think your students grow from them or are they simply writing what they think will keep you happy? What would take their place if you stopped using them? How would you work at making them use their own creative minds without prompts?
And finally, does every writing instructor you know use prompts?
I hate the word "prompt." It's too directive and limiting. I always told people to play with the ideas I gave them, invert them, subvert them, whatever they wanted to do. My classes were very loose in those terms and relaxed--we had fun (neighboring profs would sometimes complain we were too noisy).
And I was lucky because there were people ready to write in each class and they inspired each other. I never had complaints about the assignments in the end-of-term evals. As a longtime (now-retired) teacher of CW, I found that students wanted ideas that they could bounce off of and I never felt people were writing to please me, the classes were usually very tight-knit and people wrote for the group as well as themselves.
Oh, and we always read several books during the semester and I used scenes or characters from them--in other words, they could do fan fiction. Sometimes they'd writ "missing scenes" or "character reveals." Already Dead by Charlie Houston, a vampire/zombie/PI novel was a consistent favorite to play with.
I have no idea what colleagues were doing and didn't care, unless a former student came to me for help or advice because their new teacher was a dud or even destructive.
I get it that you don't like "prompts" at all--but that doesn't mean they don't work in a classroom or master class setting. It depends on the teacher.
That's what I want to talk about. What makes them work? I get it that classroom settings may be different than retreats or Substack offerings. Your students expect exercises, and maybe even welcome them. But how do they benefit them in the long run? Do they come to depend on prompts, or will they easily move on and allow their own creativity to take over?
No, I'm definitely not a fan of prompts, but I'm willing to listen to reasons for them to exist.
What makes them work in a classroom? They can get students thinking/writing/laughing/arguing/you name it. But like you, I don't get why the writing world right now is obsessed with prompts instead of encouraging writers to read, read, read, and even read books that fail because you can learn a lot from one that doesn't work, whatever the reason.
The only thing I have written from a prompt that I liked is this short, short story. The prompt was the opening line:
"She may be young but she’s not stupid. First the rescue squad arrives but when she sees the gendarmes she knows something is definitely up.
She had been walking her dogs along the beach. All morning trucks and mechanical shovels had been leveling the pebble beach. At low tide she had to skirt the barricade to reach the strip of sand along the shore.
It is a warm day in early spring, thick blue cloudless sky above tall white chalk cliffs. A light breeze blows her hair across her face. They walk on the patches of sand, avoiding the seaweed-covered rocks sharp with barnacles and mussels. She decides to head back when she notices the man talking on his cell phone. He keeps looking in the direction from where she had just come. She sees no one else on the beach.
She hurries up the slippery pebble slope to the boardwalk; the dogs follow. The rescue squad van and the car from the gendarmerie are parked on the street at the base of the cliffs. A small crowd is beginning to gather.
Another van from the rescue squad arrives and four men carrying a stretcher climb down to the beach to join their colleagues and the gendarmes. After a while, they return. The body on the stretcher is completely covered. One of the gendarmes is now carrying a purse she recognizes. She may be young but she’s certainly not that stupid."
I think it turned out quite well overall.
If you're happy with what you wrote, then it worked for you. How likely would you want to work from prompts again? Could you come up with a better story on your own, or do you think you needed that push to write one you can be happy with?
I also don’t like prompts like those you shared. I like prompts like this one, that sets the scene in an open-ended way. I also did another short, short story I liked with also an open-ended prompt, otherwise I find myself avoiding writing.
Oh, that last bit! Are you saying you avoid writing that might require you to come up with something on your own? Or are you avoiding writing altogether? If you need a push with a line that sets a scene, go for it! But really, you have it in you to create your own scenes, You don't need props.
Yes, exactly--life itself is full of prompts: inspiration is all around us.
Yeah, I usually love the researching but I avoid the writing.
Ok this is a juicy one for me, since I am an Academic Coach! I am sure that you see the irony here because you have just given us a writing prompt!
One of the things writing prompts are good for is prepping a student for more writing prompts! Silly, I know! But even the college board exams are writing prompts. Students are given prompts all the time for short answers and essays, so they need practice tackling those.
When I work with students, I do try to be more inspirational and creative than simply offering a prompt. And we use clustering techniques to get their ideas to flow. Sometimes I play beat the clock, but only because they have to in class!
