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1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More
1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More
1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More
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1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More

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About this ebook

(This book is specially discounted to 99 cents through May 27.)

Finally, a possible cure for writer's block. These story starters cover a large range of topics, including: Holidays, College, Health, Regrets, Nature, Shakespeare, Religion and over 40 more! These prompts help you to write from the heart so that you can relate to your audience. They work for blogs, scripts, stories, poems, essays and anything else that requires writing without interruption.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherBryan Cohen
Release dateDec 21, 2010
ISBN9781458013453
1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More
Author

Bryan Cohen

Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor, director and producer who enjoys dabbling in both theatre and film. Bryan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art with a minor in Creative Writing. He has written or co-written the plays Chekhov Kegstand, Something from Nothing, Kerpow! and The Morning After. He founded the website Build Creative Writing Ideas in late 2008 and he currently serves over ten thousand users a month. Bryan is a full-time freelance writer and he currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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    3/5
    A few good ideas. A lot of them occurred several times in the book.

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1,000 Creative Writing Prompts - Bryan Cohen

What others are saying about

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts

For anyone who ever finds themselves struggling for inspiration for a writing project, 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts could be a valuable - and reasonably priced - investment.

Nick Daws, My Writing Blog

When I read through Bryan Cohen's 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, I was more than pleasantly surprised. Not only are there prompts in areas to appeal to every writer, they're set up as questions which make them so much more usable and the outcome unique to each writer...Whether you're pushing through the Great American Novel or have always dreamed of being a published author, this book is another sterling tool to add to your writing room.

Jubilee Jones, Author and Blogger

If you like writing, at all, whether it's just for you, for practice, or for an audience, you need to take a gander at this. The title is no joke. There really are 1,000 writing prompts, and they aren't lame. Bryan did a fan-freaking-tastic job of pulling these together. You don't have to have major publishing goals to benefit from this collection of prompts, you just have to like to write.

Ashley Daoust, Freelance Writer and Editor

From holidays to seasons, from memories to 'the weird,' there is something for even the pickiest writer...Bryan Cohen’s prompts are, in my opinion, pure genius in their construction.

Deb Gallardo, Story Ideas Virtuoso

1,000 CREATIVE WRITING PROMPTS:

IDEAS FOR BLOGS, SCRIPTS, STORIES AND MORE

by

Bryan Cohen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Bryan Cohen on Smashwords

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts:

Ideas for Blog, Scripts, Stories and More

Copyright 2010 by Bryan Cohen

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Cover image is provided courtesy of iStockPhoto.com user Petro Feketa. Book cover designed by Amy Dombrower.

***

Table of Contents

Introduction

Holidays

Seasons

Memories

Life

Health

For the Kids

Literature and Genre

Art

Sports

The Outdoors

The Modern World

The Weird

General

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

My name is Bryan Cohen and I want to help you write. I’m the author of a Web site called Build Creative Writing Ideas and I’m also the author of this book.

I’ve found that one of the toughest things for a writer is to come up with ideas and so I’ve created 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More to help writers avoid the dreaded writer’s block that I keep hearing about. These prompts have over 50 different subjects including holidays, race, romantic comedy, childhood, prom and even the American Dream.

A prompt is a jumping off point that helps you to get your brain and pen moving. Some of these prompts are questions, some are scenarios and many of them deal with your own life and memories. When you use a memory or an emotion to write from, it helps you to feel like you aren’t starting from scratch. There are thousands of stories already in your brain and many of these prompts are attempts to jog your memory and to use your brain for all it’s worth.

I also feel that when you use your memories and your heart for these prompts, the writing ends up coming from a place of great truth. Even if you are writing a fantastical story about a boy and his dog, if it comes from a foundation of honesty, the story will strike a chord with your readers. Successful franchises like Harry Potter work for a number of reasons, but I believe the main reason is that we relate to those characters. Creating from truth is the first step to successful writing.

I’m proud to say that these prompts are original and that I’ve put many, many hours into coming up with them. I’ve gotten some extremely positive feedback from users of my website and so the creation of this book was the next logical step.

I’ve written a few short essays to help get you started, but you can start writing from the prompts right away if you wish. So…hop to it!

How to Be a Writer

A lot of people feel like they need some kind of permission to be called a writer. Like once they’ve taken enough classes or once they’ve published something there is some tribunal that will decree that they are now in fact writers. Others feel as though they’re writers even though they’ve never even made an effort to write more than a short story here and a poem there.

