Writing prompts...what floats YOUR boat?

This week was our monthly NIBS meeting, and it was great. I love being the facilitator for this group, because it gives me a chance to trawl through lots of different writing prompt ideas which challenge us and often produce some excellent pieces of work. Although I do have to be careful not to choose only the prompts which appeal to me...

Autumn hues - got to love conkers!

Whenever you look for a prompt - especially if you're choosing it for a group to work from - there are several things you probably need to take into account.

How well do you know the group you're working with? If you know them well, you can look for something suited to their abilities or preferred genres. If you have only a general idea - like when you go into a school, for example, and know only that there will be a wide range of abilities - you might have to have a mixture of prompts, or a prompt with a few extra pointers for those who need a little more direction or lack a wild imagination.

Three things - taken from a bag of many, the weird and wonderful combos
always get younger children fired up 

Are you working with visual or wordy people? Is a picture going to be better than a written starter sentence? (I've found that children work best with visual prompts for example, because not all of them have the same writing or reading ability, but they do still have damn fine story ideas!) Is it worth trying a tactile prompt, using physical objects to awaken the senses?

Paint charts - as good for the pictures of rooms as for the paint names

As someone with a very vivid and visual imagination, I get rather twitchy when I find something that feels too restrictive to use as a prompt. For example, I found a smashing picture prompt on a website, but my interest waned when I saw that the prompt wasn't actually the picture as such, it was the half-page story starter written to go with it. I didn't want to finish off someone else's story, especially not a detective story. I wanted to write my own. I didn't want what I was being offered - and of course, I don't have to use it as given. You can apply the self-edit mantra of 'Accept, Adapt, Reject' just as easily to writing prompts as to a WIP - but straightaway I felt tied to one direction only with this particular prompt (and many others on the same site). I much prefer more open prompts to give myself, and those I'm helping to write, the best possible chance to come up with something they want to write.

My absolute favourite prompt - paint samples.
Be inspired by the colour or their names

You'll know from past blogs that my previous NIBS prompts have included baskets of autumn leaves and seeds; random objects taken from my shelves; CD playlists; photos; Victorian photographs; paint samples... I think you really are only limited by your imagination as to what you can use as a prompt. But the secret in group working is to keep the prompt as big as possible so it's accessible for pretty much.

This particular month, we had two starter exercises, which created a lot of laughter with some really off the wall scenarios. (Wotsit bikini, anyone? Or a war between Wotsits and Pringles?)

NIBS Task 1.
'Due to the incident on November 14th, Wotsits are no longer allowed in the canteen. Thank you for your consideration.'

We had to describe the incident in question - I envisaged a new starter being told to "Stick those Wotsits in the canteen", and the manager coming in later to find them literally stuck to the walls with mayo and ketchup and brown sauce...!

NIBS Task 2.
'There was a list of things that could have gone wrong that day, but ........... was not on it.'

What went wrong? I had finding a pirahna in the bath. Or Hairy Harold coming in for a back wax. *shudder*

NIBS Task 3 - the main event.
We all had to bring a writing prompt taken from the website of Tomi Adeyemi, author of YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone. A lot of the prompts were quite dark, and not everyone in the group is used to writing dark, but there were some inspired and unsettling pieces. Most startling was that two people used the same prompt and came up with the similar scenario of a childhood memory replaying in the narrator's head - one based on personal experience - and yet they couldn't have been more different in style and approach. (Which is another good thing to do with a prompt - give everyone the same prompt, and see how many different directions it can go to, or not, as the case may be)

Anyway, I chose this one: 'Every night you visit me. Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes in nightmares.' Here's what I ended up with...I think it's more of a poem than a story?

Every night you visit me.
Sometimes in dreams.
Sometimes in nightmares.
My subconscious sees you, my love,
   sees the light and the dark.

I leave the dreams reluctantly,
the ghost of your arms wrapped around me,
the gentlest of kisses weighing heavy on my lips, 
my heart beating a lover's tattoo.

But the nightmares I fight to escape, 
struggling to reach consciousness.
To lie in the darkness panting 
   as though I have run from you for real,
skin tingling from lines you carved in it,
throat tight from the squeeze of your fingers.

Every night you visit me, sometimes in dreams,
   sometimes in nightmares.
Which is our truth, my love?

What kind of prompts do YOU prefer as a writer? Which do you struggle with? And do you have a favourite you'd like to share? You never know, you might have found something that the NIBSers could use!