Your Daily Writing Prompt

This week, we are working on character development. Each Sunday, we start on a new prompt theme for the week. Read our opening post for this week’s prompts here.

Gobble. What an appropriate word for today. For this week. For this month. For this year. At the beginning of each year, I pick a word for the year. For 2016, I chose the word ‘Phoenix.’ So far, the only phoenixy about this year is the fact that I want to forego the turkey and instead capture that fake bird and fry it until it’s nothing but burnt feathers. Sorry, vegetarians, I won’t really do that, I promise. Also a Phoenix is mythical, not an actual living creature. Now, I know the year isn’t over yet, but I’m struggling to care about it at all. Apparently, I need to put more thought into my annual theme word for next year since upon reflection, a phoenix arises from destruction and ashes. Did I subconsciously invite ashes? No. Stop. I can’t think that way at the moment. I’ll wind up in a padded cell. Consciously, I know one thing: I want the ash-creation phase to stop already.

Like me, characters go through their own dark periods, their own descents into destruction, and ash.

Today, we are going to explore your character’s darkest period because why not do something totally counter-cultural on Thanksgiving day?

Today’s prompt: 

Fiction Writers: Write about the darkest time in your character’s life. A time when they grieved so heavily and felt so hopeless that they were lucky to emerge from it alive. How did they survive it? What new and resilient part of themselves did they need to access to find their way out of that darkness? How has that part served them since then? How has is stopped serving them in the present day?

Memoir Writers: Write about the darkest time in your life. A time when you were grieving so heavily and felt so hopeless that you were lucky to emerge from it alive. How did you survive it? What new and resilient part of yourself did you need to access to find your way out of that darkness? How has that part served you since then? How has is stopped serving you now?

You can post your daily writing exercises in the comments section of the blog post if you’d like or you can post on our Facebook group. Or you can keep them to yourself. It’s all fine with me.

Go forth and write,

Nicole

Remember:

• You can write about yourself or apply these prompts to your character.
• It’s okay to change personal pronouns (he to she or she to I, etc.)
• You don’t have to follow the prompt exactly; it’s more important that you get words on the page today.
• You can get these daily writing prompts a couple of different ways:
  • Visit our blog every day.
  • Add our blog to your favorite RSS feed reader. We use Feedly.
  • Subscribe to our blog which will send you an email every morning with the previous day’s blog post(s).
  • Join our Closed Facebook Group

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