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The World Abounds in Prompts: Using Prompts to Stimulate and Deepen Your Writing by Ruth Leibowitz

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Ruth loves writing prompts. She facilitates and attends several writing groups that use them, and she is a member of our group. As she pointed out, we use monthly writing prompts for our ezines. For herself, Ruth writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

What is a writing prompt?

Ruth says: “A writing prompt is any relatively brief, bite-sized stimulus you can use, ignore, or rebel against to stimulate your writing.” Examples include words, objects, sounds, experiences, pictures, art, etc.

Lyndsay described how she has used music to help kids with creative writing. For example, Beethoven’s Pastoral offers themes of the outdoors, drama, storm… she would invite the kids to imagine what Beethoven is “saying” in the music – single words or phrases that can later be combined into poetry.

Sheila and Jean described how a group they used to be in would ask each member to write a couple of words or phrases on separate scraps of paper. The scraps would be placed in a dish and two picked out at random. The challenge was to write something inspired by these two disparate ideas.

Robin uses playlists of music to inspire her when she’s writing a book – the pieces are ordered according to where they would fit in the book.

Peter remembered how audience members posing questions in a school debate functioned as a sort of writing prompt.

Why we use prompts?

  • To get the flow going, grease the gears
  • As a regular writing practice (e.g., à la Natalie Goldberg: Ruth took an internet class with her – the daily prompts were almost a spiritual practice)
  • To deepen into a character, time, or theme
  • To stimulate new ideas
  • To bond with fellow writers
  • To focus on a place, time, topic, feeling, etc.
  • For pure play
  • To weave more spontaneity/surprise into the writing process (especially when someone else chooses the prompt)
  • For teachers and facilitators to offer students/workshop participants
  • For creative discomfort – to push the envelope when you’re in a rut
  • To give you a reason just to write about something that interests you (anything… clothing, etc)
  • To engage your brain (in answering questions)

How can we use prompts?

Suppose the prompt was “refrigerator.” You don’t have to respond to just the surface word.

  • Use it (initially, or as the heart of a new piece about a fridge, or events happening in a kitchen…)
  • Lose it (ignore it or drop it after you begin writing – end up writing about what happened in an entirely different room of the house)
  • Use part of it, or something associated with it (write about food, or temperatures)
  • Rail against it  – “I hate this prompt!  I will NEVER write about a refrigerator as long as I live and breathe”… and maybe that will lead to something amazing.
  • “Write to the opposite” – an oven? a cauldron? an erupting volcano?

Types of Prompts

  • Verbal
  • Experiential – an example of this would be when Ruth facilitated an event at the Highland Stables in Beavercreek, OR. Writers got to spend time with and interact with the horses.
  • Sense-based (visual, sound, touch, scent) – examples include looking around you, use of visuals, food, music or nature sounds
  • Somatic (e.g., a body sensation, a posture, a movement)
  • Prompts can be planned or serendipitous.  They can be serious or silly.

Example 1

Ruth offered a serendipitous prompt, based on a Nextdoor discussion about toilet rolls.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/right-way-to-hang-toilet-roll-getting-wrong-harmful-115507518.html says there really is a “right way” to hang a toilet roll. So we were asked to write a piece based on this concept

“The Right Way to Hang a Toilet Roll”

If you missed the meeting, why don’t you try it now. And if you have a response to it, why not send it to admin. Sheila will post responses on the Critique page – https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/critique/ – of our website so others can read and leave (positive) comments on our quick-writes. (As we’ll see later, critiquing a quick-write is not the same as critiquing a fully edited piece.)

Good Sources for Verbal Prompts

Example 2 

Writing Exercise UK generated the sentence fragments:

  • As he opened the car door, there was a loud…
  • The attack was over in seconds.

And from the random sentence generator we got

  • He liked eating his bananas in hot dog buns.

Again, Ruth gave us time to choose one (or none) of these and generate a story. (The resulting stories were amazing, including a cat driving a car, and restaurant staff unsure how to serve those conversation-inducing bananas.)

Good Sources for Visual Prompts

  • The world around you right in this moment
  • Images in films, video, internet news, etc.
  • Photo stock companies
  • Places where you travel – nature, museums, elevators, movie theaters
  • Old photos sold in antique stores
  • Things found in a coffee shop

Ruth showed us some images and asked us to consider

  • our emotional responses to the image – how does it make us feel? The emotional response can become a part of the prompt.
  • Where do we place ourselves when looking at the image – are we in the image, one of the characters, or are we outside?
  • How does the image make us imagine a different scenario

The Library of Congress has an online photo catalog where you can click on an image to find out more about it. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Example 3

One of Ruth’s images was of three boys in line to be examined for immigration to the US at Ellis Island. We were asked to write something based on the boy in the middle.