Those students who struggle with writing always want to know what to write about. So then, how do we teach them to tap into the muse? I try and work with that elusive beast as well. I don’t think that can be taught by prompt!
Working with professionals is different. Seasoned writers seem to do better with inspiration, rather than a topic or prompt. However, if a writer is feeling stuck, I will have them doodle or I even have them write things like recipes. I like writers to feel pen flowing on paper a bit—I don’t expect them to create their whole project that way, but I want them to engage the creative sites in the brain.
All of my writing sessions and camps that I do are designed to send writers home with a desire to finish what they have begun. It doesn’t have to be linear. I just want their time spent with me to propel them towards an end goal.
I thank you for this prompt and for all the excellent articles you allow me to read!
"Students who struggle with writing always want to know what to write about." That sends chills up my spine. Are we setting writers up for failure by not giving them the confidence to search for their own creative sparks?
What I'm reading from you is that academia is full of those roadblocks to uniqueness and creativity. Indeed, to bravery. There is the stench of conformity in "writing prompts are good for preparing students for more writing prompts". You may be snarking a bit but there's enough truth to it to make it both maddening and sad.
I'm glad I've opened up this conversation. When I started this I wasn't thinking of formal classes, but it could be that's where the notion of prompts got its start.
I know writers who swear by prompts but have never felt the need for them myself. I have enough ideas calling "Write me!"
Me too! Can we call that manufacturing our own prompts?
I also never saw the attraction of prompts, particularly for fiction. If what I am doing is journalling, then a question can be a sort of prompt, but I agree that the ideas that I am brainstorming as I sketch out a story outline become my prompts. As for the co-writing sessions, I am trying to use them--both as a way of being more accountable on a given day to getting writing done, and because-sort of like writing in a coffee shop--it feels less lonely to be part of a co-writing zoom group--especially since health issues means writing "in public." is not really available to me any more.
Thanks so much for your thoughts, especially on your co-writing zoom group. I'm glad it's working out for you. Interesting that you compare it to writing in a coffee shop. I've never been able to do that, either. Too many distractions, and I'm much too nosy. I spend all my time trying to listen in or figure out who my co-coffee-shoppers are and what they're doing while they're sitting there. 😆
Journaling everyday observations from all senses.
Writing on a timer is guaranteed to freeze me. On the other hand, prompts and themes free something in my head. Not prompts like: what did you do on vacation. That's also a freeze guaranteed, but a first line, yes, I've done that and shrugged off the first line later because its use was only as a starting spark. The prompts/themes of Stone's Throw, the Rock and a Hard Place monthly challenge are incredibly inspiring. They're far from being directive and writers interpret them at will. Month after month they deliver incredible writing. I'm all for prompts like these. Take a look: https://www.rockandahardplacemag.com/stones-throw-submissions
This is the third answer I’ve tried to post today that has disappeared! I’ll try again.
Thanks for the link to A Rock and a Hard Place. I hadn’t seen it before. Looks interesting!
What you’re referring to there aren’t really the kinds of prompts I’m talking about here. They’re more like assignments, as I noted I might get from my editors long ago. They’re making suggestions about topics they want to see covered, which is certainly their right.
The prompts I’m talking about are not job requirements but are ideas thrown out to get participants to write something, anything, based on those few word prompts. There are no rewards for the writers. None of it leads to their work being published. So it’s my contention that those prompts may be of little value and not worth the effort.
I can picture class exercises designed to explore aspects of writing, like POV or tense, dialogue, exposition ... I don't have any experience with the kinds of prompts that you encountered. I could see myself tell the coach: uh, sorry, nothing comes to mind. I would also be pretty pissed off... these sessions/residences aren't cheap...
True...
Okay, there's the distinction. I never thought of what I did in creative writing classes as offering prompts--and when students used the word I said "These are not prompts." I gave students *assignments* and tried to make them as entertaining as possible--and always offered them with the proviso that they could turn the assignments inside out.
Finally! A writer of the same mind as mine regarding writing to prompts.
I like prompts the way I like horoscopes—suggestive, occasionally amusing, and almost always ignored. I usually write exactly what I want, toss the prompt a wink, and leave it gasping in my rearview mirror. I’m sure it drives the poor prompt-writer absolutely bananas.
