This week’s creative prompts focus on the physical structures and materials that surround, protect, and inspire us. The things that we build and the things that we tear down. Take a few minutes, or more, to appreciate constructed spaces, from blanket forts to skyscrapers, from shacks to stadiums.
- Describe the construction of a house from the ground up. It could be actual or invented house made of actual or invented materials.
- Consider the staircase, often a cinematic site of drama and danger. Try to utilize a particular kind of stair design or build in prose or poetry.
- Architecture is defined (by Wikipedia) as “both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing.” If you usually focus more on one of these (process or product), challenge yourself to write something focused entirely on the other.
- Take inspiration from a bridge and perhaps also how bridges must bend.
- Incorporate the texture, color, and weight of bricks into a piece of writing.
- Pick a piece or poem you’d like to revise. Make a list of potential changes but frame them in the language of a house remodel ie. put in new kitchen counters (work on chapter headings), pull out the carpet (revisit the first section).
- Set a scene inside this turf church.
- Use construction vocabulary, either within context or not.
- Take a saw (well, scissors maybe) to a piece of writing and cut it to pieces. Rearrange the pieces to see what happens.
- Include both doors and windows into the same short piece of prose or verse. Weird inspirations here and here.
- Write several short scenes in which characters come and go from a single room. The only thing that stays the same throughout the story is the room itself. What kind of room is it? What does it look like, and how is it the heart of the story?
Did you miss earlier prompts lists? Here they are. Try doing one weekly, even if you’re working on a bigger project. Completing a quick, creative prompt can help your brain engage in a different way and save you from the slog of a your main artistic occupation, whether you’re writing a book, making a movie, building an art installation, or recording an album.
Like what you’ve written (or what you’ve built)? Put your build away for a week, then revisit, and revise, revise, revise. Remember: you can’t edit a blank page. When it’s ready to go, submit. If you have feedback, or ideas for prompts, please get in touch.
[Art by Submittable team member Ben Bloch: “House on a Hill,” Acrylic on canvas, 41″ x 31″]