-
LGBT Senior’s Weekly Writing Prompt: Building a Character in Five Minutes
Build a Character in Five Minutes
Most of you know I write fiction, and I conduct writing workshops in addition to journaling. Here’s a fun way to explore character creation.
Characters don’t arrive fully formed. They show up in fragments — a gesture, a habit, a thing they always say. Answer these five questions about a person who just appeared in your mind. Write the first thing that comes:
• What does this person do first thing in the morning?
• What are they afraid of that they’ve never told anyone?
• What do they keep in their pockets or their bag?
• What do they want more than anything right now?
• What one sentence do they say so often that people who love them could finish it for them?
-
LGBT Senior’s Weekly Writing Prompt: Happiness? Fulfillment? None of the Above?
This week’s writing prompt
Happiness is a word we use easily and define poorly. It can mean delight, relief, pleasure, laughter. Contentment feels quieter, perhaps as a sense that our life is enough and we’re pleased with it. Fulfillment might feel deeper still, as if we’re living the journey rather than being on it.
For this one-page flash writing, don’t overthink it. Write honestly. Let your pen move before your inner critic takes over. And don’t hesitate to be contrary. If none of these things seem applicable to you, say it. Maybe you think it’s nonsense. Maybe you think happiness is a marketing tool for the wellness industry. That’s perfectly okay.
However you define them, consider this: What might you want to feel them, or more of them: A change in routine? A conversation? More rest? A creative risk? Less noise? More calm in the chaos of the world around us? More connection?
-
LGBT Senior’s Weekly Journaling Prompt: A Room with a View
A Room That Stays With You
Close your eyes for a few moments and let your memory wander back through the places you’ve lived, visited, or passed through. Somewhere in that wandering, a room will surface — not necessarily the most important room among the many of your life, but one that stays. Maybe it’s a childhood bedroom, a grandparent’s kitchen, a first apartment, a hospital waiting room, or somewhere you were briefly but intensely alive.
Let yourself stand in that room again. What does it smell like? What’s the light doing? What sounds belong to it? Who is there? What are the feelings you associate with it?
Now write about it. Describe the room as you remember it. Not as it necessarily was, but as it lives in your memory. Then ask yourself: what was happening in my life when this room mattered? What did I feel safe enough to do there, or what did I wish I could escape? If that room could speak, what would it say about who you were then, and what does returning to it now tell you about who you’ve become?
-
New Feature at LGBT Senior: A Weekly Journaling Prompt – Making Up Our Minds
I’ve been conducting thematic journaling workshops for two years now. I always start them with a short writing prompt everyone can do in ten minutes or less. I’ll be putting these on LGBTSr now as well. Ready, set, write! – Mark
This week’s writing prompt
March can’t make up its mind. One day it’s a winter coat, the next day it’s a windbreaker. Two days ago it was 82 degrees, now it’s freezing.
But March isn’t the only one hedging. Many of us have something in our lives right now that can’t quite decide what it wants to be — a relationship in a holding pattern, a project that keeps almost getting started, a metamorphosis that has us half-caterpillar, half-butterfly.
Write about your own “coat or no coat” moment. What in your life is stuck between two things right now — between starting and stopping, staying and leaving, hoping and letting go? What would it feel like to finally just decide?
