New Set of Writer’s e-Prompts: Bringing Writing Alive with Observations

Sheila Bender writes:

I describe the second set of e-prompts I developed for Life Journal for Writers as e-Prompts to assist writers in creatively employing each of the five senses in surprising ways to fully evoke experiences, environments, viewpoints, and personas. Writing that involves the senses opens new avenues for authors and helps them overcome blocks, take new directions, and find insights. Using these prompts, your writer's notebook will become filled with vivid, engaging writing.

There are many ways into generating writing that grabs not only readers, but you as an author, encouraging you to follow your words to insightful writing. Concentrating on developing and utilizing skill with observation will keep you surprising yourself with how much you pick up through your senses and how much the details of what you pick up offer you as a platform for developing lively writing.

Here are two sample prompts from the package:

1. Imagine giving a tour of the house or room you know well, as if you were a docent leading a group of interested tourists, and asking people to notice the smallest details that only you (or a character) really think about.

Tell why you (or the character) are having them notice the details. Write this in parts, each named for a detail; call the piece "Details"

2. Button and unbutton or unsnap a sweater or jacket. Describe the way your (or your character's) fingers look while doing this by comparing them to other things so you are making a list of lively metaphors--do they look like roots twisted around a stone? Do they look like people parting after the elevator doors open? You can call this list you make of (hopefully) at least five similes or metaphors something like "Unbuttoning My Jacket, Friday Morning at Work" or "After I Arrive Home, I Unbutton my Jacket."

You can see that by concentrating on what we see but don't usually describe, we are extending our material and the amount we can evoke for others. Each of these exercises will help you slow down and begin to put the kind of idiosyncratic information into your writing that creates voice and depth.

Right now, as I button the sweater I will wear on my drive into town to go to the supermarket, I am associating to the garden snails I saw yesterday as I weeded, the way they looked tucked into their shells and untucked. I am interested in the persona or speaker who can make that association. Perhaps she is thinking about the way she should plant vegetables this year and how she will keep the garden protected from pests without using chemicals. Perhaps I have an essay or a poem in that concern, but it might be a short story--the speaker could be going to the store to buy chemicals to rid the yard of snails and feeling badly. More of an environmentalist than her husband, she does not want to use the poison he wants her to purchase. Maybe she will come home rebellious, with an organic treatment or just start collecting the snails. Maybe her snail collection will lead to something new in her life. There is so much possibility, and I feel ready and excited to write.

To purchase a three-month subscription to this set of e-Prompts, go to www.lifejournal.com/ordering and click on "E-Prompts for Three Months" and select "Writers Notebook: Observations" from the drop down menu. The other five e-Prompts sets that you can subscribe to are (1) Writers Notebook: Openings (2) Success (3) Memories (4) Emotional Self-Care (5) Loss and Grieving. The three-month subscription costs $21.95 and you will receive an e-prompt three times every week for three months.