This weekend is Thanksgiving in Canada, and I am definitely counting my blessings. For three weeks at the end of August and early September my family traveled to the UK, enjoying a wonderful holiday and the beginning of my son’s pursuit of his MA in Glasgow. It was tough leaving him behind, but we made great memories in that three weeks, and thank goodness for WhatsApp since we got home! 😊 Today’s writing prompts will be interspersed with photos from our trip.
I hope you have a creative month ahead, and if you are prepping for NaNoWriMo, check out the NaNo website for great tips. Scroll down the page for lots of articles that will help you get ready for the challenge. These tips are valuable any time of year.
Here are your writing prompts for October:
- Is there a place that you long to see? If you can’t get there in person, go wandering with Google Earth. Find the exact street and house, castle or farm where your ancestors were born. Use Google Earth to research locations for your books and your character’s life.
- Write about a member of your family who lived through a challenging time. Put yourself in their shoes. Research their neighbourhood, their battlefield, their workplace. Dig deep to find the real story behind their stories of the past.
- Close your eyes or turn your screen brightness to zero and write for five minutes. Not seeing the screen helps you turn off your critic/editor, too. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, just let the words flow without backtracking for corrections. See what doors to your imagination or emotions this exercise opens.
Boats in Nairn harbour - Use one, some, or all of the words in one of these groups to create a story or poem.
- River, boat, passengers, storm, captain, friend, stranger
- Stone, building, awe, ceiling, carving, message, past, understanding
- Path, forest, night, danger, run, hide, stranger, safe, shelter
- Glass, red, offering, temple, earthquake, trapped
- See if one of these opening sentences inspires a story.
- I wish you hadn’t come here.
- What’s bugging Helen?
- Henry lied.
- That creature never roamed this sector in daylight.
- Helen picked up the box and gave it to Henry to open.
- Why is that book so special?
- I hated making decisions.
- News came from the east. It wasn’t good.
- I couldn’t let Henry find out.
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A loch on the Dava Moor See if you can create a scene around one of the groups of dialogue lines.
- I couldn’t care less.
- You’d care if it were your family.
- I wouldn’t.
- Helen promised we’d be finished by now.
- And you believed her?
- Where is she anyway?
- We shouldn’t have come here.
- It’s the only place where we have any chance of finding it.
- But it’s dangerous.
- Without it we have no chance at all.
- Henry said we wouldn’t leave until we were finished our training.
- Henry didn’t plan for the enemy to be so close so soon. We’re leaving.
- Have you heard the latest about Helen?
- No, and I don’t want to.
- Not even if it concerns your brother, too?
I hope you have a writerly month ahead!