Prompt Bingo

I'm getting a new project off the ground, which has the working title of "Firebird Project."  It's a novel about a girl who has to put up with this guy who is a firebird.

Sometimes I have a brilliant idea and sit down and write for hours and stay up at night thinking about what I'll write next so I'm ready to go write it all down the next day.

This is not one of those times.  I blame it on being out of practice.  Like when you don't go to the gym for a week and you know it's going to suck when you finally go again so you put it off even more.  Or like when you forget to do the dishes one day and then might as well burn down your house because there's no coming back from that.

I also blame it on how this donut looks tragically unappetizing even though I'm sure it's perfectly fine.  I consider this a very good excuse, thank you very much.

So anyway, this procrastination cannot continue and it's time to get an action plan together to actually get this thing flying.

Step 1 is a little thing called "Prompt Bingo."  What you do is make yourself a bingo card and then fill it in with writing prompts.  These writing prompts can come from anywhere, including the many many writing prompt generators on the internet.  Some will even just spit out a random bingo card for you.

Here's my current one:

Safe and Sound	In the Park	The Kraken Wakes	Degenerate	Serpent
Finger	Mouth	Petal	Murder	Haiku
Hurt	Wife/Husband	Free Space!	Special Forces	A Quiet Moment
On the 4th Bridge	At Brimingham New St.	Summer	Labyrinth	Far Away
Window	Soft	In Battle	Belief	Jungle

You don't have to write in order.  So you find a prompt that jumps out at you and then write a scene using your characters and world and plot.  You can hone in on a prompt and think, "How does this word fit into my story?" or "What would my characters do with this prompt?"

The cool thing is that it first gives you some direction when writing if you start with very little (like me right now.)  Then once you have a string of these scenes, you can piece them together and start to get a better view of the plot and the story's overall structure.  Once you have a kind of skeleton, you can start to flush it out and fill in the gaps.

BYOT Blackout Editon

Bring Your Own Theater happened again last weekend. It was a lot of fun, especially since a bunch of writers went to Clarke's to write together and not only did it feel less lonely, but I also got to eat pancakes.

I felt really good about this one and the play ended up really close to the script. They added tinkly restaurant background music. When the lights came up, Vinny was sitting alone at the table, looking sad with sad music and the crowd went “Awwww!” Five seconds without saying a word, and he had the audience hooked.

So, for your reading enjoyment, here's "Glitching."