I have a confession. I’m finding the Science Fiction and Fantasy prompt list to be a bit samey. It’s making me not really interested in doing more of it. On the other hand I don’t want to give up on it so I went looking for more writing prompts with more variety so I can do a back-and-forth thing.
The other problem is that I already started counting the writing prompts in the titles. So I decided while thinking about this that I’d do a different counting/numbering/ordering system to count these. Then I thought about some options of numbering, like Roman numerals or just letters. But then I decided to be weird.
If you’ve ever read the Wee Free Men series by Terry Pratchett, or been big into older styles of knitting or English folk songs, you may have heard of the Yorkshire sheep counting methods, also known as Yan-Tan-Tethra. The shepherds would use this method to count sheep, up to twenty, then add a pebble to their pocket and start again. Then they could count the pebbles and multiply by twenty. So in the service of just being a bit odd, I’m going to number these prompts, which I’m getting from The Character Comma, like they’re little northern English sheep.
Yan- Pick a scene in your novel. Write it from the point of view of a generic, unnamed background character.
Tan- Pick a scene in your novel. Write it from a different character’s point of view.
Tethera- Find a dialogue-heavy scene of your story. Rewrite it as if it were an overly dramatic soap opera.
Methera- Find a romantic scene of your story. Rewrite it as if it were a steamy, bodice-ripping romance.
Pip- Think about your unfinished novel’s plot going forward. Fastwrite as many crazy “What if” statements as you can think of in a minute.
Azer- Write a 1-page scene with BAD dialogue. Make it the WORST dialogue in the history of the world! When you’re done, rewrite the same scene with good dialogue instead.
Sezar- Pick a setting in your novel. Make a list of sensory details your character might experience at that setting. Write at least two for each of the 5 senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell).
Akker- Think about a climactic moment in your story when your hero just barely wins. Write about what would happen if they lost instead.
Conter- Rewrite a scene in 1st person instead of 3rd, or 3rd person instead of 1st.
Dik- Write a short story that is EXACTLY 500 words. Only 200 of those words can be three letters or less. It’s hard, but this is an extremely powerful exercise in line editing and being very intentional in your writing!
Yanadik- Everything in your story is the same, except swap the gender of each character.
Tanadik- Write an interaction between two characters. Have the first sentence start with an A-word, the second sentence start with a B-word, and so on through the alphabet. Make it sound as natural as possible!
Tetheradik- Go to your bookshelf, close your eyes, and pick up the first book you touch. Open it to a random page and read the first full sentence. Write a scene that includes that sentence.
Metheradik- Your character just won the lottery. What do they do? What do they buy?
Bumfit- It is the last page of your character’s story. What would they tell the first-page version of themselves if they had a chance?
Yanabum- Write an apology letter to the character you hurt the most.
Tanabum- Write a letter from your main character to an unbiased “pen pal.” Have them talk about what’s going on, justify what they’re doing, etc.
Tetherabum- Complete this sentence for your character: “The most terrifying thing in the world is…”
Metherabum- Complete this sentence for your character: “The most important thing in the world is…”
Jigget- Complete this sentence for your character: “I was put here on earth to…”
One-Yan- What are your character’s strongest talents? What unique skill sets do they possess?
One-Tan- Why is your main character the main character? What do they add to the story that no one else can?
One-Tethera- If your character had a genie to grant them three wishes, what would they wish for?
One-Methera- What does your character fear worse than death? What do they want so badly that they would die to achieve it?
One-Pip- What is the WORST possible thing that could happen right now in your story?
One-Azer- Law and justice work differently in different places. What does your society’s justice system look like? What are common punishments for criminals? Is the system reasonably fair, or thoroughly corrupt?
One-Sezar- Does your character have a trademark colour? Invert it. How does that effect your perception of the character?
One-Akker- What does your character’s handwriting look like? Is there any significance to it?
One-Conter- Take your main character and place them into your current day job. How does the office respond? Does your character do a good job filling your place?
One-Dik- Two of your characters sneak down to the kitchen for a midnight snack. They bump into each other. Write that interaction.
One-Yanadik- Soulmate: There’s a timer tattoo on your character’s wrist that counts down to the moment she’ll meet her soulmate.
One-Tanadik- Your character finds a craigslist ad looking for company for a cross-country road trip.
One-Tetheradik- Write about the day your character met their best friend.
One-Metheradik- Your character realizes that she’s a fictional character in a novel.
One-Bumfit- What had started as a friendly game of Simon Says quickly turned into a complete and utter disaster.
One-Yanabum- The copy machine broke down in the middle of printing, which made this the third worst thing that happened this morning.
One-Tanabum- Sometimes, being under a truth spell just means not being able to lie about being fine anymore.
One-Tetherabum- For such a small town the crime rate was exceptionally high.
One-Metherabum- Some said the world would end in fire, some said in ice. Some people even said with zombies. But no one could have known that this was how it all ended.
One-Jigget- Destiny wasn’t going to run their lives. They would make their own decisions, no matter how stupid those would be.
Notes:
-I did a little picking and choosing on the prompts because I mostly wasn’t interested in their story starter, dialogue, or scenario prompt lists but I wanted to get to forty (aka one-jigget). So I took all of two of the lists and then grabbed the ones I could fit.
-I also messed (just a little bit!) with the sheep-counting. First off, I wanted to make sure it had Jigget for Terry Pratchett related reasons but also wanted to have the tethera methera. They don’t appear on the same lists in the Wikipedia article. I also edited the dik-part. Because in the list I used, there was a “c” in that word but I didn’t want to keep that here for other reasons, also didn’t want to use a completely different list of numbering, and did see one list where it was spelled just with three letters. So I stole that bit. If you’re here for fun counting, yay! If you’re here for accuracy…go to a better source.