And as for the whole writer’s retreat phenomenon? Please. The idea of paying actual money to sit in a drafty lodge with other people’s literary angst, eating bland granola and pretending to be inspired by a sunrise while a woman named Margo tells me to “write from my inner womb”—no. Just no. It’s high school English with worse coffee and more performative sweaters.
Zoom classes? Don’t even try me. I don’t want to see anyone’s grainy living room or hear about “process.” I barely watch video as it is, unless it’s a cat in a shark costume on a Roomba.
Well, there you go. But if you don't follow the guidelines, where's the challenge?
The challenge? The challenge is being original.
Oh, I get that. But you, Gloria dear, hardly need a prompt!
Ramona, ᴵ ᵀʳʸ ᵗᵒ ᵒᵘᵗᵈᵒ ᵉᵛʳʳʸᵇᵒᵈʸ ᵉˡˢᵉ. ⁱ ᵏⁿᵒʷ. ˢᵐᵃʳᵗᵃˡᵉᵏ
🤗
I like my challenges in the form of Wordle and Connections. I do them every morning and sometimes I brag about them, if I get Wordle in two or I get purple first in Connections. 🤪
I like Wordle and Connections. I also play Word Jam and Dear Reader on Apple.
I've just discovered Word Jam. I don't know how I feel about it yet. I'll look for Dear Reader.
Word Jam is solid. Dear Reader is challenging and I like that.
That made me snort out loud, even though I just came back from a retreat. LOL. I'm not saying another word... 😏
Love this conversation and your challenge about prompts Ramona. Here's my 2 cents. I think it depends on what you're using prompts for.
I've taken part in writing groups (autobiographical writing and other types) where we began with a weekly theme - the facilitator offered us Prompts or what I prefer to think of as ideas to spur our writing and thoughts, always with the idea that we could just write with or without them.
I tend not to use prompts when I write my blog posts - I rely on themes or issues that arise as a woman in midlife experiencing a new stage and yet sometimes I'm spurred on by lines from authors I read - it could be that they are a type of prompt.
And then, I created Tap and Write - a process in which I use EFT Tapping to calm our minds and bodies and connect with our creativity before writing. I use prompts in this process that match the goal of the Tap and Write Circle which is always to support the possibility of a shift in perspective or change in direction. The prompts, in many of my Circles, are questions to invite participants to explore different parts of us, feel and think in a different way, experience lightbulb moments, confirm what they already know - the writing is the vehicle to explore deeply what's underneath the challenge without worrying about getting the spelling etc. right.
I don't use prompts in my journal writing.
So, that's it for me. Thanks again for the post and inviting us to think about prompts and why we use them!
Joan, being spurred on by other writers and their writing feels right to me. It's not on demand, it just happens. And aren't we excited when it does!
If prompts work with what you do, by all means keep doing it. My point relates to using prompts to make us better writers. I don't think it does. But if prompts can be applied for other uses, there are no complaints here!
I have written to prompts. But. When I read a prompt, it has five seconds to make an idea burst forth from my brain (or nudge loose a stuck idea - lots of those) otherwise: NEXT!
I got two poems and a chat with my wife from the prompt, “Your first kiss,” but that was because I took the “your” as second person plural (me and my wife) instead of second person singular. Most prompts? Nada.
I like that five second rule--if you're going to consider prompts anyway. It's that sitting and stewing over someone else's suggestions that becomes a huge turnoff for me.
I agree. I don't see much value in prompts and joint writing exercises. Years ago in college I took a fiction writing class even though I had only vague ideas about being a writer. As exercises, the teacher had us write 500 words or so about a person we knew, and about a setting we were familiar with. These, she said, were the fundamental elements of the story we were to complete by the end of the course. Don't try to start a story from a plot or theme, she said, these will develop naturally from the characters and settings you create. Much later, when I taught a fiction writing class in a university extension program, this teacher was my guide. Character and setting, the rest is embellishment. Not everyone agreed, of course. This has been awhile ago, but I remember one fellow instructor who always gave her classes exercises like writing about the color blue. Writing about anything can have value, of course, as an exercise for the imagination. By the way, that college teacher had a suggestion that I've followed from time to time ever since. If you're having trouble getting started, open a book by an author you like and copy a paragraph or two. Don't be afraid of falling into imitation; the sense it gives you of being a real writer can give you the nudge you need.
Everyone has different opinions about what works best when trying to teach people writing techniques. I taught adult ed classes and because I had no real, formal training I decided the best way to get them to write was to make them comfortable with their writing. I still think that’s first and foremost.
