prompts

Prompt: Missed Connections

There is a series called “Missed Connections” that features description of personal encounters, where someone saw somebody and it made an impression on them. “I saw you standing in line at Starbucks with red hair and I thought you were so beautiful.” The idea is to figure out if you are or know the person described.

Did someone write about you, or say something about you, that doesn’t match your perception of yourself? Describe the experience.

Prompt: Freedom Across the Ages

Independence Day is fast approaching. We look at freedom in very different ways. Looking at freedom at different ages is also a unique perspective.

The prompt this week is to pick an age, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, forty, sixty, and describe what freedom felt like to you (or a character) at each age. Pick at least one and make it into a story, or use all of them to describe your experience of freedom.

Prompt: Expectations of Fathers

The prompt this week is on upcoming Father’s Day holiday.

The role of a father has changed over the years. The impact of fathers is legendary throughout history. We often talk about “father figures” in our lives. Many feel “less than” because they were raised without a father or by an absent or distant father. Others had different father experiences, ones of abuse. Have you ever thought of how an abused child responds to a traditional prayer, “Our Father.”

Fathers have had many stereotypes over the years, such as the television show, “Father Knows Best,” or struggle with the impact of the father-figure of Bill Cosby, now that he, the person and actor, is charged with crimes.

We have changed who we think we are as women. How has men’s attitudes about themselves, their perspectives on fatherhood, changed? Expectations have also changed about father behaviors.

Write about fathers, personally or conceptually.

Prompt: Witness Perspectives

The prompt this week explores the subject of memory, eg, how differently my siblings remember incidents that we all witnessed in our family. Or how difficult it is to collate the different perceptions of witness to a crime or an accident.

How can we fully believe anyone’s story when we know what has colored his or her perception in the first place?

Will our own story ever be told? By whom? To what use?

Why telling the truth to the best of our ability is important, even knowing it is not The Truth.

Prompt-a-Month: Forgotten Things

Writers in the Grove Prompt-a-Month badge.The June prompt-a-month for our Writers in the Grove members is:

Forgotten Things

The deadline for submissions is 7/1/2017. Submissions will be published during the next 30 days.

Writers in the Grove members may hand in their submissions during the workshops or use our members only submission form. Check out the guidelines and instructions for submissions in the announcement.

Prompt: Make the Inanimate Come Alive

This prompt is from the book by Amoz Oz, “A Tale of Love and Darkness.”

Already in the entrance hall I was seized by respectful awe, as though even my heart had been asked to remove its shoes and walk in stockinged feet, on tiptoe, breathing politely with mouth closed, as was fitting.

In this entrance hall, apart from a brown wooden hat tree with curling branches that stood near the front door, a small wall mirror, and a dark woven rug, there was not an inch of space that was not covered with rows of books: shelves upon shelves rose from the floor to the high ceiling, full of books in languages whose alphabets I could not identify, books standing up and other books lying down on top of them; plump, resplendent foreign books stretching themselves comfortably, and other wretched books that peered at you from cramped and crowded conditions, lying like illegal immigrants crowded on bunks aboard ship. Heavy, respectable books in gold-tooled leather bindings, and thin books bound in flimsy paper, splendid portly gentlemen and ragged, shabby beggars, and all around and among and behind them was a sweaty mass of booklets, leaflets, pamphlets, offprints, periodicals, journals, and magazines, that noisy crowd that always congregates around any public square or marketplace.

Take one or more inanimate objects and make them come alive.

Prompt: Where the Road Takes You

This week’s workshop was led by Writers in the Grove member, Paula Parks, and she brought us the following prompt.

Collection of photographs and images of roads, trails, and pathways.

Examine or imagine a collection of photographs of roads, all types of roads, with bridges, train tracks, dirt roads, tree-lined paths, paved back roads, wide well-traveled interstates, all sorts of travel byways and highways. Write on wherever the road takes you.