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Showerthought: I switched from one big prompt to three small ones in a workshop last month and it fixed my writer's block
Last month in my Tuesday writing group in Boise, our host gave us one giant prompt about a house fire, and I sat there for 20 minutes with nothing while everyone else scribbled away. The next week she tried three tiny prompts instead, like 'describe the smell of the smoke' and 'what was in your pocket', and I filled two pages in 15 minutes. Is it just me, or does breaking a prompt into smaller pieces work way better than one big emotional setup?
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rowan_butler9314d ago
Watched my buddy Dave go through this exact thing at his Thursday group. Same setup, big prompt about a flooded basement, and he just froze up staring at the ceiling for half the session. His leader switched to small stuff the next week, like 'what did the water sound like' and 'what did you grab first', and he cranked out a whole page without stopping. Something about the little questions shuts off the part of my brain that panics when it sees a huge blank page. One big emotional prompt makes me feel like I have to write something deep and important, but asking about a smell or a pocket is just a small thing I can actually answer.
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