The Writer's Idea Book 10th Anniversary Edition: How to Develop Great Ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Screenplays

PROMPT: Write about a place you haven’t seen for many years, preferably not since you were a child. Then, if possible, visit that place. How close does your description from memory match the reality? You may be surprised how your memory has changed it. Writer Wright Morris wrote of a favorite childhood place he remembered well, a cool, dark spot under the porch of his boyhood home in Nebraska. He remembered hiding in this spot, and even in his middle age still could see the flat sweep of land fanning out in front of the house. When he returned to the house for a visit, his family long since moved away, he was shocked to find the space beneath the porch far too small to accommodate even a child. He had made it up. Over time, his imagination had created a place that didn’t exist.

PROMPT: If you had fun with the previous prompt, put some people in that fictional hometown. Write some character sketches of these people. If you catch a spark, begin a story. You may want to collect the stories into a single work. A famous example of this type of book is Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. A more recent example is Laura Hendrie’s Stygo.

PROMPT: Write a scene in which a character returns home after an extended absence. Tour the character through the streets. What has changed and what has stayed the same? If you want, heighten the tension by creating a disparity between the descriptive details as seen by the character and the character’s reaction to them. The character, for example, could view sad, shabby storefronts as quaint and cozy or look-alike suburban streets as unique and distinctive.

PROMPT: Characterize a place by focusing on its predominant industry or business. Try to use the industry to suggest the nature of the place. For example, I live in Cincinnati, where one of the major businesses is Procter and Gamble, maker of soap, detergent, and toothpaste, an interesting fit in a city that prides itself on cleanliness—physical and moral. For an example of how to do this in fiction, in his novel The Nephew, James Purdy places a ketchup factory in his small town. The industry helps characterize the town as a bland place—the factory isn’t, after all, churning out spicy mustard. The blandness and conformity of the town oppress its citizens, making them emotionally ill, just as the pervasive odor of brewing tomatoes from the ketchup factory makes them physically ill.

PROMPT: Sometimes it’s easier to write about a place where you no longer live. If you grew up in one place and now live in another, write from memory about the place where you grew up. Don’t look at old pictures or use an atlas. Rely solely on what you remember. Feel free to exaggerate.

PROMPT: If you need more distance, move your town to a different state in a different part of the country, but be true to the smaller details. Use it as a setting for fictional events. How easily does it move? What changes—such as accents or weather—need to be made to fit the new part of the country? Or, move a troubled story to a new place, one based on a place where you’ve lived, one you know well.

return to them and look for ways to fuse them into a piece about how you are both like and unlike the stereotype of people in your place.

PROMPT: Write about how you are an ideal representative of the place where you were raised—your ethnicity, ideas, values, likes, and dislikes. Then write about how you are an anomaly to your place of origin, utterly unlike the other people who live there. Put these pieces away for a few days, then r

PROMPT: Write a letter describing your neighborhood, town, city, state, or region from the point of view of someone who has just arrived. Though this persona will lack your insider’s knowledge, he will be wide-eyed at the world he’s discovering. And he will notice different things from what you notice, if you can push yourself deeply enough into the persona. To him, this place is exotic.

In fact, take time to explode the clichés.