Marco Polo Was A Con Artist

As I was thinking about my fiction post for the day, I started looking through some of my favorite sites.  When I stopped by The Discovery Channel’s news page, I was struck by the headline of Marco Polo not really going to Asia.  Of course I had to run over and read the story and realized it was an entire page about some of the biggest myths in history.  (And yes, Marco Polo really did go to Asia).

That got me to thinking about how this could be used in a fictional sense and it just seemed obvious.  There are so many great moments that define every aspect of history, but what if they weren’t exactly true?  What if the truth behind the “facts” were even more grandiose, or on the other hand, extremely boring?

There is a school of thought that most of the legends that come from the ancient world are actually stories that are based in fact but embellished to make them sound better.  And throughout the years, especially in the days before writing and stories were past in an oral tradition, those stories grew into what we consider myths today.

Think about some of the coolest, or oddest, points in history and rewrite them.  But instead of trying to turn them into myths, create a “real” scenario behind them and see what you can come up with.  Who knows, a hundred years from now, someone might find your work and think it to be the “real” thing.

Fictional Ideas

I got my real start online by coming up with writing prompts for the rest of the world to share.  It started out as a way to get my own creative juices flowing and the next thing I knew was that I had several notebooks filled with writing ideas.  Not all of them were worth passing along or even mentioning, but some weren’t so bad.

So, I thought tonight’s post should have to do with different places to find fictional ideas.  I know that giving out the addresses of my competition is probably a really bad idea, but finding the right idea isn’t about being competitive; it’s about helping each other keep our creative edge.    Here are a few place you might look when trying to come up with an idea to write about.

1.) The Prompt Writer–Yeah, I have to put my own site in the number one spot.  I have a ton of ideas on the site and they’re all free for the taking and to use as the writer sees fit.  It’s about writing, nothing more—nothing less.

2.) Creative Writing Prompts–This site was put together by the lady that gave me my first start online, Shery Arrieta-Russ.  She’s an amazing lady and one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.

3.) Writer’s Digest–These people have created some of the best writing prompts to be found anywhere.  These are the ideas brought to you by the professionals in the field.

4.) The Write Source–This is kind of a cool little page as it’s more of a list of topics than prompts.  Also, it’s broken down into grade levels from 1st grade through 12th.  However, it can easily be turned into something that can be used for just about any type of writing.

5.) The Write Prompts–Just as the name says, this is a site filled with writing prompts.  They post one prompt a day, including visual prompts which is very cool.

Check them out and have some fun.  If nothing else, challenge yourself and see if you can’t come up with a great story.  Or better yet, see if you can’t create a few new prompts of your own.

Prevent Writer’s Block With Word Association

Over coming writer’s block can be harder at times than others, and even rummaging through other venues may not work.  That’s when working with word association can help.

Word association is one of the easiest ways of coming up with ideas that I’ve ever personally used.  In a nutshell, it goes like this.  Write down any word that comes to mind.  Doesn’t matter what, just write it down.  Now, write down 3 or 4 different ideas that come to mind from that first word.  Keep going from one idea to the next until you see an idea begin to form.

Another idea I created for myself is a little thing I call N.A.V.A.  These stand for Noun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb.  I just write down one of each, not thinking about how they go together or anything like that.  Then, I work at trying to find a way to link them to each other.  For example, my page would look like this:

N=Basketball
A=Globular
V=Crash
A=Sensationally

Now, I’d try and get each of those words to coincide with each other in a story or an article.  For instance, I could write a story about a basketball player in a car crash.  Or I can write about the sensation exploits of professional basketball players.  There are several ideas that can be obtained from just these four words.

Mind you, these are only a couple of ideas to help you get over your writer’s block.  One of the best ideas, though, is to create your own ways of overcoming this obstacle.  If you can create your own ways of beating writer’s block, there will always be something to talk about.