Prompts and Activities

How to Create a Character: An Interview Game for Writers

One of the best ways to get to know your character is to slip into his or her shoes. In this mini-lesson, Naomi will help us imagine life as the characters we’re writing about. Noticing how our characters act and feel in specific situations helps writers see beyond...

How to Start a Poem: A Visualization Game for Writers

So, you’ve got some ideas now, but how do you actually start your poem? Every poem needs a “doorway” to get it going. Sometimes the doorway into a poem is a physical object. Other times, it’s a descriptive phrase. And sometimes—the best times—the way in takes us by...

How to Start a Story: A Visualization Game for Writers

So, you’ve got some ideas now, but how do you actually start your story? In this mini-lesson, Naomi guides us through visualizing the start of our stories. One of the best ways to start our characters into a scene is to put them in motion. What physical action might...

How to Choose a Just-Right Idea: A Question Game for Writers

How do you get the big ideas out of your head and onto the page? In this mini-lesson we’ll play a game to shake out the ideas in your head so you can put them on paper. One of the ways we choose a meaningful idea is to write about a problem that matters to us. We...

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