Getting started: prompts and beginnings

By Liz Matthews

Prompts

Do you have trouble deciding what to write about? Does the blank page or screen make your mind go blank? Here are a few ways to jumpstart your writing:

• Keep a folder of pictures, articles, postcards—anything that could spark an idea for a story. When you’re stuck, pick something out of this folder to get you going.

• Pick up a book and read a passage or a chapter. Use one of these lines to break you out of your writer’s block, or model a favorite author’s style. This can be a very worthwhile experiment.
• Interview a relative or anyone you find interesting for some reason. Use an event or experience from their life as a basis for your own story.
• Listen in on a conversation in a public space.
• Use your senses to describe something around you.
• Use the Young Writer’s Project prompts
• Write a story about the most important objects in someone’s life.

Beginnings
Once you’ve decided what you’ll write about, you need to decide how to begin your story. There are, of course, countless ways to begin a story, but your main goal is to grab your reader’s attention and make them want to keep reading. You want to orient your reader to what’s coming so not long after the first sentence, introduce the character, the setting and a problem or conflict — something that the rest of the story will solve. Also, help your reader see, hear and experience the story. Here are a few ways to begin your story:

• Setting – describe the place or room that your character occupies

• Character portrait – describe some specific aspect of your character
• Action – put your character immediately into motion
• Symbolic object – describe an object that will become central to the story
• A question – ask a question in the voice of the protagonist that the rest of the story will try to answer
• Scene (character, setting, and action) – begin with the character in the midst of doing something in a specific place
• Character’s thoughts – begin with a character’s internal monologue
• A prediction – have the protagonist make a prediction about their life or the life of another character
• An anecdote – begin with a brief retelling of a significant event—possibly humorous
• An aphorism – use a short statement or saying that expresses an opinion. Example: “A penny saved is a penny earned” –Ben Franklin
  Make up your own in the voice of one of your characters.

• A journey – describe the beginning of a trip and be specific about the transportation.
• Strong sensations –use all five senses to describe a scene or place