Writing Prompts: Your Friend or Foe?

Each one of these images can be a prompt for your next short story, a writing exercise, or even a scene. Which ever way you choose to use writing prompts is up to you.

But are they helping you write, or are they distracting you from getting down to the business of writing?

Prompts can be used as a visual stimulus to get the creative juices flowing. They help if you want to exercise the writing muscles before getting to the heart of your project. Sometimes, however, they're extremely distracting.

When ideas get stuck somewhere in the 'mushy middle', or you need inspiration, looking at these can help spark new story ideas, plot development, or even character paths, however, are they deterring you from getting the work completed?

For those of us easily distracted, these may not be a friend but a foe in our writing. However, if you get stuck in one part of your story and just want a break for a while, prompts are a great way to keep writing. Explore a different topic, get the 'mushy middle' unstuck, or maybe just freewrite for a while.

Be careful with prompts if you can't get back to your original project. The idea is to start a project and finish it! Maybe not quickly, but you'll get satisfaction when you've accomplished your goal: to finish writing your story.

Complete your story or you'll end up with journals, scraps of paper, files, and notebooks full of partially finished work that goes nowhere and ultimately ends up sitting in a desk drawer.

Your story was good enough for you to devote precious time in creating it. Your story should be read by the masses, either on a blog, entered in a short story contest, or as a published novel. Even if you don't think so, finish your story, let others enjoy it.

Don't let your story die within you!

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