How To Use Writing Prompts to Brainstorm New Writing Ideas

Transcripts
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The transcript features a discussion led by Allison, who is an author and yoga instructor, on using writing prompts to stimulate creativity and brainstorm new story ideas. Here’s a summary of the key points:

  1. Introduction to Writing Prompts: Allison emphasizes the importance of writing prompts, which she credits for helping her out of a creative slump. They form the basis of her “Creative Warrior Writing Path.”

  2. Steps for Brainstorming: She outlines a five-step process to effectively use writing prompts:

    • Step 1: Select a prompt, which can be a sentence, theme, or even a few keywords.
    • Step 2: Move around to get the blood flowing. Activities like yoga or simple physical movements can invigorate the mind.
    • Step 3: Set a timer—typically for 25 minutes—and start writing down anything that comes to mind related to the prompt without worrying about coherence.
    • Step 4: Take breaks to let ideas settle and potentially expand. Engage in mindless tasks like walking or cleaning to keep the mind open.
    • Step 5: After the break, return to your writing, review your notes, and expand on the most intriguing ideas.

  3. Encouragement to Write Freely: Allison stresses the importance of writing without self-editing during the brainstorming phase. The goal is to allow ideas to flow naturally and evolve from small concepts into more developed thoughts.

  4. Resources: She suggests utilizing various playlists and resources for writing prompts available in the video description, encouraging viewers to practice their creativity over the next 30 days.

  5. Personal Anecdote: Allison shares a personal example of how a seemingly random prompt, related to “Alice in Wonderland,” led to a creative story, illustrating the effectiveness of the brainstorming technique.

Overall, the transcript is a motivational guide for aspiring writers to break free from creative barriers using structured brainstorming techniques centered around writing prompts.

Hey guys! Allison here, author, yoga instructor, and creative warrior. Today we’re going to talk about writing prompts—more specifically, how you can use writing prompts to help you brainstorm a new idea for a story or book.

I love writing prompts! They are a tool that helped me get out of a pretty depressing writing swamp. I love them so much; they’re actually at the foundation of the Creative Warrior writing path, and I know that a lot of you struggle to come up with ideas or take your ideas past that initial “what-if” phase. So let’s take a look at how you can use writing prompts to brainstorm an idea in five easy steps.

This is actually the exact process that I use to come up with new ideas, and a ton of the stories in my two collections of flash fiction on Amazon were created using this process.

Step One: You need to grab the prompt. A writing prompt can be just about anything—one to two sentences that you then continue, a theme, an idea, three words that you need to include in a story, a genre, a location, and an object. The possibilities for prompts are endless!

You can find them just about anywhere, or to take some of the pressure off yourself, you can grab a video from the playlist right here on this channel of writing sprints and prompts and use it to help you through the rest of these steps. Or you can grab 30 days of writing prompts from the description below, and you’ll have writing prompts ready to go for the next 30 days. The links to the playlist and that download will be in the description.

Step Two: Move around a little. Wait! Don’t start writing quite yet. Now that you have your prompt in your head and you’re mulling it over, your brain is working through it—get your brain and body moving! Get the blood flowing and your energy up.

I personally recommend yoga; it is great for nourishing your creativity, opening your mind, and building mindfulness—all great things when you’re about to sit down and write. You can find some quick flows right here on this channel in my “Yoga for Creativity” playlist (link in the description below), or you can just do some simple movements: maybe go out for a walk, jog in place a little, or do some jumping jacks. But I do suggest trying to do something that gets your heart above your head!

Yes, this means you have to get a little upside down—just a little, though; you don’t have to do a headstand or anything. But this is called an inversion, and it increases blood flow to the brain. A really simple way to do this is what’s called a forward fold. All you have to do is stand and fold forward, just like the name suggests.

But this is a type of inversion because it gets your heart above your head and helps push blood flow to the brain, getting your brain invigorated and ready to write.

Step Three: Set a timer. You’re using one of my sprint and prompt videos that I mentioned earlier. Those have a built-in timer right in the video that will help you write for 25 minutes. By selecting one of those videos, you get a prompt and a timed writing sprint all in one video!

So, you’re going to set your timer, and then you’re going to grab a pen and paper. Use those notebooks that you have lying around that you’re afraid to use because they’re really nice. Use them! You can use an iPad or a tablet if it has a pen or the ability to write by hand, and you can use a computer if you must. But I highly recommend doing this portion of your brainstorming by hand.

Once you’ve set that timer and you’ve got your pen and paper, you’re just gonna start writing.

So this stuff kind of has a bunch of steps built-in: set your timer, grab a pen and paper, and start brainstorming. To start brainstorming, you’re just going to write down anything that the prompt makes you think of—literally anything! Words, a piece of dialogue, a location, an idea, a theme—you get the idea!

Whatever the prompt makes you think of, write it down. It does not have to be complete or even coherent sentences. I mean, you might want to be able to understand later what you were trying to say, but we’ll leave that between you and your thoughts.

Maybe your line of dialogue leads to a conversation; keep that going! See where that leads. Maybe you start a character outline. Maybe the prompt makes you think of a type of person, and you start writing down what that person might look like or think about or where they might work.

Just get everything in your brain out onto the paper. Don’t worry about whether it’s a good idea at this point or whether any of the things you’re writing down are good. Just keep writing! Try not to pause too long during the 25 minutes; keep your hand moving.

You can see here some of the brainstorming I did when I got the prompt “mystery space raven.” I was given those three words, and I just started writing down anything I could think of related to those words. I wrote some strange and kind of funny things that popped into my head immediately when I heard the words. One of those things was the line from Alice in Wonderland, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

As you can see, it did go a little wild because I eventually got from Alice in Wonderland to a kid living on a spaceship reading Alice in Wonderland.

Wait! I’m not going to tell you anymore. If you want to read this story, check it out! You can download it below and check out the entire story that came about using this brainstorming technique.

So, next step—I think it’s step four, maybe? That step had a lot of built-in sub-steps! Once your timer is up, take a break. Walk away! Yes! Leave your writing behind, walk away, and go do something else. Do something unrelated to your piece and hopefully a little mindless: do the dishes, start tidying up, go for a walk, or do the laundry. If you can avoid watching TV or being on your phone or even reading, I would suggest doing so.

That kind of just leaves… cleaning, I guess! Don’t do anything that’s going to interfere with the ideas that you’ve already had. Do something that’s going to leave room for those ideas to bop around in your head and maybe even expand.

Once you’re done taking your break, come back to your piece, set another timer, and keep writing! If you were using one of my videos, you can just press play again on the same video and the same prompt that you were already using.

Look at your notes and start grabbing some of the most intriguing thoughts and ideas from those notes and try to expand on them. Take them a little bit further. Remember, you’re still brainstorming, so don’t worry too much about whether these ideas are good or if you can take them farther. You’re just trying to give some of the ideas you already had some legs.

You’re trying to take them from little bitty newborn babies into bigger babies. I don’t know a lot about babies. You’re trying to take them from newborn infants to infants—they’re not walking yet, but they have legs; they wiggle and move around and stuff. I don’t know where this metaphor is going, but maybe you get the idea! If you do, you’re my kind of people!

If you start to take an idea somewhere and it doesn’t work, that’s okay! Pick another idea and see what happens.

If this process sounds like something you can do (and trust me, it is something you can do) and you’re ready to try it out, grab a sprint plus prompt from the end of this video, push play, and get writing!

Now that you have these tips and this technique, go fight for your creativity!

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