The Visitor

Weekly writing prompt #11, and my response to last week's prompt

This year I have a personal goal to do more writing “play,” so I’m creating weekly prompts for myself and sharing online, in case you’d like to join me too. I hope you will! Teachers, you’re welcome to use these with your students. I’ll be posting these every Wednesday on my website, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack.¹

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This week’s prompt involves a field trip! Where you go on your field trip is up to you. I recommend a place new to you, but it doesn’t have to be. The idea is to experience a location with fresh eyes and write about it. You could write this from your own perspective, or you could imagine a fictional character in this space. You don’t have to go somewhere far or expensive—you could do this writing exercise at a local park, your library, waiting for a dentist appointment, at a grocery store . . . anywhere, really. Or maybe you happen to be traveling this week—take your writing notebook with you! Set aside ten minutes to write down your impressions as a visitor someplace new and incorporate that into a scene.

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My Response to Writing Prompt #10

I ended up doing this one not once, but three times! I thought it would be fun to create found lists for each of the main characters in my current work-in-progress. And it was! I’ve been living with these characters for quite awhile, so I found this rather easy and a fun warm-up before working on their story. Doing this kind of exercise can be a good way to test out how well you know your own characters. If you draw a blank or can’t come up with something that goes beyond a more superficial list that might apply to any variety of people, then that might be a signal to dig deeper with your character(s) and spend a bit more time getting to know them.

I would love to know about your experience with this exercise. As a refresher, here is the prompt from last week:

And here is what I wrote: