What's your story's setting? Is there a place--a city, a building, a park--the characters keep coming back to? For this prompt, think about the main or recurring setting. What's its history? How long has it been around? What was it before? Who used it before? What interesting things, big or small, happened there? When? Why? … Continue reading Scene Prompt #30: Location, Location, Location

Do any of your characters have a secret? Let's see if we can add/deepen some secrets. No promises this is going to prompt a scene, but it could prompt several scenes. You may already know your story's secret, but if you don't . . . When I don't know what I'm doing, I generally fall … Continue reading Scene Prompt #29: The Secret

While flipping through these books I use to help me think of these prompts, I landed on something about death, and I was reminded of the James Scott Bell Great Course. (I'm about halfway through it. It's pretty good.) In one episode, he talks about death stakes. He says readers probably won't care enough about … Continue reading Scene Prompt #22: Death Stakes

You're telling this story for a reason, right? Because something happened to your main character that was memorable. Probably a rollercoaster of memorable, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Given the fact that you're taking the time to tell this story, one of the scenes in this story almost has to make the character's list … Continue reading Scene Prompt #19: Highlight of My Life

Pick a scene you want to write. This will work best if there's a very important noun involved. Person, place, thing, concept, your choice. That thing? It's now the elephant in the room. And what's the deal with the elephant in the room? No one mentions it. At least not by name, not in your … Continue reading Scene Prompt #18: The Elephant in the Room

I'm taking this one wholesale from Tom Spanbauer. Forever ago, I took a week-long class from him, and he gave us a pre-class assignment (your prompt): Write about a moment after which you [or your character] were different. That's it. That's all he said. No further explanation. I, however, will give you a little more: … Continue reading Scene Prompt #17: The Frozen Moment

In real life, when things are really stressful or scary, time can seem to slow down. You catch more details. You have more time to process, even more time to move your body if necessary. In life, slow motion probably doesn't happen very often, but in story--really, in every scene--there's a moment where things change, … Continue reading Scene Prompt #15: Slow Motion

Do you know what your book's about? For this prompt, you need to know the main character's overall story goal. You also need to know who the goal's main opponent is, the one character who embodies the opposite philosophical position. Yeah, I said opposite philosophical position: We're going to pretend these two characters are captains … Continue reading Scene Prompt #14: The Big Fight

We're going back to basics here, which I was reminded of as I flipped through a book by Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett. You don't have to just sit down and immediately start drafting "in scene", beat-by-motivationally-reacted-unit-beat (this post is coming). Instead, you can take a couple minutes and summarize the scene to both give … Continue reading Scene Prompt #13: The Synopsis