Cats, courage, and creepy things – time for some prompt inspiration.
I couldn’t make the Opening Night last week, so there was a spring in my step at the Mercure tonight. Greetings were shared with familiar faces, and introductions were made to new individuals (yay!) who had decided to try the club for size.
Linda led the proceedings again. She kicked off with a short writing exercise, using the prompt: “Write about a room in your own home, using first person.”
Five minutes never seem to pass so quickly as when I’m scribbling down ideas on an AWC Club night! Various rooms got included in this challenge – a kitchen too small for white goods, a garage that had become a Man-cave, a study for learning (or was it something else?), and a living room full of lovely books (us writers don’t care about the dust)! My piece would have been the same, no matter what room – I moved house a few months back and still have to sort the final clutter…
For our second challenge, Linda asked us to take our piece from the first prompt, and now write about it in a different genre. No choices were out of bounds, we could go romantic or criminal, humorous or dystopian, real life or sci-fi. Safe to say, our homes were cosy no longer! A workroom lost its creative joy to become the scene of a crime, another writer had an out-of-body experience in her bedroom, whilst a third had a close encounter with a spooky doppelganger in her conservatory mirror…so much for the romantic choice, eh!
Moving away from our homes, we straddled the midway break with Linda giving us two sets of six random, unrelated words. We had to write a short piece for each, including every word from the relevant set of six. The word sets were:
- Preposterous, Kingfisher, Wallet, Dawdling, Predicament, Bottle.
- Stomp, Ragdoll, Overwhelm, Acrid, Mirror, Smart.
It’s always interesting to hear the different pieces people come up with, using the same words for inspiration. Would ‘kingfisher’ be a shade of blue or feathered friend? Would ‘bottle’ relate to courage or a welcome tipple? I’m a little obsessed with feline creatures, so ‘Ragdoll’ was always going to be a pet cat in my story, besides, ragdoll toys become far too creepy in my imagination!
In between the writing exercises there were some interesting discussions about what people took away from Club nights. During this evening, some writers scribbled down a comprehensive short story in minutes using a prompt, whilst others mulled over ideas and wrote just a couple of sentences in the same timeframe. However, both outcomes could be the inspiration for your next story or poem, possibly even the start of a novel, when taken away and reflected upon. Speaking of new things, don’t forget our Club competitions are a great way to try writing in a different genre, or to hone your skills in a more familiar one.
Anyway, back to the Club night. Some good writing all round, and Linda got to wield the gavel! Hope you went away with an idea or two bubbling in your head…and didn’t have nightmares about the ragdolls….
Maggie Morton