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Get your creative juices flowing with these similar writing prompts.

A New Chapter

Pick up one of your favorite novels. Open it to a random page. Whatever chapter you land on, rewrite it your own way. Take it in a totally different direction than how it actually plays out in the book.

The Outsider

If you're working on a novel or short story, write a pivotal scene from an outside observer's perspective who has no role in the story.

Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So began Seth Grahame-Smith's book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which (you guessed it) re-imagined Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in a world with zombies. Sometimes one big twist is all it takes to get you thinking about a story in a different way. How would the introduction of zombies shake things up in your world? How would it affect the relationships between your characters? How would it change priorities? Which parts of your world would stay the same, and which parts would be different? Detail this in a short story of 1,000-2,000 words.

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Any Questions?

There's one powerful motivator that led your reader to your book - curiosity. Our brain doesn't stop asking questions because it knows that's how it learns and evolves. Questions raise uncertainty. Unknowns. And if there's an unknown, then humans want to make it known. There will be a big question that drives your story, so take a couple of minutes to consider the mother-question that propels your book from beginning to end.Your manuscript also needs to be powered by lots of little questions. Your book will need a variety of whos, whens, whys, and wheres to keep your reader engaged. In fact, every scene in your book needs to have a question define it. It's what will keep your reader turning those pages. Review each of your scenes and identify the question/s hanging over it, because once you nail that, their mind will be asking the most important question of all - what happens next?

Three Questions

Come up with three thought provoking questions. Such as:

  1. Who is Sara?
  2. Why is she running down the street?
  3. What is she holding?
Or:
  1. Who is knocking at the door?
  2. Do you know them?
  3. What do they want?
Without stopping to think or check on your spelling, answer these questions as fast as you can, with whatever comes to mind.

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