We live in a tough world full of put-downs and negative talk. If someone does not have the will or the ability to achieve his dreams he may feel the desire to kick around the aspirations of other people. We may hear this kind of unproductive negativity from our parents, friends, loved ones and those we mistakenly see as our enemies.

A writer is a person who can see through all this negativity and still feel passionate about writing. A writer wants to write and wants to figure out ways to make writing more a part of his life. There are some writers that are financially successful and others who haven’t made a dime, but they are all still writers.

If you say over and over again that you aren’t qualified enough to be a writer…you will fulfill your own (kind of boring) prophecy. If you tell yourself that you are a writer and you tell other people this over and over again, the opposite will be true. But how do you know if you’re a writer?

If you aren’t sure if you qualify as a writer, there is only one thing you need to do.

Write. Just write. Write as much as you can as often as you can. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written anything lately, just start now. If you have an off week, month or year, it doesn’t matter because you can start writing again at any time. If you have the desire to write and you can give yourself the permission to have this passion in your life then you are a writer.

This is about the time that the excuses come rolling in:

I don’t have enough time.

Writing doesn’t pay and I’m broke.

I don’t have any motivation.

Solving these problems is as easy as visiting your local library. Hundreds of books have been written about time management, financial management and creating motivation in your life. Continuing to make these excuses and ones like them, with solutions available at any time (for free, no less) is essentially laziness.

Laziness is boring. A life of spending your free time watching television and learning everything you can learn online about celebrities (or the like) is boring. If you even have an inkling of wanting to be a writer, pick up a few books that will leave your excuses in the dust and try working hard to make something of yourself.

My website, Build Creative Writing Ideas has many tips and tricks to improve your motivation and time management, so if you can’t get off your butt to visit the library check it out. For those of you who are ready to write, strap yourself in and try a few of these prompts on for size. Happy writing!

How to Write from Prompts

These 1,000 creative writing prompts have been compiled from various ideas that have floated in and out of my head over the last two years. I have made as many as I can very open ended so that the same prompt could be used multiple times over.

The prompts often take the form of a scenario with a question:

259. You see a little boy wander into the middle of a busy intersection. What do you do?

There are multiple ways that you could choose to write from this prompt. You could launch into a first person story or explanation:

I would immediately drop all of my belongings and run to his safety. As I run into traffic, my life would flash before my eyes and I would hope desperately that I could make it to the boy in time to save us both…

You could make it into a third-person fiction story:

"Derrick and Joey laughed and sipped their drinks. All of a sudden, Joey noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

‘What the…’

Joey trailed off as he noticed a young boy trip and fall in the middle of the road. He was all alone. Joey was the only person with enough time to act…"

Or you could transport it into another genre:

The boy tripped and fell in the middle of the road. The truck struck him with all its force and it quickly shattered into a million pieces. The nearby cars screeched to a half and stared with their mouths agape at the uninjured boy.

What you write from these prompts could be the start of an entire story or it could just allow you to get a few paragraphs in for the day. You could write a blog post based on what you write, a short story, a poem, a teleplay, a screenplay, a stage play, a novel or anything else that requires putting pen to paper.

These are not assignments by any means. You can write as much or as little as you wish. Run with an idea until you can’t think of anything else and then try another one. Write one story from a prompt and then write a completely different story from the same prompt. What you use these prompts for is up to you. If you turn one of these prompts into a million-dollar screenplay (and I hope you do) go off and enjoy yourself, because I will not expect anything from you in the slightest. I created these ideas so that writers could simply write from the heart without having to think too much so go off and make me proud :).

If you do not like a prompt, you don’t have to write from it. You can also come up with a new prompt based on the prompt you don’t like. Seriously, whatever you want to do with this book and these prompts, please feel free to do it. I just want you to write! If you ever have a question about where a prompt came from or what I meant by a particular prompt, feel free to contact me on my site, Build Creative Writing Ideas.

Writing Every Day

One fantastic way to use this book is to write from one prompts every day to keep yourself trained and fresh. Writing every day can be difficult to get started but once you make it a habit it’ll be just like flossing (except much less gross).

The method that I like to use to integrate new habits into my life is a method developed by blogger Steve Pavlina called The 30 Day Plan. One of the mistakes people make when trying to add a habit to their lives is that they think too far down the line wondering, How could I possibly make this a habit for the rest of my life?

Steve Pavlina recommends that you look a lot more short term. He likens adding a new habit to installing some software

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