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Writing Prompt

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week

Come up with a list of three things that are important to your main character. Push one of those things out of alignment so that it will draw your character to the antagonist’s side.

Hard Magic, by Larry Correia, narrated by Bronson Pinchot

Take a horrible, hard-to-domesticate animal and then create a culture in which somebody has figured out how to domesticate these beasties.

A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge, narrated by Peter Larkin

Populate Excustoria’s coast with some magically, meteorically mutated life.

Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, narrated by Stefan Rudniki. It’s a fantastic example of well-constructed flora and fauna, and it’s also a good example of how to make a sequel almost completely unlike the book that came before it.

Give us a group of people on a long trip in space with a problem, which they solve. Do it in 150 words.

Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, narrated by the author

Write the point-of-view of a character whose vision is obscured, and describe how they use their other senses to attempt to determine where they are.

Terrorists in Love: The Real Stories of Islamic Radicals, by Ken Ballen, narrated by Peter Ganim

Give us a story with an old, colonial British type eating marshmallows. For extra points, set it in the Schlockiverse. (Note: no actual points will be awarded.)

Our stuff! Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson, Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal, (and lots of things narrated by Mary), and Dan Wells’ John Cleaver trilogy.

Identify a historical period that you like, and write a story in that setting. Don’t bother researching anything until you’re done.

His Majesty’s Dragon: Temeraire, Book 1, by Naomi Novik, narrated by Simon Vance

Take a city to which you have been, and set a chase scene there.

The Terror, by Dan Simmons, narrated by Simon Vance

Write what one of your characters would write if that character had a blog.

One Salt Sea, by Seanan McGuire, narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal

What if dreams became so much more vivid that when you woke up, for a full hour you didn’t know whether you were still dreaming or not?

Startide Rising, by David Brin, narrated by George Wilson

Listener Bill Housely provided this one — a lone woman who runs an orbital refueling post makes first contact when some aliens arrive in desperate need of fuel.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Note that there are lots of available recordings. We recommend something unabridged, like the version linked here.

Stick an omniscient narrator scene in between two 3rd-person limited scenes.

Have two characters carry on a dialog which is out of sync with what each of them are thinking.

Acacia, by David Anthony Durham, narrated by Dick Hill

“Jack Black stranded alone on an alien planet.” Your challenge? Make us like the main character and want him to live…

Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey, narrated by Dick Hill

Write a series of 16 numerals. This is probably Jordo’s credit card number, or at least one of them (in one of the many universes where he is still allowed to use credit cards.) Go shopping! Oh, you’ll need the expiration date! It’s April 1st, 2012.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Dummies, by Rob Wilson and Rhena Branch, narrated by Simon Slater

Take an existing folk tale and re-tell it using the Dora the Explorer formula for quests.

Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal, releases this week! We’ve put links to it over here on our brand new Book of the Week page!

Give us a monkey, a bronze pot, a baby, and pizza in completely different situations than what we heard in Mary’s outline.

Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay, narrated by Simon Vance

Spellbound: Book II of the Grimnoir Chronicles, by Larry Corriea, narrated by Bronson Pinchot

Give us a character who, after reading one Larry Correia novel, goes out and procures a grenade launcher.

Find a writing buddy, swap stories halfway through, and then compare notes.

Here, There Be Dragons, by James A. Owen, narrated by Stephen Langton

You get kidnapped and put in an asylum for the criminally sane.

Everneath, by Brodi Ashton, narrated by Amy Rubinate

Adapt the unadaptable fairy tale Mary introduced us to (the one about the little old lady who catches on fire and dies).

The Slab, by Michael R. Collings, narrated by Andy Bowyer

Do this with your own work—have your friends interview you in depth about something you’ve finished, or something you’re currently working on.

Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett, narrated by Stephen Briggs

Write a flashback, in a prologue, with a mirror scene. Yes.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley

You can only go back in time as far as your own life-span, but somebody needs to go back a hundred years. A team of 100-year-olds is assembled as time traveling heroes.

The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, narrated by Fred Berman and Phoebe Stole

Take a character of yours, and split that character into a character and a foil.

Stranger in a Strange Land (unabridged), by Robert A. Heinlein, narrated by Christopher Hurt

Your characters needs to perform a reverse-heist, putting jewels into a safe without getting caught.

The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton, narrated by Michael Cumpsty

From Earl K. Hill, our cameraman: tell a whole story from the view of the sidekick.

Partials, by Dan Wells, narrated by Julia Whelan

Regarding riding mounted beasts—make the cost to the rider so high that it’s almost never worth it. Now create circumstances under which it’s always worth it.

Sharpe’s Rifles, by Bernard Cornwell, narrated by Frederick Davidson

Have Queen Victoria’s cousin not die. How is history changed?

The Hollow City, by Dan Wells, which, as of this writing, doesn’t show up on Audible’s site. We counsel patience.

Take a hero and give him a hobby, and something alive that he loves.

Imager, the first book of the Imager Portfolio, by L.E. Modesitt Jr, narrated by William Dufris

The story of the writer and her VERY ENTHUSIASTIC alien fan who is impossible to escape.

Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, narrated by Jenny Sterlin

Go find an interesting mental illness (quick, before Dan takes all the good ones). Now write from the sufferer’s POV, but don’t tell us what’s actually wrong.

Sucks to be Me, by Kimberly Pauley, narrated by Nancy Wu

Your colonists are going to a world whose axial tilt is different from Earth’s. How are the seasons different?

Helliconia Spring by Brian Aldiss, narrated by Christopher Slade

Describe a setting. Then, without using any emotion-words, describe that same setting again three more times from a happy, sad, and angry point of view.

All Men of Genius, by Lev AC Rosen, narrated by Emily Gray

“The Hairy Housewife,” because Brandon didn’t hear Howard correctly the first time he said “harried.”

The Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant, wraps up with Blackout, and is a very satisfying example of a series that does something different with each book.

For some reason one character is put into the body of another character.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon, narrated by David Colacci

Google military three-letter-acronyms (IED and RPG are off-limits.) Swap out one of the words for a supernatural descriptor beginning with the same letter. That’s your story seed.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, by John Scalzi, narrated by Wil Wheaton

Cheerful ruffians, civilized louts, yes—but, no—and ready, set, go.

Existence, by David Brin, narrated by Kevin T. Collins, Robin Miles, and L. J. Ganser

Put your characters in a place they cannot escape and keep them there.

Shanna plugged “One Hot Summer,” but the actual title is One Long Hot Summer. It is not currently available Audible, but it’s available on Amazon at the link above. There are lots of other things on Audible for you to listen to, including four titles featuring Shanna Germain.

Find a way to kill a character. Then write it in three ways: sad, heroic, and accidental. As an alternative, take a story you’ve already written, and write a different ending so that someone dies instead of living, or lives instead of dying.

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, by Mignon Fogarty, narrated by the Grammar Girl herself

Email typos or broken links on this page to whitingiz@hotmail.com.