Five More Writing Prompts for the Holidays

Hoping for some writing time over the next few weeks? Here’s some more prompts to get you started… A gift is delivered incorrectly to your home. It’s an intriguing shape. What do you (or your characters) do? Choose your genre.. is the gift magical? Sinister? Suggestive of an imminent crime? Do you open it – or is this a human story about what happens as you seek the rightful owner? Write for ten minutes without stopping, beginning with the following prompt: I packed a suitcase, the scent of winter in the air. Attempt a picture book for the holiday season. Your main character is a child who has never seen snow. Write about one of the first holiday seasons you can remember. How old were […]

2015-12-17T18:03:15-04:00December 17, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, The Finding Place, Young Writers!|

Writing Prompts for the Holidays!

Have some free time on your hands in the next few weeks, and want to get creative? Here are five prompts that might just help! 1. Write about a character alone and away from family for the first time ever during the holidays. Are they are alone by choice, or out of necessity? Where are they? What has happened? How do they spend their day? If you have time to write for a longer period of time, ensure your character undergoes some form of transformation in the course of your writing. Their perspective and emotional state is quite different, by the end. 2. Ever had the feeling, during a snow storm, that the snow is never, ever going to stop? Write about a time when […]

2015-12-10T19:17:54-04:00December 10, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, The Finding Place, Young Writers!|

Creativity can be Taught… and also Discouraged

A couple weeks back, at the Arts Academy, one of my teenage writers brought in homework assigned by his Writer’s Craft teacher. It’s so boring, he told me. I asked what he had to do. His homework involved finding as many alternative ways as possible of saying ‘he said’ and ‘she said’, and coming up with creative adverbs to go alongside his chosen words. My writing student had a list, so far, that included such things as: he retorted vociferously she cried miserably he howled horrendously she whispered quietly Now, this Grade 11 student is a fabulous writer so I said, “You realise they all sound awful, right? Adverbs should be avoided – write well enough and you won’t need them. And he said/she said […]

2015-12-08T23:23:42-04:00December 8, 2015|Uncategorized|
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