Prompts
The Judge
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise — Break your story idea down into three sentences of three words each. That will give you a beginning, a middle, and an end, and help you understand the architecture of the work. By having to choose three verbs, you’ll be forcing yourself to consider the three parts of the action. The Objective — To see if your story, like a good stool, has three legs to stand on.
By Denise E Lindquist3 months ago in Writers
The Importance Of Dialogue
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise — Highlight the dialogue in a story by a writer you admire. Then determine how much dialogue is summarized rather than presented in quotation marks. Next, set up a situation in which one character is going on and on about something — complaining about grades, arguing with a spouse about the children, or recounting an accident to a friend. Summarize the dialogue, occasionally interspersing it with comments and stage directions. The Objective — To understand what summarized dialogue accomplishes and how it affects tone, pace, and the shaping of a scene.
By Denise E Lindquist4 months ago in Writers
Tales From Beyond: The Haunted Letter Challenge: The Entries. Top Story - October 2025.
Greetings to the demented, the disturbed, the deranged. The entries for the “Tales from Beyond: The Haunted Letter Challenge” have been received and are festering in the dark deluded dungeons of the supernatural judges who are currently being haunted and disillusioned as we read each and every entry. There are 34 spooktastic letters in total.
By Rick Henry Christopher 4 months ago in Writers
A Scene With Two Characters
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise - Write a scene in which a character’s body, as well as his mind, is engaged in doing something — stage business. Possibilities listed below: Explore how various activities and settings can change what happens within a scene. For example, what happens when characters are planning their honeymoon if they are painting an apartment or one of them is cutting the other’s hair? Or what happens when characters are having a confrontation in public — say, in a fancy restaurant — rather than in the privacy of their home. It is also instructive to analyze how a writer you admire handles the interweaving of dialogue and body language. Go through one of your favorite stories and highlight all the body language and choreography. We guarantee this will teach you something. The Objective — To give a concrete life to the scenes our characters inhabit. To understand how action and choreography relate to the objects in the scene and how all of these relate to and help shape dialogue and the engagement of the characters.
By Denise E Lindquist4 months ago in Writers
Role Play and Real Play
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter - What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts - The Exercise - Have a fellow writer do this exercise with you. Make up situations involving two people who disagree about something - for example, two friends who have planned to shoplift something, and one is getting cold feet. Or a landlord and a tenant disagree about the terms of a lease. Next, tape your dialogue as you and your friend "act out" the two "roles" in a scene. Don't decide what you're going to say ahead of time. Improvise, through dialogue, as you go along. Then transcribe the dialogue exactly as it was said. Here is where your writer's ear comes in. Read over the written account of your scene. How much of the original exchange is useful for your story? How much of the dialogue might you summarize? And are there any "perfect" lines that you would keep? Finally, try writing the scene using the transcribed dialogue to give shape to the scene. How much of the original dialogue would you keep? The Objective - To hear and see how real talk is repetitive, disjointed, and boring. At the same time, to train your writer's ear to transform actual speech into carefully crafted dialogue.
By Denise E Lindquist4 months ago in Writers
His Freckle Too, Stayed Until Morning
I did not notice it before. That small freckle just beneath his left eye, the one the light always seems to find before I do. How many times have I seen his face and never really seen it? The mark itself is nothing special, really, a speck, a shadow of pigment the sun decided to keep for itself, yet tonight it feels like a secret I have finally been allowed to see.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast4 months ago in Writers
Observations On Vocal's Excellent Free Prompt Articles
Introduction I was looking for something to write about and couldn't see anything immediately in the official and unofficial challenges, so I then went to the Resources Tips page. Unfortunately, this has not been updated in over two years, but that does not mean it is not useful.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 4 months ago in Writers
