Let me publically say thanks to Stephanie Foster, with the Red Mountain library, did a tremendous amount of working setting up tables, placing the event on the Mesa event calendars, and buying lunch for everyone. The presenters: Brock Booher on plotting, Connie Flynn on characterization, Angela Morrison on world building, and the team of Laura L. Walker and Marilee Jackson on putting some romance into your stories. The representatives from NaNoWriMO, Shari Mickle and Matt Mesnard, who explained the NaNoWriMo contest and offered suggestions on finding time to write. Also my wife LuAnn who ran the bookstore and my daughter Lucy who helped run the registration desk.
During my presentation, Jumpstart Your Creative Juices, I had several requests to post the writing prompts I mentioned. I have decided to post them here for everyone to see. I will do one each weekday until all of them have been posted. And here is the first one.
PROMPT – TITLES
I generated the idea for my first novel from a Title prompt. As a beginning author I worried about running out of ideas for stories—silly me. Just to see how hard it would be to generate more story ideas I scanned through a list of movie titles. Whenever one caught my attention I wrote it down. Once I reached a goodly number of interesting titles I took a closer look at the list. Death Race 2000 was on the list and started me thinking about what a race would be like for dead people and from that I wrote Hellathon.
My example is based on movie titles, but any sort of title works. Movies, novels, short-stories, songs, and even band names can all be used to generate ideas. The trick is to let your mind wonder what kind of story you could write with that title. Look at it figuratively. Look at it literally. Look at it with whimsical eyes. Use it as a starting point for your creativity.
Here are the ten titles. I hope you have fun with it.
1. They Might Be Giants
2. The Long Goodbye
3. They Were Expendable
4. Thunder Road
5. Angels Die Hard
6. You Only Live Twice
7. Keeper of the Flame
8. A Song Is Born
9. A New Life
10. Walk, Don’t Run
Based on the list above, I generated the following elevator pitches.
Based on “They Might Be Giants” is a pitch for a children’s book: Jared and Sally have been asked by their father to take a pair of shoes to a customer in the next town. They are the most enormous shoes either of them have ever scene. Could it be that the people living there are giants? And if so, what will happen to the children when they arrive?
Based on “The Long Goodbye” is a pitch for romantic screenplay: Rob and Sarah have one last weekend together before he ships off to war.