I say now that I don’t like prompts but I did, in fact, use them back then. I gave them the first few lines of a few potential stories and told them to finish any one of them. They had fun and so did I, and some of them actually built stories that made sense and were even quite good. They went away happy, with some smidgen of insight into how to move a story along, but if I were teaching a serious class, I’m not sure I’d go there.
I’m not a fan of copying famous writers’ works. I don’t think that’s how our brains work. Writing down a few sentences word for word makes us concentrate on getting the words down and that’s about it. It doesn’t teach anything about form or style or what makes those words sing. Sorry…
Me, neither, though senior members of the department I was in seemed to think that copying famous writers was the gold standard for teaching creative writing.
I hope that idea is long gone now. I remember trying it early on and already thinking, 'this is dumb...'
Same here. My thought, "Why would I want to? Exploring what fine writers do and how they do it seems more useful."
Ramona, I agree with you. I learned how to write by writing. I wrote daily journals starting in grade school. I wrote school assignments and both my parents went over them, Dad ferociously and Mother (a professional journalist) encouragingly. I'd spend the night rewriting before class in the morning. I read endlessly - not writing textbooks but literature. I still do. Yes, I took degrees in writing as undergraduate and graduate, but I think the traditional workshop model sucks. Working one on one with my professors helped. But still, in the end, I was on my own. I too feel prompts - for me - are a waste of time. I want to write what I want to write. When I was sending out to literary mags, I would cut and paste feedback into a fb doc - but I wouldn't jump to change what I'd written. When I had maybe four or five comments and the story/essay wasn't selling, maybe I'd look at all the comments and see if I wasn't getting something. As a lifelong writing teacher of all ages, I never used prompts either. Just encouragement.
In my experience, writing professors fall into two general groups: those like you (and me and my college mentor) who work to encourage and inspire and help writers grow--and professors who are bullies and drill sergeants because as one famous poet told me about her style: "The world is tough and writers need to know that." Of course there are some in between but I learned the most from the first kind and that was my model of teaching.
Even my writing teachers who used the group critique/writer silent model were kind when we were one on one. They never joined in on the bullying. There was a saying even among them, though, that "if you can find anything else to do, do it."
I remember that warning, too, in so many words. Almost nobody bought it. The thought of becoming a famous writer—always a ‘famous’ writer—was too delicious. 😏
Encouragement is the lifeline for any writer, student or otherwise, and so is truth. If something isn't working they need to know it. WE need to know it, even if we're far along. But new writers are so tender. They already see failure in everything they do. If they're really trying there is always something worthwhile in there, and we need to point it out, even while pointing out what might not be working.
But, again, the training is in showing them the way to pull out what's already in there. Let them find their potential by allowing them to search for their own ideas. I think prompts stop that from happening.
Funnily enough, reading another writer's work stirs our own creative process. I can't tell you how many times I've been reading something wonderful and suddenly I'm moved to stop reading and start writing. Doesn't have to have a thing to do with what I've read, but something happens. That writer becomes a muse. Not a teacher.
For a time, all the way through "Collected Poems, "I read Czeslaw Mlosz, a poem a day, before I started my own writing. Just finished Robert McFarlane's "Is a River Alive" and would like to read a paragraph or so aloud each day before I start my writing. First have to wrest it away from my husband.
Bingo. Lightning strike.
Totally agree with your take on prompts. Thank you for articulating and expressing what has always bothered me about them.
Thank you. I’m glad I’m not alone!
I have participated in some online writing workshops where we responded to prompts. I rarely felt as if the exercise benefited me. It's much more fruitful for me just to write in my journal or just start rambling about whatever comes to mind, such as seeing some lightning bugs out the window in my back yard or contemplating all the bug and bird noises I heard the other morning before sunrise. An analogy might be an occasion when you see someone when you are out and about doing errands or whatnot and the person asks, "So what's new?" That is also a prompt - I rarely know how to respond!
Lightning bugs! They seem much more populous this summer here in my mid-Michigan neighborhood than last and there are so many that I have seen them up close. Magical.
Rambling works for me, too, Polly. Just putting words down sparks something, but they have to be words that come from ME. They're my thoughts, nobody else's, and there's something magical about opening that portal, as if it had just been waiting for me to start doodling.