DailyWritingPrompts.com

begin your story with this line: Only the boy could give them what they wanted.

put a new spin on this cliche: to buy it for the price of a skinny chicken

craft a story around this metaphor: an envelope of distaste

in 200 words, describe “a black book found wedged between the coffee table and wall”.

A vignette is a small literary sketch that may or may not provide a starting point for a longer work. Vignettes provide snapshots of characters and circumstances that people can identify with. Unlike flash fiction, vignettes don’t aim to tell a story. It is simply a description of something or someone. Vignettes can take on many forms: poem, monologue, description, dialogue. Writing a vignette is similar to freewriting. Choose a topic or a prompt then write for 5 to 10 minutes about it.

Here are 5 “slice of life” prompts to jump start your vignettes:

1. finding a $10 bill in the gutter
2. piece of paper flutters down from between two pages in a book
3. sirens screaming past the open window
4. anxiously waiting for the phone to ring
5. glancing at an expired license

[Excerpted from my e-mail course, Creativity Alley: 21 Ways to Jumpstart Your Muse.]

A problem or premise can be viewed from two distinctive points of view — the observer viewpoint and the merged viewpoint. Today’s creativity method focuses on the second viewpoint.

The merged viewpoint occurs when you become the object of the observation. You become the subject of your observation, and you observe from the point of view of your subject. This is referred to as projective identification.

Projective identification can be purely fantasy:

• What’s it like to be a potato about to become French fries?
• How does it feel like to be a gum stuck in a shoe?
• Imagine what it’s like to be an ink cartridge.

Or it can be empathetic:

• Seeing the situation through a laborer’s eyes
• Getting inside the skin of an AIDS victim
• Being in the shoes of a chronically depressed person

For your creative activity today, write 2 short texts (100-200 words) using projective identification for the following:

• Fantasy: What’s it like to be a picture frame?
• Empathetic: Being in the shoes of a petty thief.

Here’s a list to try this creative method on. Write in the voice or perspective of the following:

• a banana about to go bad
• a woman unable to conceive
• a spare tire
• a harassed telephone operator
• a Band-Aid
• an owner whose business is about to go bankrupt
• a blank diskette
• a guy about to break up with his girlfriend
• a computer keyboard
• a woman about to give an answer to a marriage proposal

Copyright © Shery Russ

first line: “The door slammed with finality.”

start a list: “The 7 Top Things that Could Happen to Bad People”

write from the point of view of a “one size fits all” shirt.

what would you cook for an enemy? describe the appetizer, main course, and dessert.