From the time you learn how to talk, you have stories to tell.
Faced with a classroom writing assignment, though, you can feel the fog rolling in, hiding all your best personal narrative ideas.
To clear that fog, sometimes, all you need are some simple questions to get started, which is why so many of the personal narrative prompts in this post include them.
You’ll find the prompts grouped by theme to make your search for ideas easier.
What is passive voice misuse?
How do you know if you’re overdoing it with passive voice constructions?
And is active voice always better?
If you’ve ever run your work through the Heminway Editor, you know it flags passive voice right away (along with wordy or overly long sentences).
Human editors, too, tend to bristle at the overuse of passive voice.
So, it’s a huge time-saver when you know how to recognize and correct it in your writing.
Read on to learn how.
So, you want to write a short story — and not just a mildly entertaining short story but one your readers can’t put down until they’ve finished it.
You want a story that gets reactions like “Wow!” and “How did you do that?” and “Do you have more like this?”
What writer doesn’t want that kind of reaction, right?
And since short stories are short, you have less time to wait for your readers’ reactions — but you also have less time to grab their attention.
That’s why a great topic is worth its weight in gold when it comes to writing these little gems.
Even with the challenges inherent to short story writing, you’ll most likely finish a short story in far less time than you would a novel.
So, you’ll get to explore more story topics in less time than if you were writing longer works.
But how do you generate short story ideas that are worth the time you’ll invest in crafting a short story your readers will love?
If you’ve been writing for long enough, you already know good story ideas are everywhere, and you might even have some in mind as you read this.
But which of those ideas should be on your shortlist for story writing projects?
And if you don’t have any great ideas at the moment, where do you get some?
Researching pseudonyms for authors is an academic pursuit in and of itself, and an author’s pen name can reveal a lot about their life and time.
So today, we’re looking at 15 writers who’ve shed their “government names” in favor of something different.
You’re looking for some creative story ideas for teenagers, maybe because you want to write YA fiction, or maybe because you know someone else who does.
Welcome to our inspired collection of 55 writing prompts for young adults.
You’ll find a variety of characters and scenarios to play with. Choose from different themed groups to find your next story idea more quickly.
Start with one that feels personal to you. Then make it familiar to your reader.
What on earth is blackout poetry?
And how can it stoke the creative fire within you?
And what if you’re not really “the poetic type”?
Good news! Even if you’ve never met a poetry assignment that didn’t fill you with dread, you’re about to learn something that will change the way you think of poetry.
This is something you can do to de-stress and restore your energy, even while you’re tricking yourself into doing something creative.
And all you need are someone else’s words and something to write with.
You’re starting a sentence with and, and your detail-oriented friend suddenly erupts with “Pssh! You can’t start a sentence with a conjunction!”
Strange. You weren’t aware starting sentences with conjunctions was verboten.
Even your English teacher did it. So, it must be okay, you argue.
“Nope. It’s not correct,” your friend insists. Except your friend is WRONG!
Okay, that was a sweeping generalization (much like what your friend said).
But there are plenty of situations where it’s completely fine to start a sentence with and.
You’ve heard the expression, “Pause for effect”?
Read on to see how that applies.