Blog
Mystery – July 10
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”- Sir William Blackstone, born this date in 1723. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist must choose between letting a person your protagonist knows to be guilty go free or implicating a person your protagonist knows to be innocent.
read moreSciFi/Fantasy – July 10
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success…. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”- Nikola Tesla, born this date in 1856. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist realizes that the people for whom your protagonist long endeavored to create a thing will ignore that thing and all its potential.
read more10,000 Hours
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he details the concept of the 10,000-hour rule. That’s a reasonably well-accepted theory that to become thoroughly proficient at something, a person needs to practice for about 10,000 hours. Gladwell’s most famous examples include the Beatles and Bill Gates. Prodigies — the exceptions who prove the rule — are popularly known. However, they account for a very small percentage of the people we consider “successful” at anything — music, sports, business, math,...
read moreLiterary – July 9
” ‘Dangerously well’ — what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well’.” -Oliver Sacks, born this date in 1933. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist’s sense of feeling too well causes her/him to end up feeling not very well at all.
read moreJournaling + Fiction – July 9
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building on the new.”Socrates Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about where you should be focusing your energy instead of where you are focusing it. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist squanders all his/her energy on an old fight and has nothing left for the new one.
read moreBig Questions – July 9
Can single people be as happy as people in a romantic relationship? Journaling prompt: Spend 15-20 minutes writing your answer in the spirit of exploring yourself and the world around you. If you can answer with a simple “yes” or “no,” explain the sources or implications of your response. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene that forces a character in your story to answer the question, or spend 15-20 minutes answering the question in the voice of a character you want to know more about. Photo from Unsplash, the internet’s source of freely...
read moreRomance – July 9
“After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down.” -Barbara Cartland, born on this date in 1901. Writing prompt: Write the scene in which your protagonist first realizes that age is happening to her/him, too.
read moreMystery – July 9
“Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.”- Dean Koontz, born this date in 1945. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist, amid a crowd, is alone with her/his most horrifying thought.
read moreSciFi/Fantasy – July 9
“More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.”- Glen Cook, born this date in 1944. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist commits an evil deed for what s/he believes is the right reason.
read moreLiterary – July 8
18-year-old Ernest Hemingway was wounded on this date in 1918 by an Austrian mortar while serving in Italy during World War I. Writing prompt: Write the scene from earlier in your protagonist’s life when the injury that defines him/her occurs.
read more
David B. Schlosser is an author of award-winning fiction and non-fiction, and an editor of award-winning fiction and non-fiction.
Read More...