An ongoing series here at Northern Word will be Writing Prompts, which are designed to help unstick you from whatever stickiness is interfering with your craft. Let's try a dam writing prompt, shall we?
Fiction: add a dam scene to your story, for godsakes. And don't go all "Fugitive" on us. Your main character is lost and detours near a dam, and meets someone unexpectedly. Or a dam is being built, and one of your secondary characters is a construction worker who gets injured. Or a dam is destroyed and the havoc sweeps your characters downstream. Somehow, a dam gets into your damn story. Four paragraphs before you stop. Keep going if you can.
Nonfiction: find a dam somewhere near what you're writing about. It probably won't help, but it'll give you something to do and by the time you're done you'll have thought of something to get you through your stickiness. If you're looking for a new topic, find your local dam, and there will be something there, trust me. Write four paragraphs.
Science Fiction/Fantasy: There is something in a nearby dam that shouldn't be, and your character just found out about it. Does he or she go there to find out more? Does what is in the dam come to him or her? Four paragraphs, soldier! What, you don't think they have dams in fantasy stories? Where do you think the damn elves get all their water?
Romance: I really don't read romance, but if I did, I suppose a dam would be a decent place for some sort of clandestine meeting with the right sort of fellow. Four paragraphs. As naughty as you like.
Poetry: Write ten lines about this picture, and then write ten more lines about what the picture would look like without the dam. Then put it all into a villanelle. Just kidding. About the villanelle.
Photo above: hydroelectric dam at St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, on the St. Croix River.
Leave a comment