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Similar exercises

Get your creative juices flowing with these similar writing prompts.

Beginnings

Getting started is one of the most difficult tasks that faces every writer. Julie Parsons is an international bestselling author. For this exercise, she's giving you the opening lines from some of her books. Take the following lines and use them to write the beginning of your own chapter:

  1. You could say it began with a phone call."
  2. Michael had watched them both for weeks."
  3. She remembered the way it was the first time she saw the prison."
  4. Midsummer, no time to be in New Orleans."
  5. With the dawn came the light."

Pick-Up Line

Cheesy pick-up lines are the worst...but sometimes (when they work), they're the best conversation starters out there. Pick one of the pick-up lines from below and write down a conversation that you can imagine following afterward.

  • "Your smile is like Expelliarmus. Simple but disarming."
  • "Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?"
  • "Are you a parking ticket? You've got fine written all over you."
  • "Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only ten I see."
  • "If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together."

Stream of Consciousness

Sometimes in order to get over writer's block, you simply need to put word down after word. Keeping this in mind, set the timer to 15 minutes. Start writing whatever comes to your mind until time's up. Then do it again - but, this time, write stream-of-consciousness from the perspective of your protagonist.

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Picket Fence

Describe your house - or the dream house you hope to get some day.

Advert

Write an advertisement putting your 12-foot long crocodile on the market. Then write the story behind why you had to sell your pet crocodile in the first place.

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