Of Blank Pages and Story Prompts by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

You can’t fix a blank page. But what do you do when you are faced with one? I don’t know about other authors; I just know me, and I hate facing the dreaded blank page when I have no idea swimming in my head.

The blank page isn’t a problem when the ideas are flowing, I fill that page and then some lickety-split. When the ideas are not flowing, well that blank page can be daunting.

And why am I stuck on this?

Because I am faced with the dreaded blank page and no ideas this morning, why else?

Of course, there are ways to combat this. The easiest of which is free writing. The exercise where you set a timer for five minutes and then write down everything that comes into your head during that time.

The first time I did this exercise, in a high school creative writing class, I wrote that I didn’t have anything to write for the first couple of minutes, and then the words started flowing.

Not the greatest stuff, but as you can’t fix a blank page, at least I had something to work with, which is way better than staring at a blank page!

Another way to combat this problem is using story prompts, which can easily be found online. I find them all the time on Pinterest. Some of these are lists of three things to include in your story while others are single ideas, phrases, and even sentences to start off your story.

This is actually how I started the sci-fi I’m working on. A writing group I was in at the time had a prompt challenge, where the leader put up a group of prompts and we had a week to start one or more stories from those prompts. We shared what we produced at the next meeting.

I can’t remember how many prompts I used, but I remember the most important one. It’s morphed since then, I added some detail, but it became the opening line of my sci-fi until I realized that the scene in my hero’s POV, which I wrote after that scene, actually happened before the first scene I wrote, so I switched them around.

That prompt was still the start of what is looking to be a nice sci-fi series. I am working on book two while still occasionally tweaking book one, and I do have ideas percolating for book three. At this point, I have title ideas for four books, but I have a feeling I might need five books to finish the story. Mostly because I have two male heroes, and both their stories need telling.

Admittedly they are twin brothers, and the first book opens with the younger twin searching for his missing twin, which is really becoming quite a good read, if I do say so myself. It is the third book where the older twin becomes the main hero. I’m obviously not there yet.

But as the fourth book is supposed to be about the downfall of the villain they are fighting in the first three books, I’m now thinking I might have to have a fifth book to show the happily ever after of the heroes. Might. As I haven’t written that part of the story yet, I really don’t know.

I do know I need at least four books.

I’m working on it.

With Nano coming up, I might just start the third book then.

Wish me luck!

Then again, I started book one from that prompt during Nano a few years ago. And I actually wrote enough then that I started book two! As in I wrote over 90,000 words in that one month that year!

That was the best year I had yet.

This brings to mind the year Konnie actually wrote just over 50,000 words one November. Inspiration hit her and her family was mighty peeved at how much time she spent on her computer writing that month.

Konnie has never officially participated in Nano, never registered and after that one time, she has a good excuse not to.

Oh, and that book she was inspired to write. It is now the first book of her five-book sci-fi series!

I should point out that Konnie started her sci-fi years before that prompt session which started my sci-fi. A fact that all the other participants pointed out. It was high time I wrote a sci-fi too.

So anyway, now both of us have an epic sci-fi we are working on, but we also both have other stories on which we are working. What we both have always written is sweet romances. In fact, Konnie started her book as a sweet romance, it just morphed into a sci-fi.

Anyway, happy writing everyone!