Consider adding more specific length constraints to what you write, beyond just the sentence and paragraph — perhaps 20 words for the sentence and 150 words for the paragraph. As always, adapt the prompt as needed to make it work for your text.

Good writing.

When your character is stressed or distressed, where do they go for solace? Self-soothing is a skill we learn in childhood that remains with us in various adult or infantile forms throughout our lives. In the early pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce depicts Stephen Dedalus's homesickness at boarding school with exquisite vividness. The boys are rough and strange and everything seems cold and damp, reminding the reader of the feeling that comes after wetting the bed — "at first it is warm, then it gets cold" — that Joyce described on page one. Stephen feels so homesick, he actually looks ill, and the other boys can see it.  "—What’s up? Have you a pain or what’s up with you?" a boy named Fleming asks him.

—I don’t know, Stephen said.

—Sick in your breadbasket, Fleming said, because your face looks white. It will go away.

—O yes, Stephen said.

But he was not sick there. He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. Fleming was very decent to ask him. He wanted to cry. He leaned his elbows on the table and shut and opened the flaps of his ears. Then he heard the noise of the refectory every time he opened the flaps of his ears. It made a roar like a train at night. And when he closed the flaps the roar was shut off like a train going into a tunnel. That night at Dalkey the train had roared like that and then, when it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped. He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and then stopping; roaring again, stopping. It was nice to hear it roar and stop and then roar out of the tunnel again and then stop.

Recreating the effect of a train's roar by closing and opening his ear flaps, Stephen distracts himself from his anguish and returns to a memory that is nice — and "nice" in Portrait is not the empty pleasantness it might be in another text. It's there from the start, associated with all things good: the "nicens little boy named baby tuckoo," his mother's smell that is nicer than his father's, his mother herself — "Nice mother!"

PROMPT

For this prompt, show a character engaging in an act of self-soothing. It could be healthy or unhealthy, successful or not. Consider, too, whether you will omit or mention the event or situation that necessitated this self-soothing.

Good writing.

PROMPT: Depict a character lying. It could be a minor fib or something huge, an outright fabrication or the fudging of some incriminating detail in an otherwise true story, or perhaps the withholding of a crucial piece of information. Their lie could be an intentional deceit or the artifact of a faulty memory. Does the lied-to person already know the truth, or will they find out later, or never know? What about the reader? What about the liar — do they have insight? Play around with this. Misinformation can be dangerous, but it can also be funny.

Or perhaps you want to make it a larger error, say sending an important (or simply private?) message to the wrong recipient. Or a terrible mistake with profound fallout, such as bombing the wrong house, operating on the wrong side of the body, drinking the poisoned tea instead of serving it to the intended victim.

Visualize the situation. What's the most dramatic moment here? Will you start with the intended action, the switcheroo itself, the moment the character realizes their error, or perhaps the aftermath?

For this prompt, tell a story that your character or narrator is compelled by that is not their own — perhaps it's a rumor, a news item, or a piece of hearsay — but that is somehow meaningfully adjacent to the main story you are telling.

The protagonist of Elias Canetti’s wild novel Auto-Da-Fé turns out to be a monster who cares far more for books than human beings. His library seems impressive initially, but it is gradually revealed to be the creation of an obsessive madman. Its description in novel’s first chapter always evokes in me a mixture of awe and dread. I, like Canetti’s Professor Kien, think of libraries as sacred places, but Kien’s is so holy it is frightening. It always makes me think about my relationship to my own books and whether my own fantasy library would be ruthlessly organized like Kien’s or if, perhaps, I’d just prefer a larger edition of my own current (and to me, delightfully) disorganized bookshelves.

His library was situated on the fourth and topmost floor of No. 24 Ehrlich Strasse. The door of the flat was secured by three highly complicated locks. He unlocked them, strode across the hall, which contained nothing except an umbrella and coat-stand, and entered his study. Carefully he set down the brief-case on an armchair. Then once and again he paced the entire length of the four lofty, spacious communicating rooms which formed his library. The entire wall-space up to the ceiling was clothed with books. Slowly he lifted his eyes towards them. Skylights had been let into the ceiling. He was proud of his roof-lighting. The windows had been walled up several years before after a determined struggle with his landlord. In this way he had gained in every room a fourth wall-space: accommodation for more books. Moreover illumination from above, which lit up all the shelves equally, seemed to him more just and more suited to his relations with his books. The temptation to watch what went on in the street – an immoral and time-wasting habit – disappeared with the side windows. Daily, before he sat down to his writing desk, he blessed both the idea and its results, since he owed to them the fulfillment of his dearest wish: the possession of a well-stocked library, in perfect order and enclosed on all sides, in which no single superfluous article of furniture, no single superfluous person could lure him from his serious thoughts.

