PROMPT ELEVEN – EXTREME HOLIDAY
This prompt has some limitations because it deals with holidays. This is great if you plan to write for the Hallmark Channel and not so much if you deal mainly with science-fiction or horror.
The idea is to take a holiday and push the traditions and celebrations surrounding it to the extreme. I find it best to focus your twisted imagination on only one aspect of the holiday, like the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree.
Once you have the holiday-gone-wild concept worked out think of how it got that way and how it challenges your hero. Does your hero embrace the insanity and push the limits even farther or is he/she just trying to survive the event?
Here are five holiday traditions.
Turkey bowl
The perfect Christmas tree
New Year resolutions
Birthday cake
Anniversary dinner
Based on the annual block-wide football game I generated this elevator pitch.
The Family Bowl – One day each year determines a family’s fate until the next Thanksgiving. Life is great if your family wins the annual Family Bowl. For the rest of the year the people on your block are at your beck and call. But Josh was twelve and had only Mom and his sister, Stacy, to help him put together a grid-iron monster capable of beating the other families on the block. He needed a “Hail Mary” plan or his family would be on the bottom of the loser’s column . . . again.
This prompt has some limitations because it deals with holidays. This is great if you plan to write for the Hallmark Channel and not so much if you deal mainly with science-fiction or horror.
The idea is to take a holiday and push the traditions and celebrations surrounding it to the extreme. I find it best to focus your twisted imagination on only one aspect of the holiday, like the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree.
Once you have the holiday-gone-wild concept worked out think of how it got that way and how it challenges your hero. Does your hero embrace the insanity and push the limits even farther or is he/she just trying to survive the event?
Here are five holiday traditions.
Turkey bowl
The perfect Christmas tree
New Year resolutions
Birthday cake
Anniversary dinner
Based on the annual block-wide football game I generated this elevator pitch.
The Family Bowl – One day each year determines a family’s fate until the next Thanksgiving. Life is great if your family wins the annual Family Bowl. For the rest of the year the people on your block are at your beck and call. But Josh was twelve and had only Mom and his sister, Stacy, to help him put together a grid-iron monster capable of beating the other families on the block. He needed a “Hail Mary” plan or his family would be on the bottom of the loser’s column . . . again.
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