Heffron Prompts: Part II

PROMPT: If you're stuck, consider changing the time of day you usually use for writing.  If you've been putting in an hour on your story before heading to work in the morning, write during your lunch break, or as soon as you get home in the evening.  Also consider changing where you write.  If at a computer, take a notepad to a park or a library.  New times and locations and routines for writing can spark new interest.


PROMPT: Spend at least three sessions practicing the "stay in the chair" method.  Set a timer for your session, and write whatever you want, perhaps responding to a prompt in this book.  Do not for any reason get up from the chair.  Turn off the phone, shut down your e-mail, tell family members that you are not to be disturbed unless someone is facing a life-or-death situation.  If the idea you're exploring stalls before you finish, begin a new one or simply write about writing or describe the room in which you're working.  Your goal is to practice staying in the chair.

PROMPT: Create a new element of the story that is being kept secret by one of the characters.  Allude to this secret somewhere in the first scene.  As you move ahead, slowly reveal the secret, one that adds another complication to the story.  You needn't know the secret yourself when you start writing.  Allow yourself to discover it as you write.

PROMPT: Steal a line from something you've read.  It might only be a phrase, but grab that sucker and plunk it into a piece of your own.  If you don't have a piece in progress, spend a session exploring an idea in which that line or phrase can appear.

PROMPT: Describe a process.  This exercise is a standard in technical writing courses.  Students explain the steps involved in doing something, such as fixing a flat tire or installing a water heater.  Spend part of a writing session describing a process.  Then look for ways of weaving this process into the work in progress.  For example, in her essay on how to write the lyric essay, Brenda Miller describes how to make challah bread.  She uses the process to enlarge the essay and make her points about craft in a more lyric way.  In fiction, describing a process can have the same effect, the most famous being the chapters in Moby Dick that describe the techniques of whaling.  Your fictional character, rather than react to his wife's leaving in the typical ways, might carefully wax his car.  Don't look for obvious parallels when deciding on which process to describe.  Choose one you know well or one you can research.

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Prompt excerpts from: Heffron, Jack. The Writer's Idea Workshop: how to make your good ideas great. Cincinnati, Ohio, 2003

For other more prompts from The Writer's Idea Workshop, please check out Heffron Prompts: Part I.

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2012

Heffron Prompts: Part I

I am currently reading The Writer's Idea Workshop; how to make your good ideas great by Jack Heffron.  I am four chapters in and while much of what I am reading has been touched upon in other writing books, this one has struck a singular cord within me.  In Heffron's book he talks about how we, as writers, often talk an idea to death and then lose all drive to write about it and how we should keep some ideas secret until we have enough written on the page to sort of rope us into the project rather than allow the idea to exist as some ideal that we will never actually work toward finishing.  I am ever so guilty of this and that is why my current project - something that I've mentioned in passing to Crimson - is going to remain under wraps until I have a few chapters pumped out and can make a real decision on whether or not this idea is any good.  In the mean time, here are some of the prompts from his book, which contains over three hundred prompts, that I found particularly interesting and useful. 

PROMPT: If you have an idea that you've been carrying around in your mind for a while, stop reading this book and put something on paper.  Even if you can only spend five minutes doing it, spend the five minutes.  If you're hesitant to begin writing, just describe the story in a paragraph or write five possible titles or name all the characters.  But do it now.  This very minute.  I'm not kidding.  Go.  You shouldn't be reading this sentence, unless you've taken time to do this prompt.

PROMPT: Write a pledge to yourself to keep secret an idea for a writing project.  Tell no one about it.  If you tend to be a blabbermouth, as writers often are, give the pact with yourself a time limit, such as: "I'll keep this idea a secret for one month, during which I'll write a little something on it every day." 

PROMPT: If you've been working on a piece for a good while and feel it may be time to let go, put it away for a while, give yourself a deadline for working on it.  For example, tell yourself you'll spend the next five sessions on the piece before putting it away.  Then, stick to that schedule, even if the piece suddenly comes to life.  If it does come to life, you can bring it out again later but for now you've decided to move on to something new.

PROMPT: Write about a place you've never been, one in which you've always had an interest or somewhere that has inspired a feeling of connection.  Investigate your interest or connection.

PROMPT: Create a prompt of your own.  One of the themes of this chapter is that creativity requires moving past what you've been told to do, and so what I'm telling you to do is tell yourself what to do.  You might want to brainstorm a half-dozen "assignments" and choose one to explore in a session.  The key here is to set forth your own task and then find ways to accomplish it.

PROMPT: After a writing session, write a congratulatory note from your ideal reader to you.  The reader should tell you he or she loves your idea.

Excerpts from: Heffron, Jack. The Writer's Idea Workshop: how to make your good ideas great. Cincinnati, Ohio, 2003

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I, for one, jumped on that first prompt!  I hope that some of you will do the same.  Don't get stuck on a project that is taking forever and eating up the time that you could be using practicing, polishing, and, most importantly, creating!  I put some of these prompts up with specific contributors in mind but I hope these are useful to any and all of our readers.  For more prompts please check out Heffron Prompts: Part II.


Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2012