PROMPT: Describe a space and its contents in such a way as to illuminate your character's personality. Ask yourself, too, Who's noticing all this? Is it the owner of the highly organized cabinets or the messy desk or the overflowing closet? Is it their friend or child, plumber or lover? Or the person cleaning out their apartment after their death? Whoever, whatever, where ever, make sure the place and stuff you decide to write about are meaningful to your character, freighted with emotional baggage.

Today's prompt: Send someone on a search for a missing object, whether of great importance or something rather trivial, and use it as an opportunity to describe the setting of their search.

Someone had scavenged there. Most of the shingles had been stripped from the roof, and all in all, the poles and planks that remained seemed much less than the makings of a house. The  ridgepole  had  snapped,  no  doubt  under the  weight  of  snow.  That  was  probably  the  beginning of  the  catastrophe,  which  might  then have  continued  over  weeks  or  years. I had heard of a family who had lived some distance to the north of the lake who had been snowed up in to the eaves and whose house began to fall. They upended the kitchen table to to prop the ridgepole in the middle, but the roof had pried loose from the walls at either end, admitting the wind, and the walls sagged the window frames out of square so that all the panes broke. They had only snow to stanch all these openings. They hardly dared make the fire in the stove hot enough to warm drinking water, they said, for fear that the snow,which was all that held the house up, would sodden and shift and pull it down. There were reputed to have been seventeen in that family. They were said to have survived by stacking themselves up like firewood at night under nineteen quilts and as many hooked rugs. The mother was said to have kept a stew on the stove of water and vinegar, into which she put the tongues of all their shoes, as well as the trimmings of their hair and beards and fingernails, and pine pitch and a pair of antlers and a long-handled shoehorn — and they lived on the pot liquor, poured over snow to stretch it. But that is a part of the world where people tend to boast of discomfort and hardship, having little else worthy of mention.

Prompt: Take your character to a place that has fallen into disrepair or decay and have them imagine — or recall, if they’ve been there before — its former state. Allow what they remember or envision to reveal information about the character.  

Send one or maybe two characters on a trip of any scale — an errand or an epic voyage. Keep in mind the purpose of the journey (going home? quest for holy grail? walking the dog? honeymoon? gallon of milk?) but leave it off the page for the moment, focussing instead on some banality (filling up the tank?), the passing of seemingly empty time (waiting in line at the market), a pro forma conversation (checking in at the hotel -- but using whose name and credit card?). Is this time in fact less empty than it seems?

Think of some work of art — a painting, a book, a poem, a song or album? — that reminds you of an old, deep, happy moment, something from your youth or childhood. If you can, dig up that reference and listen, read or look at it again.

Then do this same work imaginatively for a character in your narrative. Follow the thread from a present narrative moment to a work of art that your character associates with some happy/ier? time — including a vivid description of that work — and be sure to go all the way back to the moment in the past that the work evokes.

Of course, you could do this exercise with a dark or despairing moment too, but as for me, I'm presently working on trying to cheer myself up.

A Commonplace Book is a collection of thoughts, ideas, snippets of information, copied passages from other texts, and possibly also images or snatches of musical notation, all of which are gathered into one volume by an individual for future contemplation. Consider keeping a commonplace book that is specifically tied to your current writing project, and if possible do this in an analogue format such as handwriting in a notebook and / or gluing clippings into a scrapbook. Curate, add to and review the commonplace book often. It's a great way to gather ideas and keep the story fluid.

Whether you decide to make such a book or not, references and allusions can be inspiring.

Prompt: Select a short passage of text -- from your commonplace book or something you've read recently or a line that you read a zillion years ago and never forgot -- but something that compels you and seems to connect with what you're writing. Tweak it a bit and sneak the altered sample into your text. Unless it's out of copyright, the more oblique / the more you tweak, the less complicated things will be when you eventually get your manuscript published. (Beware of pop-song lyrics here, the rights to which are notoriously well defended, making them expensive to quote...)

For this prompt, play around with including a musical sound track to a scene — not the sort of music-from-a-movie-score that might have been written to illuminate a scene’s mood or action, but an actual song that is being played or sung in real time in the scene. It might have been chosen by any of your characters or be a feature of the public space they’re inhabiting, say “Happy Birthday” at a child’s (or an old woman’s?) party, “Uncle John’s Band” played by a bunch of teenagers on a record player in a smoke-filled rec room in 1970s suburbia, or the Muzak version of “Lara’s Theme” infecting the sterile cube of a high rise office building's elevator.

