SEPTEMBER 2025

 Prompt from James Joyce

Joyce is arguably the most influential writer of the twentieth century. His masterpiece, Ulysses (1922) challenged the traditional  rules of style and form, and changed the landscape of modern literature.

#001 - Interior monologue: Yourself

The interior monologue is the thought process of a character written from their perspective. A method of writing an interior monologue is through "stream of consciousness," allowing any conscious thought that comes to mind to be written down. In stream-of-consciousness mode, sentence structure and style need not be considered during the process of writing.

Write an interior monologue using stream of consciousness from your own perspective (i.e., write down the flow of your own conscious thoughts.) You might like to use Joyce's method of writing without punctuation, with each thought a continuation of the last, until you reach the end of the page. 

#002 - Finnegans Wake

In Finnegans Wake Joyce uses an incredible amount of wordplay. He enjoyed creating portmanteau words - a single word with two meanings.  The word derives from the English term  "portmanteau luggage" - a piece of luggage with two compartments. An example of a portmanteau from Finnegans Wake is "kissmiss" : both an alternative spelling for "Christmas" and something that may occur under the mistletoe.

Try to come up with some portmanteaus of your own.

#003 - Family members

Pick members of your family and write a description of them using their age as your wordcount (e.g., Nan, 71, Dad, 48, your niece, Lucy, 5). Could you think of a single word to describe your one-year-old baby nephew? Mix up the descriptions so that your paragraph has varying sentence lengths. Mixing up short and long sentences helps to structure prose and varies the pace.

AUGUST 2025

August 2025 prompts

In honor of Ozzie Osbourne’s passing. I felt compelled to create a prompt that is inspired by your favorite music.

1. Pull up your favorite play list, mix tape, mp3 player, ipod, cassette tape or just turn on the radio in your car and pick your favorite song title, lyric or inspirational tune. Write a short piece in any point of view and style based on that song. As an example from Ozzie: “Crazy Train” could be a story about a sentient train that uses AI to take over the world. OR it could be a tale about some insane asylum inmates who escape and take over a transcontinental railroad. Your music and your choice.


2. Maybe you are not inspired by music - in that case, pick your favorite tv show and choose a secondary character. Make that character the main protagonist in your story. For example: in Seinfeld - Kramer is a secondary character - what kind of tale could he tell?


3. Finally, think of your favorite musician or composer from any era. IF they were a fictional character, based on their music, what story would you tell starring them?

Enjoy!

JULY 2025

 Prompt for July 2025

July is a great time for vacations, beaches, fireworks and camp. The 4 prompts for this month deserve a nice short tale for each - any genre you like. Have fun!

1.Set your story during the hottest day of the year. What happens?

2. Write a short piece about being in the woods at night, alone.

3. Write a story about being on a sandy beach.

4. You are at the 2028 Pittsburgh Fireworks display when mysterious drones begin flying all around you and, suddenly, the barge with the Zambelli fireworks explodes and all the fireworks go off at the same time. What happens next?

June 2025 Exercise

 JUNE 2025

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In tribute to Ceci’s journey to Beijing this month I created a travel adventure prompt. For your consideration:

• Take one of your favorite characters to a wonderful and exotic location where they have never been and give them an adventure. 
• 10 pages max. 
• Write in 2nd person POV.  Second person point of view uses the pronoun “you” to address the reader. This narrative voice implies that the reader is either the protagonist or a character in the story and the events are happening to them. 
• If the 2nd person POV turns out to be weird or difficult - go ahead and do this story in Stream of Consciousness (1st person - limited punctuation and grammar structure - ala James Joyce).

MAY 2025

 Shaler Writer’s Group

Prompt for May 2025

This month the Vietnam Memorial Wall comes to Shaler and many of the programs here at the Library will use that opportunity to research and learn about the Wall and the War.

For a prompt in May we will use the opportunity to write something inspired by this event.

1. Create a character who is very different from yourself and write a monologue that they might speak about the subject of war. 

1. Imagine that you are 17 years old and have just received orders to go to Vietnam in the height of the war. Describe your feelings and concerns. You can be either gender.

2. Imagine you are 20 years old and a resident of a war torn country who has been surviving during an active battle. Describe that character and what story they would tell. You could tell their story in any tense or point of view.

3. Imagine a character who is ancient in age and has seen many wars and battles. This experience is just one more event among many in their life. Write a monologue that they might say to a group of young people.

4. Imagine that you are a parent and your son or daughter is named on the Memorial Wall. What would you say to them?

April 2025 Exercise

APRIL 2025

Choose one of the short stories below and write a brief plotline. Then, using your special, personal style of writing and genre - write the story for yourself in five pages or less. Stick with the important elements from your plotline but feel free to change characters, place and specifics. Here are the stories:

METAMORPHOSIS - Kafka

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI - O Henry

THE TELL TALE HEART - Poe

THE LAST QUESTION - Asimov

THE LOTTERY - Jackson


You can find them for free online, or at least you can find a summary of the story for free online.






Enjoy!

March 2025

MARCH EXERCISES

1. Tell the story of how you learned to use a kitchen tool or appliance. It can be when you learned to use a fork and spoon, or a spatula or a mandolin or a potato peeler or the stove or the grill or, well, any kitchen thing.

2. Search for a photograph or drawing of something unusual. Write a short description of what you see and 3 possible titles for your story about the item.

3. Recently, the Playwright group on Facebook held a 30 days of writing prompts and one of the prompts was to write a short piece about lists. Checklists, shopping lists, to-do lists, etc. In any genre you choose, write a story featuring a list.

4. The 1-2-3 Punch scene is called “the 1-2-3 Punch Scene,” because it happens REAL fast. If you blink you might miss it. (So don’t blink…Okay, do blink). Your reader won’t know that you’ve done it but all within one paragraph usually you’ll have divulged very specific character traits that run down through your character’s core in a matter of a minute or two. This is, in essence, the 1-2-3 Punch. In as quick as a paragraph you can have your character carry out 1-2 or 3 quick actions that display who that character is down to their core and it all happens as quick as a punch and your audience suddenly has a large sense of who that character is. To execute this type of scene well you need to decide a couple of character traits you want your character to have. Let’s make an example: I have a Protagonist named Jim. I want to portray that Jim is kind, caring, and charitable. Let’s say Jim’s widowed Aunt stays with him and his son. She comes home one day and realizes she forgot the butter. Jim hears her exclaim her disappointment and he quickly jumps up and says “Don’t worry about it Auntie, I’ll run out and get your butter for you so that you don’t have to run back in town.” He says it with a big smile of course and a great attitude about the whole thing whistling as he’s off on his way to the store. While waiting in line to buy the butter the person in front of him is a dollar or two short. Jim quickly says “Oh, let me get that for you” and smiles at the distraught stranger while digging in his pocket for two dollars. In a short paragraph, we have seen that Jim is kind, caring, and charitable. We didn’t have to SAY “Jim is kind, caring, and charitable.” We used a scene to let the reader see it for themselves. Create a character and decide on 3 character traits you want them to have. Write the 1-2-3 punch paragraph about that character.