Combining Research with Prompts

Although this involves research, the purpose is not so much factual, as it is using a bite-sized, fact, picture, sound, etc. as a jumping off point. For example, if you were writing in a particular historical time:

  • Listen to the music from that time (Gregorian chants? Big Band? Hip Hop?) For a story including a fictional medieval monk, maybe imagine how he listens to the chant.
  • Look for photographs from that time
  • Look for journal entries from that time
  • Visit a similar ecosystem

Prompts “After the Fact”

What if you’re already writing something, and just want some way to deepen the process. Ruth gave the example of a story she is working on involving a slightly overweight, somewhat unpopular boy, and his beloved cat. She found photos that might represent the boy, his interests (food) and the cat (a lovely image where the cat is placing a paw onto a book). This type of writing prompt garnered quite a bit of interest in the group, and may well be relevant to members who don’t like “writing to a prompt.”

Group Prompts

  • Writing prompts are great to use in groups
  • It’s amazing what happens, especially when people share their writing
  • The same prompt can bring up vastly different works of writing – exciting to hear!
  • Writers get new ideas about how to relate to an idea.
  • “Group Writes” are possible
  • There are various approaches to use of writing prompts in groups – in particular, the Amherst Writers and Artists method 

The Amherst Writer and Artists Approach

Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA – https://amherstwriters.org/) was founded by Pat Schneider in 1981 to support the voices of established and emerging writers, to free silenced and marginalized voices, and to promote respect for writers. They have a particular interest in helping silenced women tell their stories. Pat Schneider wrote: “Whether your purpose for writing is artistic expression, communication with friends and family, the healing of the inner life, or achieving public recognition for your art – the foundation is the same: the claiming of yourself as an artist/writer and the strengthening of your writing voice through practice, study, and helpful response from other writers.”

Their philosophy states:

  • Everyone has a strong, unique voice.
  • Everyone has creative genius
  • Writing as an art form can be done without damage to a writer’s original voice or artistic self-esteem.
  • A writer is someone who writes.
  • In other words:  We are in this together. We all have offerings. This is a non-hierarchial model – we each receive time and interest. The group facilitator shares in the vulnerability of writing and reading.

Everything is by Invitation in this approach.

  • Reading out loud, receiving feedback, and providing feedback are invitations, not rules.
  • Writers’ preferences are honored here.
  • For example, if we’re going around in a circle and you don’t want to read out loud, simply say “pass.”

Group rules include:

  • We don’t share anything about other people’s writing outside of the group.
  • In both listening and feedback, we give our full attention to the writing. No side paths, no matter how relevant they seem. (For example, readers would respond to the writing, not discuss similar writing, or similar situations they’ve known.)
  • We speak to the writing, not the writer. This protects the privacy of the writer and honors this as a writing workshop. The writer can hear what shines in their words, rather than having to deal with personal comments or assumptions. (For example, readers would assume everything is fiction. In response to a deeply emotional piece, the reader might say “The writing really moved me,” but would not say, “How tough that must have been for you.”)
  • Our responses to just-written work are to notice what is strong, what stays with us, what is working. At this stage of newborn writing we offer no suggestions, questions, or negative comments.
    • Readers should be specific. It can be amazing and helpful for a writer to find that what they viewed as an accidental turn of phrase has a powerful effect on the reader.
    • At an edited stage we can offer critique, but at the “just-written” stage, the aim is to offer encouragement and validation.

Suggestions for Providing Feedback

Commenting Without “You-ing” helps speak to the writing, not the writer. For example, refer to: the narrator, the character, the protagonist, the villain, the speaker.

When providing feedback, you could ask yourself:

  • What stays with me?
  • What is my favorite sentence/part?
  • What is powerful?
  • What grabs or holds my attention?
  • What touches or moves me deeply?
  • What is humorous, enjoyable?
  • What aspects of craft (e.g., sentences, sounds, rhythms, ideas, dialogue, images, descriptions, storyline, character development, structure, etc.) are strong?

These could be good “positive” questions to open a group critique, with more in-depth questions coming afterward (since pieces we critique in the group are usually not at the just-written stage. That said, why shouldn’t we critique something at the just-written stage sometime? Reply with your comments!)

Handout

Ruth’s handout can be found at: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/The-World-Abounds-in-Prompts-Resources-List-from-Ruth.docx

Thank you Ruth for an amazing presentation. Those of you who missed it – you missed something truly inspirational!

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