Including song lyrics can be complicated (and expensive) in terms of rights, so if the song is in copyright, focus on details like instrumentation, the timbre of the voice or instruments, the tempo, the static from the fuzz on the needle, speaker distortion, or possibly a paraphrase of the lyrics, rather than directly quoting them. It's not easy to describe the sound of musical instruments without resorting to clichés, so be aware that pitfall, and take your time with this one.

Once a sense of the crowd has been established, narrow your focus and zero in some particular character or incident. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this pattern a couple pages into Chapter 3, the big party scene, of The Great Gatsby:

There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the corners—and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage "twins"—who turned out to be the girls in yellow—did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn.

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

Ba. Who knows what they’re always flying for. Insects? That bee last week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms, telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of oceangoing steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows. Faugh a ballagh! Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it’s round. Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor’s weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well. And the tephilim no what’s this they call it poor papa’s father had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and that’s the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick?

PROMPT: Return to any passage you’re concerned may be sluggish and revise it to introduce (or increase) variety in syllable, sentence and paragraph length as well as syntax. Perhaps an interjection or a bit of onomotapoiea, too? Can you create some rhythms here, alternating long and short, or multiple and single syllable words, terms with Latin roots versus Greek or German?

After thinking about motifs for a little while, it’s possible to get carried away by them. So what amount of repetition and variation is going to work for your text, what’s too subtle, what’s heavy handed? Of course there’s going to be a wide range of effective possibilities. I did a quick bit of math and figured out that “blood” appears, on average, once approximately every 815 words in Macbeth, “green” appears once every 2,479 words in The Great Gatsby, and “cannibal” appears once every 6,337 words in Moby-Dick, whereas the more obvious motif of whiteness shows up about ten times that often in Moby-Dick). The word “blood” is, of course not the only way Shakespeare evokes the murder or it’s leavings — there are a few instances of “bleed,” “red,” “spot” and the like as well. Similarly, the whole green thing in Gatsby is part of a larger theme that encompasses a range of colors (the yellow car, flashes of red, the varying colors of leaves throughout the seasons…) Although these metrics are a little fuzzy, it seems safe to say that a very heavily hit motif in these three works (blood and whiteness) comes up on average every few pages (although many of the occurrences are in fact clustered together in certain scenes). A slightly more obscure motif like the cannibalism in Moby-Dick comes up much less often — in this case less than once every twenty pages — but nonetheless often enough that it is noticeable and indisputably an idea the author wants the reader to ruminate on.

So, with these thoughts in mind, take an inventory of some of your motifs and the number of instances that that occur as well as the pattern and frequency. Use your awareness to cull, augment, or vary as you think will best advance your story.

My pink bike? I really don't like the color pink. I do like red, which to me feels powerful, not girly. I'm not a fan of girly, or of female stereotypes. I wear red lipstick, not pink. When I smoked (a very long, bad time ago), I smoked Marlboros, Red, not Gold. I never had a Barbie, and I thank my mother for that. I also never bought my daughters Barbies, and I'm not sorry. I'm an unapologetic second-wave feminist, and I acknowledge that a lot of the empowerment I have sought and found from that movement has to do with wanting (and getting some of) what men have always gotten without even asking. I don't respect lace and pink and frailty much, and that's probably a fault of mine, but anyway, to bring it back around, I was flabbergasted to hear my bike described as pink.

Then I looked at it and saw that yes, the decade that had crazed the pleather of the saddle had faded my red bike to a horrifying hot pink. And I hadn't seen it. I'd been riding my kick-ass little steed around the city feeling red-empowered — for years — with absolutely no idea that I wasn't projecting anything like the energy I thought I was.

Which made me think about aging and mellowing and the fact that I actually enjoyed the Barbie movie when my daughters dragged me to it by the hair. It made me think about character arcs in storytelling and how we depict change.

A great strategy for revealing change and also creating subtle rhythms that engage and entrance readers is to set up something small, an almost unnoticeable detail, and cash in on it, maybe in a big way, later on. Something apparently unimportant can turn out to be different — pivotal — when re-encountered, whether it's the unnoticed clue that solves the case or just the red bike that turned out to be pink (in a way that illuminates a change in character, or a self-misperception).

This sort of move generates narrative energy because of the differential between the two (or more?) different times or viewpoints. It may bring with it suspense, a feeling of surprise, delight, disappointment or dawning comprehension, all of which are useful to the writer because they trigger a sense satisfaction in the reader as they witness the writer reeling in what they had cast, perhaps now with a fish, or a different colored bike, on the line.

PROMPT: Revist some previously introduced element of your narrative — could be a physical object or a place or a character — at a different time or from a different point of view, and explore the differential between the former and the latter.