Howdy again, chums! Here I am again with a new set of writing prompts that were given to me in a hallucination caused by a near-blackout at jiu-jitsu tonight. But first, I want to say a little about the value of these kinds of things. Let me just get to a new paragraph and…

Okay, so many of the writing prompts I’m coming up with are silly one-off things. Write a paragraph about Cousin Ricky? Sure, but who cares? Your brain does. It’s not about Ricky. It’s about exercising your brain and conditioning it to work more efficiently in a certain area. It’s the same reason you learn algebra and trigonometry in high school. No, you probably aren’t going to use the quadratic formula much, but teaching your brain to reason mathematically IS something you’ll use beyond high school (so quit your bitchin’!). Same with writing prompts. And as much as I like reading what you come up with, you’ll find it even more useful to come up with prompts of your own that apply more directly to your own projects. But by all means, keep sending me the stuff you come up with for these!

Here are this week’s:

Prompt: Jack Handey famously wrote: “One way I think you can tell if you have a curse on you is if you open a box of toothpicks and they all fly up and stick in your face.” What are some other ways to tell if you’ve been cursed?

Prompt: Camping out with some friends at Lake Percy, you’re almost asleep when you hear a commotion outside your tent. You think it’s a bear until the ruckus stops and a raspy voice says…

Prompt: The toaster pops up and sets in motion a chain reaction that ends four blocks away. Please describe this series of events. DO IT!

Prompt: Bastion is afraid of the wind, which goes back to one experience he had as a child. But things didn’t happen exactly how he remembers… What does he think happened, and what REALLY happened?

Prompt: CARNAGE AT THE BARN DANCE!!! GO!!!

Prompt: Cousin Ricky just got back from Texas with a pick-up truck full of rattle snakes. He has a plan to make a lot of money with them, and that plan is…

Prompt: (this one’s for your novel or work in progress) If your character could walk away from everything and go anywhere they wanted, where would they go, and what would they do there?