Howdy, friends! I’ve been thinking a lot about writing prompts. They’re good exercise for your writing muscles, and they’re good tools to have in the shed. They can be vague or specific. If you were writing a novel and you got stuck, you can prompt your way through. These are fun to come up with, so I think I’ll do a bunch of them for a while until I get bored with the whole thing and go back to collecting wood ticks. If you write from any of these prompts, I’d be delighted to see what you came up with! Email or post in comments.

Prompt: Ceeda Red Hornets (fictioinal) deliver in their sting a hallucinogenic venom. In humans, the venom produces a state of euphoria and mild visual effects. More stings mean more euphoria and stronger hallucination. In the forest, Clyde finds himself stung by a Ceeda Red Hornet. Then another. Then another. He has stumbled upon a nest, but was it by accident or was it a trap? Someone is speaking to him as he is stung to the brink of death. What do they say? What does Clyde see?

So that one is pretty specific. Here’s a vague one that could fit in any old story you’re working on:

Prompt: On the ground not far away, Character happens to notice a thing. Character picks it up. Character used to have one just like this.

You can use things like that to round out your character or weasel your way out of a corner you’ve found yourself in. Good times. Now here’s some more, and then you can be on your way.

Prompt: That’s not your regular mailman… Why is he hand-delivering a box to your door? What’s that crazy look in his eye? What does he say before climbing into the mail truck and screeching away? What’s in that box?

Prompt: When Monica was young, she found something in the woods. She still has it, hidden away. She hasn’t visited it in a while, but today she is going to see it.

Prompt: A superhero – or villain, I guess – with heat vision is having a great morning… at first. One mishap leads to another, and the morning routine spirals out of control.

Prompt: Cousin Ricky is back in town, crazy as ever. He seems intent on helping you get a boat loan, but first he claims to know where there’s “buried treasure.” He’s leading you there now.