December 10, 2018 by darcyabriel

Writing Prompt

I hope the frenzy of this holiday season is still leaving some good writing time.

I’m an early morning person and often I’ll do my “stream of consciousness” writings first thing in the morning when all is quiet and everyone else is still asleep. Of course, for night people, it could be the opposite end of the day, after everyone has gone to bed.

Either way, take a break, empty your mind of holiday noise and holiday to-do lists, and free flow your way to a quiet corner with this six-word prompt with a bit of a holiday flavor to it. Just go where the words take you.

Journal Writing Page ornamentaldistraction

she was but an ornamental distraction…

December 4, 2018 by darcyabriel

6-Word Writing Prompt

I’m on a winter and holiday kick so I’m sharing prompts using words inspired by the time of year.

I like taking pictures of sunlight and mist. I like playing with aperture and speed, and a variety of different settings on my cameras. I also shoot in RAW as opposed to jpg format, providing more depth of color to work with in final processing. I like to work with a broad range of colors and light when taking photos, just as I like to work with a broad range of words and crafting sentences when I write. The more tools you have, the more you want to play and experiment.

I can get a bit creative with taking photos, just like when I write stories. I take a lot of liberties in both. Take Silver and the Humanotica series, or Nightingale, and spinning things on their head. I love to do that.

One of the reasons I enjoy writing the 6-word prompts is because it’s a finite set of words to invoke an image and/or emotional response. It challenges me, just as writing short blurbs for my stories challenges me to be succinct and evocative.

Moving on, here’s the latest 6-word prompt.

porcelain skin, white as bleached fear…

Have at it. 🙂

November 12, 2018 by darcyabriel

Writing Prompt To the Darker Side

129MP_starling top of pine in october 2015 I enjoy writing from prompts and creating them as “stream of consciousness” writings to work with and mold later. I do this type of writing using many different mediums as inspiration – photographs, words, tarot cards, song titles, movie titles, etc. I then, at a later date take these “sparks” that end up being about 250 words each and flesh them out into more fully-developed outlines, and eventually into fully-realized stories, either short stories or novel-length.

Sometimes these “stream of consciousness” writings bring me a fuller understanding of a story I’m already working on, perhaps giving me some character insight or world insight. Or they could evolve into fresh story ideas. I’ve developed this “stream of consciousness” writing into a ritual that I do each morning. I look at it as “warm-up” exercises to get my brain engaged in the creative writing mode for any given day. And if it’s going to be a busy day, perhaps it being the only writing I get done that day, it is something more than nothing. And as we know, we can’t edit a blank page, thus at least 250 words is something to work with later.

I’ve begun to create several of my 6-word prompts each week. I’m afraid they’re all a bit dark, but I like writing dark. Anyway, I like prompts, they spark ideas for stories, and I like designing and working with images for them. I do a lot of photography myself, so I’m starting to use less stock images, and more of my own images. But that also gives me a different eye to viewing when I’m out photographing, as I consider what images I might photograph and refine to use with these prompts.

I have enough prompts now to start thinking about creating a collection of prompts. So, I’ve started designing them with that in mind as I move forward. I thought I’d share this one. I’ll try to share one or two a week just to throw out some inspiration and something different to work with that others might enjoy as well.

journal-writing-page-ghost-child-8x10