100 Days of Poetry Prompts

by Eva, in category Ideas, Poetry

Here are 100 prompts for promptly-written impromptu poetry.

Use these prompts for daily practice, for warm-ups, for intellectual party games, or to pen last-minute valentines.

Commit to the whole 100 days; flex your dactyls and indulge in spondaic spontaneity.

Life is short, art is long long short.

Poetry Prompts

  1. A Shakespearean sonnet about music theory.
  2. Rotting roses, a tube stop, ecstasy.
  3. Turn a poem you love into its opposite.
  4. A triolet on toilet paper.
  5. Fake passport, dragons, sex.
  6. A dramatic monologue by a submarine captain.
  7. A sestina about a childhood holiday.
  8. Ink, blink, mink.
  9. A poem describing the last episode of your favourite TV series.
  10. Your mock-epic morning routine.
  11. A haiku about the end of the world.
  12. A rhyming couplet about couples.
  13. Love at third sight.
  14. Cold coffee, a möbius strip, a spiritual experience.
  15. A funny poem about art.
  16. Advice from your older self.
  17. “Higher and higher every day,”
  18. Write a found poem with words you can see from where you’re sitting.
  19. Write a villanelle with A-rhyme “few” and B-rhyme “press”.
  20. Write a poem around your favourite proverb. For inspiration: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243216
  21. Self-love, champagne, science.
  22. Write a macaronic poem using false cognates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate
  23. Ne plus ultra.
  24. 2 lines about your mood.
  25. Humble, tumble, fumble.
  26. Write a poem composed of punctuation marks. For inspiration: Updike’s “Love Sonnet”.
  27. An ode to giving in.
  28. Write a poem about the most unpoetic thing you can think of.
  29. Touch, much, clutch.
  30. “There is no money in poetry…”
  31. Rhyming resolutions.
  32. “There was a young woman from Crewe…”
  33. Hitch, ditch, stitch, itch.
  34. Write a poem consisting only of direct speech.
  35. Your favourite poet, cut-up: http://www.languageisavirus.com/cutupmachine.html
  36. Green and gold.
  37. Turn a blues song into a villanelle.
  38. Necklace, essence, ascribe.
  39. Ask, mask, task.
  40. 2 lines of trochaic hexametre about feeling tired.
  41. Bank, thank, drank.
  42. “Upon the Russian frontier…” – Matthew Arnold.
  43. Write an eponymous poem.
  44. Write an ode to your favourite piece of clothing.
  45. Brown paper, irises, Guinevere.
  46. Write a poem about something you’ve never seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled.
  47. A: none; B: trusted; C: brink; D: pair; E: rose; F: home; G: left.
  48. “Life and Thought have gone away…” – Tennyson.
  49. Write a modern alba. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alba_(poetry)
  50. Almond, allemande, à la mode.
  51. Include as many clichés & tropes as you can in a poem.
  52. Dress, chess, press.
  53. A ballad about a modern divorce.
  54. A poem titled, “Death in January”.
  55. Knelt, svelte, felt.
  56. “That is her book-shelf, this her bed…”
  57. Adore, shore, Theodore.
  58. Rewrite your daily horoscope in trimetre.
  59. Invent a new poetic form and give it your name.
  60. Enthusiasm, miasma, simian.
  61. Enter, interest, tern.
  62. Tryst, mist, wrist, exist.
  63. Invent a word that rhymes with “love”. There aren’t nearly enough…
  64. Hide a love poem for someone to find.
  65. Write a poem “blasoning” your lover. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blason
  66. “Roses are red, or purple, or pink…”
  67. “I never said I loved you, John…”
  68. An ode to the loveheart.
  69. A poem from one famous lover to another.
  70. Write a found poem on the road.
  71. Tangent, exigent, gigantic.
  72. A haiku about a missed rendezvous.
  73. An allegorical poem about rebirth.
  74. Foal, fool, foul, foil.
  75. “The day we made the final ascent.”
  76. Write a mnemonic poem to remember the zodiac.
  77. An acrostic for the word BLANKET.
  78. Explore the word, “stamp”.
  79. Write a poem with a crayon.
  80. Write an ekphrastic poem describing your favourite work of architecture.
  81. A prose-poem on the state of flow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
  82. A ceremonial poem to be initiated as a poet.
  83. Capture the way the light looks.
  84. Write a poem with an extended metaphor about electric sockets.
  85. Write a haiku on a pebble.
  86. Peat, meet, sleet.
  87. A poem about a political event you care nothing about. *
  88. Write a dramatic monologue from the POV of a historical monarch.
  89. 2 lines of dactylic hexameter about a countenance.
  90. A poem in the form of an itinerary, planner, or almanac page.
  91. A sonnet on your favourite cup or mug.
  92. Thief, honeymoon, gold paint.
  93. Attempt to convey the call of a bird you love.
  94. A poem about a person who has been gardening, without mentioning gardening.
  95. Might, mitre, miner, mint.
  96. Compose a new rhyme to a children’s game.
  97. A limerick involving a blouse.
  98. Describe a food you dislike in as much disgusting detail as possible.
  99. Find something poetic in the history of a coin.
  100. A rhyming riddle to guess your favourite plant.

