So often writers and people in general second guess everything, especially what they write. They then cross it out, erase it, work around it or completely rewrite it. After you do this for so long, you eventually just handle the process in your head without realizing it. You begin to think of every word, sentence, and part of grammar before you write it.
–R.I.P Paragraph that I wrote and erased–
Now it may be safe, but it’s not healthy for a writer to do so. It disconnects you from a flow of writing which is much more important than the flow of thinking. – In which case that would make you a philosopher, not a writer –
Moreover, you would surely agree that writers learn from their mistakes and though they may still make them in their minds, they are not acknowledging them, learning from them or are able to look back at them and see where the mind strayed off track.
The ability to not only learn from mistakes, but actually play with them, develop with them and write with them allows the writer to explore purity. I say purity because everything that you have ignored, every angle you avoided writing from, every idea that you felt went off the story line has never been touched or tampered with and so it remains pure.
After you write for some time, you will learn that what most people want to read is pure writing and to find pure writing, you have to do the manual labor of writing on ideas that you would normally and subconsciously cross out or erase.
I always say, if hair on your chest makes you a man, scribbles and crossed out words makes you a writer.
Success is really what you call “Mastered Creativity”. What you will find below are some constructed writing challenges and exercises to push your creativity. They are formed in a way to apply practice to parts of writing (and thinking) you have rarely practiced before. The goal is to get your creative mind to push limits, stretch its imagination and to give it a game to play.
To have an open and expanded mind that is capable of using objects, sounds, movements, etc., and turn them into something solid and applicable is exactly what the most successful creators do. So why not start with the basics – Creative Writing. You might just realize that there are some life lessons to be learned from the writing exercises.
1. Newspaper Headline: I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of reading all the negativity in the newspaper. Old Zig Ziglar always said that the reason foreigners can come to America and become millionaires within a year is that they can’t read all the negativity in the newspaper. For this challenge, write your own headline article for the newspaper and share what you think is important enough for all to know. Lesson: Make sure the positive is what remains on the front page. Focus on the good, the happy, the love and remember to share it with everyone. Put all of the negativity in the obituary section.
2. Oddvertisement: You have seen great advertisements that may have even gotten you to buy something, but you have also seen terrible ads that feel like a continuous prod in the ribs. Advertisements are only fun when you see an advertisement for something odd. That’s why I call it an Oddvertisement. Open up your pantry or closet and dig for something in the far back that never gets used. Now it’s time to sell it. Write an oddvertisement that is creative and encouraging enough for someone to consider buying it. Lesson: Anyone can make a sale, but only the creative make a living off of it. There is always a different way to look at things, you just have to have the right mindset.
3. MadLib Promotion: While MadLibs are extremely fun. The joy can be even more fruitful when you are the one who created the MadLib for someone else to complete. Lesson: Challenge others by giving them the authority to choose what word goes in a certain spot.
4. Word Of The Day Stories: Dictionary.com has a Word of The Day every day. For a beginner writer, try freewriting and using the words from the last seven days. For a more expert writer, create a story using all of last months words. To take it a step further, you can even start your story by using the time and setting of the actual month that you are using the new words from. Lesson: Time really does go by quickly, yet it’s still possible to learn something new everyday and apply it to your life.
5. Improv Writing: Improv, Improv Character Building, Improv-ing Writing SkillsLesson: People-observation skills and the ability to make a correct judgement can be critical in some situations. In others, it’s necessary to keep an open mind about a person since truly, you don’t know where they come from, what they are thinking or where they want to go in life.
6. Who’s Quote Is It Anyway?: Have a list of famous quotes you absolutely love? Create a story that implements them word by word, as the theme, or by using your own derivative of the meaning. Give the quote an all new definition and background. Who knows, if you switch it up enough, you just might be quoted for it. Lesson:Emulating The Successful Through Quotes.
7. Poetry Walk Or Meditation. While walking and becoming aware of all that is around you, carry a journal and write down notes and ideas to create a poem from. Lesson: Living in the moment and remaining aware.
8. Connect-The-Sentences: Either pull random sentences from different books or use sentences you have recently heard someone say. Make three columns and in the first and third, write down the sentences that you gathered. The middle column is for you to write your own sentence that can connect the first and third sentences. The more challenging you want it, the more columns you can add, making every other column blank. Lesson: To achieve anything in life from where you are, you have to create a bridge. There is never skipping steps. You can’t just skip the middle column of this writing game or skip the work you need to do to get to where you want to be in life. It’s also great to realize that you can make the bridge as interesting and be as creative as possible.
9. Word Jump. While freewriting, start every sentence with the word that you blindly land your finger on in a book or newspaper. Lesson: You never know what’s going to pop up in your life to knock you off track. Are you creative enough to adapt and overcome?
10.Guest Post: Instead of getting a guest to write a blog post for you, you write it. Open up the post like you normally would on a subject of your choice (preferably controversial, but it doesn’t need to be). Then introduce your guest that will be writing a post on the subject (Create an alias for yourself). Now begin writing from a different perspective, as the guest blogger. Lesson: Getting different perspectives.
11.Word Play: Write a poem with word play… wait, weight, waste, waist, hole, whole. Lesson: Simply just fun!
12.I Write Dead People: Open up a newspaper to the Obituary section and write a story about how a person died. Lesson: Makes you happy to be alive doesn’t it? Life’s too short to not be creative.
13. Telephone Book Tale: Open to a random page of your yellow book, placing your finger on a part of the page and using what is written in that ad, put it in your story. Did your finger lie on a Muffler shop? Has there been a recent murder there? Was all that was left at the scene a piece of paper and the phone number which has been disconnected? Big yellow phone books don’t do any good unless you can write a story from them. Lesson: Nothing is ever as it seems.
