Associating Prompt Themes with Writing Concepts
We are now officially in month five of our 10-month “writing marathon” training program for nonfiction writers. If you are joining us for the first time, welcome! Catch up at your own speed. In January, we focused on pop culture, February was the month of Black History Month, March saw us studying prayer, and April was a stroll into social media experiments. For the remainder of the training program, we will now associate monthly writing prompt themes with writing concepts. The theme for May is mud, which correlates with the concept of creative brainstorming.
Mud and Kids, Week #1
Mud means a lot of different things. I should know. I did a ton of research on this month’s topic and learned about a huge network of topics and ideas associated with mud. In week #1 of this month’s theme, mud, let’s start off talking about mud and kids. Your job is to invent five ways of describing a dwelling.
Creative Idea Gal’s Thoughts
May 1st is the loveliest of days. It is the first of the month which means new beginnings on many levels. It is also the birth month of my oldest daughter. In three short weeks, she’ll be turning seven. She’s a big girl now, enchanted by all the teenybopper Disney shows and fiendishly imaginative. Her favorite types of inventions have to do with names. She loves to give interesting and unique names to things.
The author’s daughter pictured with one of her many cute inventions.
One day, she came home from school, so happy to tell me about the “muddy palace.” I learned that the muddy palace was the name she gave to a special mound of dirt that was wet. She and her friends pretended it was a royal dwelling when in fact, it was a simple nature game that they were playing. That was enough for me. I knew right then that I had to write about this muddy palace in a creative way.
What is Creative Brainstorming?
Well, the definitions I found for creative brainstorming dealt with group activities and a link to mind mapping, neither of which are my intention. I prefer to define the term myself. I define creative brainstorming as “conducting open-minded research on a concept and looking for related concepts.” I began my research on mud in Wikipedia by typing in keywords of mud, muddy, and mudd. Every search yielded new answers and fascinating ideas. My goal this month is to get you to creatively brainstorm a concept and come up with related terms. Hopefully, this month’s prompts based on the deceptively intriguing mud theme will do just that.
(Hint for today’s prompt: Why would today’s writing prompt ask you to describe a dwelling? Reread Creative Idea Gal’s thoughts. This is one way to associate concepts.)
Helpful Resources
“Structured brainstorming produces numerous creative ideas about any given “central question”. Done right, it taps the human brain’s capacity for lateral thinking and free association.” – Skymark website.
“Rules For Brainstorming. Weird, wild, wacky and off the wall, ideas are welcome. Negativity is not.” – Steve McNamara, for AdCracker.com
Writing Prompt 050
Prompt: Invent five ways of describing a dwelling.
- Step 1: Choose a dwelling of your choice. Any will do. Make sure you know the proper name of the dwelling. If you don’t know the name of the dwelling, invent one, but be prepared to explain why you invented its name.
- Step 2: Think about how to describe your dwelling. Provide clear descriptions of the dwelling. Use adjectives.
- Step 3: One easy way to help you describe your dwelling differently is by slanting your writing to your audience. Who is your audience? What kind of writing style suits your audience?
Please be sure to leave comments about this writing prompt. We want to hear from you!
About the Author
Amanda M. Socci, J.D., is a freelance writer with 14 years of experience writing professionally. Socci currently cuts her blogging chops on her personal portfolio blog, the Creative Idea Gal blog, and on an online news site, Mount Vernon Patch. Inspired by Nina Amir’s Write Nonfiction in November writing challenge, she created a unique 10-month training program for Writenonfictionnow.com and Writenonfictioninnovember.com blog visitors.
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[…] I talked about how my daughter invented the concept of muddy palace and how it surprisingly led to a writing prompt about dwellings? Something similar happened with today’s topic – – mudd volleyball – – which […]