What are the ``34 prompts'' that are useful when you are stuck writing or want to add color to your story?

Author Kelly Link, whose work was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, shares 34 pieces of advice to help you when you're stuck writing. Link calls these advice 'transformational prompts,' which allow you to distill and apply ideas that fit the story you're writing or expand your fixed horizons.

34 Transformative Prompts to Unlock Your Writing, Courtesy Kelly Link ‹ Literary Hub

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Link says, ``Before I started writing, I loved everything about books. However, turning writing into a career was hard work, and I often found it unproductive, frustrating, and unbearable to continue working.'' I feel tired and want to focus on other things,' he says. Even in such situations, I feel happy when I write ``when I have to solve a problem or create a complex situation,'' and it is important to work to stir up such interests and ideas within myself. That's what he said.

Mr. Link often holds writing workshops, where he begins his advice to new writers by asking them to list, ``What brings you the most joy in writing a story?'' Writers are the first readers of the books they write, so it's hard to face writing unless you're filled with joy, fun, surprise, and discovery.

``34 Transformative Prompts to Help You Write'' is a collection of 34 transformative writing prompts that Link uses to draw from things he enjoys while writing, things he's been surprised by, things he's found interesting, and other books he's read in the past. It provides opportunities for surprise and discovery in writing. Although these prompts aren't applicable to every writer or every story, Link has put together a list of prompts you can use when your work feels stale or mundane, or when your story feels like it's preordained and devoid of surprises. You can try applying one or a combination of the prompts. It's also important to add your own lists as you continue to write and discover new things of your own.

Mr. Link's ``34 Transformative Prompts'' are below. Prompts can be small ideas you can add to the essence of your work in progress, or big ideas if you're creating a story from scratch.

・01: The last sentence reverses or overturns the meaning of the first sentence.

・02: Try to write it within 1 hour

・03: Animals speak words

・04: All characters are talking animals

・05: All characters are speaking animals, but the characters and worldview are not mentioned in the story.

・06: A story written quickly in the form of a letter

・07: Use fairy tale words and images in stories that are not fairy tales

・08: A format in which a supporting character in the story talks about the footnotes of the work.

・09: Look for words that call attention to themselves, such as rose thorns, copse, tangle, magic spell, etc.

・10: Depicting the time axis intentionally

・11: Speak as clearly as possible

・12: Death that was not originally expected in the story

・13: Use palindromes

・14: Perform actions using a hospital in a work that does not use the hospital as a setting or important point.

・15: Stories present lessons and rules for living, but they also contain contradictory rules.

・16: A narrator who hates the reader and speaks to him with malice

・17: Some words that are important to understanding the story are deliberately not used and are taboo.

・18: Using the numinose concept, which is a rational understanding of the irrational and direct 'sacred'

・19: Continuously move the viewpoint

・20: Create an aesthetic atmosphere with depictions of sex that are not directly related to the story, parties, hedonism, sensuality, etc.

・21: Conflict the style of the story with the genre and essence of the story

・22: Write two stories in parallel and alternately

・23: Babies appear in every scene. This baby can be used for both surreal and realistic effects.

・24: Use completely coined words without annotations or explanations

・25: A supporting character or a person who does not directly appear in the story is treated as a supernatural threat, but the nature of the threat is not explained.

・26: Characters seem to be acting according to the rules of another genre rather than the rules common to the story genre.

・27: Uses figurative expressions so often that it's embarrassing

・28: Introduce the concept of fantasy in a way that inhibits metaphorical meaning as much as possible

・29: Directly refer to other writers' stories

・30: The same story is told at least three times in the story, and each time the story is told, it is condensed and reduced to one sentence at the end.The story uses the ``Matryoshka structure''.

・31: The natural world interrupts the story and allows it to grow

・32: Add pictures to the story. This picture doesn't have to be a great illustration.

・33: Repeat the same sentence throughout the story

・34: A story that refuses to be understood. ask the reader for something other than understanding