14. Where Do You WANT To See Yourself In 5 Years?: Simple as that. Write every detail, every dream come true, every aspect of the life you want. Get crazy with it! So many people will ask you this throughout your life. Create an answer that will blow them away.
Stay Positive & Then Follow Through To Make That 5th Year Come True
It’s winter time in Madison, Wisconsin. It is actually snowing right now and we are supposed to get up to 5 inches. I figured this would be a perfect time to post my writing prompts I created just for you. Regardless if you are living where its snowing, I hope you have some time to do some free writing. Below you will find 15 writing prompts and one bonus prompt that I will respond to. Following the prompts I will give you suggestions on how to successfully write prompts. As much as it is a free writing technique, there are requirements and lessons to learn. It took me a lot of cruddy free writing stories to learn and I am more than happy to share them with you. Without further ado,
15 writing prompts, just for you by Garth E. Beyer: Because getting prompts elsewhere just is not good enough!
The tornado sirens are blaring and you are waiting by the window patiently to see if there is actually a tornado nearby. You see a woman screaming and pointing behind her as she runs toward your house. Why do you think she is screaming? What do you?
You felt adventurous this morning so you are at the local park which is basically like being in the woods. Not realizing how far off the trail you have gotten, you become stuck between a wolf and the edge of the cliff with raging waters steadily streaming down below. What are your thoughts and actions?
A large burly man has you thrown over his shoulder. Since you are not in view of the direction he is heading, all you see is desert land behind him. What do you think is ahead of him? Where is he taking you?
You are a bird for a day. What do you do? Where do you go?
You have just won the $1000 a week for life lottery. How do you celebrate? What are your plans for the money?
Your school field trip leaves you stuck in the hot air balloon with the prissiest girl in your class. How do you survive the 2 hour hot air balloon ride while the fuel slowly runs out?
Write a detailed description of where you believe wind comes from.
You must use a color in every sentence while describing the beginning, growth, and end of the life of your favorite fruit.
Free write with the sole focus of stars. It may be stars on a flag, or the sky, as long as the subject remains on stars.
Write in detail of your dream vacation. Where is it? What do you do? How would you describe it to a family member upon return?
List different types of hugs a person can give and the significance or subconscious meaning behind each.
You are on a roof of a building with your friends and they are pressuring you to jump across to the roof of the adjacent building. What is running through your mind? Do you jump?
You have just been in a terrible biking accident down a hill. You are telling your friend the narrative starting from the beginning of your day to how you ended up in the hospital bed.
The city has dubbed you head of college applications “Admissions Officer”. Revise and Rewrite the acceptance letter to your liking to be given to all accepted college applicants.
You have an assignment for Garth. You need to come up with fifteen writing prompts. Do you obey and write the writing prompts? If so, what are they? If not, why not? (Post them in comments section for me and others)
Toastmasters Bonus Prompt
My bonus prompt is not one I made up like those above. I got it from attending Toastmasters the other night during Table Topics. I was the first to volunteer (always am) to go up and pick a folded piece of paper with the prompt. “Theme: your personal best, real or imagined… Making dinner for a picky eater”. The Table Topics Master focused on positivity and the point of the Topic was to focus on the best parts of an experience, no matter how disastrous it may have been.
When I read my prompt I quickly thought of a cursed friend when she was vegetarian. It was her birthday and I tricked her by telling her that I had to stop back at my house to get my money. How could I purchase her sweet things at the mall if I had no money? To her surprise I had the house pitch black…except for the candles. I had the dining room set up with a table cloth, candles, silverware and wine glasses. After pulling the chair out for her, I came back from the kitchen and surprised her with a huge dish of vegetarian lasagna. She had been begging me to make a dinner for her. I am not the best cook, but beg and you shall receive. I found a lasagna recipe online, but really ended up grabbing whatever ingredients I thought would go good in it. While it turned out to look a bit more like goulash, she loved it. As much as she has begged me to make it for her again, I refuse. I consider that day to be my personal best at making a dinner for a picky eater. I would not want to ruin it.
Yes this was impromptu speaking and I edited it a bit for posting it here. But I didn’t want you to be the only one writing prompts! It’s like having a personal fitness trainer that doesn’t lift weights with you. It just cannot be.
I Prompt You To Learn These Lessons About Writing Prompts Promptly
1. Writing from a prompt is supposed to break you away from your normal writing techniques. I suggest practicing writing with your left hand before you start a prompt, flipping open a dictionary and taking some random words out to use in your writing, and doing your best to not use your memories – use your imagination.
2. I broke up with my prompt and got the better half. Writing from prompts are not meant to flow. You are not writing an essay (unless stated otherwise in the prompt hehe). Be brief and concise in each idea you come up with for the prompt, break them up and find a way to connect them later. The greatest stories from prompts happen when miraculous ideas are dubstepped on paper and get the reader using all parts of their brain to connect them.
3. If you decide to crumple up your paper, you know you are in the right direction – as long as you uncrumple it and keep writing. You have to let yourself fail when writing from a prompt, only then can you figure out the message you really want to get across in the prompt.
4. Having writers block when trying to write a prompt? Others will tell you to force it and push through. They are wrong, never do this when writing from a prompt. What they are asking you to do is break your barrier and find the flow. As stated in number 2, that is not what you want. Grab another prompt that you can actually start and be creative.
5. Really do have fun with it. So many freewriters focus on making their story really important and try to send a message or lesson in their writing from a prompt. Yet again, they are trying to shape what they write, do not do this. If a lesson or theme is supposed to be shared from the prompt, then it will be. The main focus should be to make your writing quirky, unique, and out-of-the-box.
6. Lastly, I want to provide you with one great resource that I found on Squidoo (Created by Seth Godin, one of my heroes). Check out this Writing Prompt Lens
