This year I have a personal goal to do more writing “play,” so I’m creating weekly prompts for myself and sharing online, in case you’d like to join me too. I hope you will! Teachers, you’re welcome to use these with your students. I’ll be posting these every Wednesday on my website, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack.

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You can find previous prompts and my responses here.

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If you want to receive all my weekly writing prompts in your email, subscribe to my newsletter/Substack and click on the link to manage your subscription. There you should see a Notifications section and you can turn on/off which emails you’d like to get from me. Reach out if you have questions—I’m happy to help! Your questions also help me understand what’s working/not working with Substack, as I’m still getting the hang of things here.

This year I have a personal goal to do more writing “play,” so I’m creating weekly prompts for myself and sharing online, in case you’d like to join me too. I hope you will! Teachers, you’re welcome to use these with your students. I’ll be posting these every Wednesday on my website, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack.

♥ ♥ ♥

Have you ever found an item left behind by a stranger that revealed something about the person? Maybe it was a receipt at a grocery store, and you can deduce from what they bought that they must be planning a birthday party. Or maybe you’ve found an inscription or annotations in a book that told you something about the person who added them, or the person the notes were written to. If you’ve read my novels Sisterhood of Sleuths or Book Scavenger then you already know I’ve thought a good deal about messages left and found in books, and it’s that line of thinking that inspired the writing prompt for this week.

This year I have a personal goal to do more writing “play”, and so I’m creating weekly prompts for myself which I’ll also share online, in case you’d like to join me. Teachers, you’re welcome to have your classes write with me too! I’m calling this practice Writing Prompt Wednesday and will post the prompts on my website, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack.

art by Vesper Stamper

This year I have a personal goal to do more writing “play”, and so I’m creating weekly prompts for myself which I’ll also share online, in case you’d like to join me. Teachers, you’re welcome to have your classes write with me too! I’m calling this practice Writing Prompt Wednesday and will post the prompts on my website, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack.

♥ ♥ ♥

This week’s prompt gives a line of dialogue to start a scene: “What’s the password?” My approach with a prompt like this is to first brainstorm ways a password could be used: to access a computer system or software program, to enter a secret club, a contestant on the game show Password . . .

Those are the first three things that come to mind for me, and with each association, I can begin to imagine a scene. What I imagine at first is faint, like a sketch in a notebook that I might mentally erase and redraw multiple times. As I’m thinking through my ideas, I ask myself questions about the story tension:

• I imagine two people at a computer—are they working together to figure out a password? Is there a time factor, like they’re under pressure to figure it out before they get caught by someone? Or is the tension between the characters—maybe one is insisting the other show them something on the computer that they don’t want to reveal.
• With the secret club, what kind of club is this? A kids’ clubhouse, a night club, or something else? Why does the character want to be admitted to this club, and why are they worried they might not be allowed in?
• When I imagine the game show setting, I’m assuming the character wants to win, but why? Do they need money? Are they hoping for fame or to impress someone? What if they’re someone who does not like to be wrong, ever? What happens if someone like that is paired with a partner who is very bad at the game—what kind of dynamic would that create?

Of course there are many more directions you could go in too. Can you imagine other scenarios? I’d love to hear about them.

You can find previous prompts and my responses here.

♥ ♥ ♥

This year I have a personal goal to do more writing “play”, and so I’m creating weekly prompts for myself which I’ll also share online, in case you’d like to join me. Teachers, you’re welcome to have your classes write with me too! I’m calling this practice Writing Prompt Wednesday and will post the prompts on my website, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack.

♥ ♥ ♥

This week’s writing prompt is about receiving a mystery letter. Is this a note from a secret admirer? An invitation to a party? A request from a neighbor? As I mull over what to write for this prompt, I’m thinking about scenarios where there would be conflict or tension between two characters and how that might be communicated via a letter. I’ll share my response on Substack next week.

You can find previous prompts and my responses here.

♥ ♥ ♥

If you want to receive all Writing Prompt Wednesday posts in your email, subscribe to my newsletter/Substack and click on the link to manage your subscription. There you should see a Notifications section and you can turn on/off which emails you’d like to get from me. Reach out if you have questions—I’m happy to help! Your questions also help me understand what’s working/not working with Substack, as I’m still getting the hang of things here.