Writing prompts

As much as I enjoy putting this blog together, I do sometimes struggle with knowing what to write about. Sometimes I’ll sit down with a clear idea in my head and the words come fairly easily, other times it’s with a hope of inspiration but a realisation that Twitter or Spotify may soon distract me.

On those days, when I’m staring at a blank page, I often find myself heading towards the various writing challenges and prompts that Twitter offers. The further I dig the more I find, but my favourites are a haiku challenge which is posted by baffled, a ten word story challenge posted by hangtenstories and an indeterminate length story challenge called #vss365. I’m not quite sure on the source of this one, but you’ll find the prompt if you use that hashtag. All of these post a fresh daily prompt and although the character restrictions on Twitter lead to short pieces of writing, it really is a great way of getting the creative juices flowing.

My friend AlisonTrollop has recently started to put some writing challenges up on her Patreon blog. The first of these was to write a story of no more than 250 words around the prompt word of aural.

I drafted a few ideas for this but in the end decided  to have a go at amended and editing something that I’d previously written, into a format that met Alison’s challenge. This was first produced for the creative writing course that I took and I have posted a version of it on here previously. It got some interesting feedback when I shared it, some said it felt as if it was the start of a love story, others felt there was an uncomfortable edge to it. Perhaps I should extend it and see which route it takes.  

Most days he’d spend the journey with his head in a book, oblivious to those around him. The girl with the broken mirror changed things.

He’d first noticed her a few weeks ago, sat on her own, three rows in front, the sound of her rustling through her makeup bag drawing his attention. Intrigued by the way she then stared intently into a cracked, broken mirror she held in one hand, whilst with the other delicately applying makeup. The mirror so damaged the shards might fall out if tipped the wrong way. The makeup application so precise it was clear the fragmented image didn’t bother her at all. 

The bus seldom halted before his stop, but that day it did. He knew it was going to be for her. She never looked back as she walked down the bus, never looked around as she got off. He could have looked over his shoulder and tried to catch a glimpse of her as the bus pulled away, but something stopped him.

After that, her morning ritual became part of his. He got to know where they should be on the journey when the eyeliner came out, how long there was to go when the blusher was applied. Every day it ended the same way. She’d get up and walk away, he’d never got to see her face. Never got to see the image she’d created using her broken mirror.

He still wonders what the girl with the cracked mirror looked like.