Creative Writing: Writing Prompts to Beat Writer’s Block

Picture it: a writing room. Everything is set up perfectly — the keyboard has been cleaned, there is tea in a mug, steeping to perfection, and the lighting is just right. A writer, a person burdened with the purpose of creating fiction that captivates their reader, saunters over to the desk and sits. With a quick adjustment of their knuckles, a symphony of cracking joints serves as the prelude to a session of creation unseen since “let there be light.” Except …the writer’s hands remain sedentary. What should be a passionate tango of language dancing across the surface of the keyboard is nothing but a middle school dance where everyone is glued to the wall.

Writer’s Block. See, inspiration is fleeting, and there is only so much “I’ll give you something to cry about” you can tell yourself to get the words to come. Unfortunately, sometimes the words get stopped up. We can all hope that medical and literary science will come up with a word laxative to treat prose constipation, but we’re going to be waiting a while. Much like actual constipation, there are home remedies for the condition, and they aren’t always pretty.

For this week’s blog, I’m sharing some writing prompts that may serve as the literary castor oil and bacon grease that’s going to make you more regular (that’s the last constipation joke, I swear!).

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“The Zoodiac Killer” – The A.P. Miller Method of Busting Writer’s Block

Twitter has a fantastic writing community, and one of the most frequent questions asked among writers is: how do you break up writer’s block. My answer is simple. It’s a writing prompt meant to open the creative centers of my brain — that prompt:

A giraffe is testifying against a chimpanzee in a court of law for the murder of a gazelle — the giraffe accidentally confesses to the murder. Why was the giraffe trying to frame the chimpanzee and where there accomplices?

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