Writing Prompts for NaNoWriMo

 

It’s mid-October, which means two things: first, spooky season is well and truly upon us, with its crisp air and cardboard tombstones and sticky-sweet caramel apples and I could not be more delighted. And second, we are two weeks away from National Novel Writing Month, or, to those of us who are a little bit masochistic, NaNoWriMo.

Some of you probably have your novel all plotted out and ready to go. You are clearly serial killers.

The rest of us might need some help. Even if we know mostly kind of what we plan to write, it helps to have a little nudge.

I present for the approval of the midnight society, a list of prompts to help you get started or to help dig the wheel out of the mud when you get stuck.

Happy Spooky Season and Happy Writing.

 

1.      Your character realizes they have inadvertently become a stalker.

2.      Screw you.

3.      A translator lies about what she’s just been told.

4.      Write an anonymous letter to a stranger, going into intimate detail about the things you’ve learned about Life.

5.      Write about a lie you told and got away with.

6.      There’s a high school party happening. Write the scene from these three points of view: the drunk teen in the corner whose lost her friends, the cop called to the scene, and the nosy neighbor who called the police.

7.      Write about the oldest thing you own. Make up a backstory completely different from the truth.

8.      A woman you don’t know shows up at your house in the middle of the night to tell you something very important. What does she say?

9.      The chapter begins, “Never underestimate the lives of old men sitting on park benches.”

10.  “I was not sorry.”

11.  What is the sound of silence? Write about a time you heard it.

12.  You, a grown-ass adult, are afraid of the dark. Write about what lives in it.

13.  Your main character lives in Gary, Indiana, in 1918 and his house is on fire.

14.  How is tomato soup made?

15.  Write about irresistible temptation.

16.  You are a serial killer. What TV shows are in your Netflix to-watch list?

17.  Write a scene in which a pair of dirty socks is very important.

18.  She was a fat woman whose eating habits were dainty. There was a check for $14,000 in her purse, not made out to her, but, you know, she was good at figuring these things out. Start with her hair.

19.  Your character is 42 years old and has an imaginary friend.

20.  You are Death and starting to write your memoirs. How does it start?