Greetings, fellow kids.
Today’s writing prompt is more practice on a combination of things.
While you are writing this scene, think about the reader’s questions and their desire to have them answered. Keep the scene engaging.
You also want to watch your dialogue tags and keep them to a minimum where possible.
If you can manage to do all of that and develop the characters in the scene a little more, I will buy you a cotton candy when you come visit.
Let’s take a look at the prompt now, then I will discuss further.
February 25
Create a brand new scene, with three characters, a small inciting incident for one of them, oh, and you only have 4 paragraphs (no more than 4 sentences each).
Ahhh, I see you have found my challenge.
Only 4 paragraphs, a total of no more than 16 sentences. You have a lot to do. Think you can handle it?
I am pretty sure that you can. There may be a little trick to it. Let’s see if I can help. Also, note I changed it to 4 paragraphs, from 3. I didn’t want to burden you too much.
For starters, you should outline what you need to do.
- 3 characters
- dialogue
- a new scene
- small inciting incident
- compel the reader to want to turn the page
After That You Begin
Next, you will want to mitigate things you don’t need. This will be things like superfluous descriptions, adding scene elements that aren’t needed and unnecessary chatter.
You may want to start with a quick scene description while you introduce the first character. Remember to keep things concise.
Something like “Jack lays on his couch, the new cast on his leg heavy and awkward.”
Then you can add some action while introducing the second character. “Jill walks over laughing, placing a pillow under his foot.”
And in two sentences we have two of the 3 characters, we know we are inside Jack’s house and he has a new cast on a broken leg. Not too bad. (Though I am sure you can make it better.)
The third character could come into the scene with the inciting incident. Something that might make Jack jump off the couch and spring into action.
Remember that is has to be gripping for the reader though. Right now, no one really cares about Jack and Jill. Why should they? Empathy for a broken leg? That won’t last long.
But if Jack were 6 and Jill were 9 and there were no parents around, then perhaps the reader may want to care a little more.
All that is left, then, is to give the reader a question they must have the answer to, and viola! Goal achieved.
Post what you come up with in the comments section. I truly want to see the turn out from this.