☞  You can download these prompts in PDF format in the Coterie.

A few books that may make you a better poet:

  • A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  • The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry
  • Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

* For inspiration:

Poem with Tweezers by Orhan Veli Kanık

Not the atom bomb
Not the London Conference
Tweezers in one hand
Mirror in the other
What does she care?

Notion Template for NaNoWriMo Writers

by Eva, in category NaNoWriMo, Plotting

Here’s a simple, aesthetic Notion template for writers participating in NaNoWriMo. If you enjoy writing in Notion, you’re all set for the first of November. And if you prefer other writing software (Scrivener, perhaps?), you can use this template as a backup or tracking solution.

Click here to view this Notion template.
Then click “Duplicate” in the top right corner to transfer it to your own Notion workspace.

About This NaNoWriMo Template

  1. The daily pages are all set up for you to sit down and start writing on the first of November.
  2. The main database allows you to enter your word count, and calculates how many words you have left to write.
  3. There’s a Preptober Checklist that’s populated with all of the prompts from the Preptober Calendar, and links to lots of resources.
  4. You can also set up daily writing (or word count update) reminders that will be sent as a push notification if you have the Notion app (with notifications turned on).
  5. The Draft database includes pointers for each story stage for those using The One Page Novel drafting method.
  6. The dashboard gives you several views of your work-in-progress, including Calendar, Scene List, Storyboard, and a One Page Novel Kanban board.
    More information can be found on the How to Use page.

I hope you find this template helpful.
Good luck with your writing, for NaNoWriMo & beyond!

More NaNoWriMo Resources

  1. PREPTOBER SCHEDULE
  2. HOW TO WRITE A NOVELLA
  3. NANOWRIMO RESOURCE LIST
  4. HOW TO WRITE FAST
  5. More Novel Templates

The One Page Novel Story Structure

by Eva, in category Plotting

The One Page Novel is a storytelling framework that shows you the big picture.

As unlikely as it may sound, you really can condense and organise the plot of an entire novel on one sheet of paper.

It was this simplification that helped me finish writing a novel for the very first time, and it can help you too!

If you…

  1. Don’t know where to start.
  2. Have trouble finishing stories you begin.
  3. Are feeling discouraged by flat or unconvincing characters.
  4. Can’t find a way to tie up loose ends.

… then I think you’ll LOVE the One Page Novel!

The One Page Novel in a Nutshell

The One Page Novel…

  1. Requires just one sheet of paper,
  2. folded into 8 sections.
  3. Each section represents a story stage.
  4. Each story stage serves a specific function in the development of the character and their story.
  5. For each stage, we brainstorm 3-4 plot points that fulfil the stage requirements.
  6. The horizontal fold represents the Threshold of Adventure.
  7. Stages above the Threshold fold take place in the Ordinary World,
  8. those below, take place in the World of Adventure.
  9. The plot points above the fold are written the RIGHT WAY UP, but the ones below the fold are written UPSIDE DOWN, to remind you of the change in point of view.
  10. We plot the stages OUT of reading order.
  11. We fold the One Page Novel into a booklet to bring the stages INTO reading order. (This is a really cool technique. Be sure to watch the video below to the end, to see how it’s done!)

The Hero's Journey & the One Page Novel

There are many more nuances to the method that are covered in the full course, but those are the basics.

Read More

Zettelkasten for Writers

by Eva, in category Tools

What if you could hold a conversation with your book notes?
This was the idea that first tempted me to try the Zettelkasten Method, developed by Niklas Luhmann in the 1950s.

The basic method is deceptively simple…

Zettelkasten

The Zettelkasten Method

Here is the Zettelkasten method, in its simplest form:

  1. Assign each index card a unique number.
  2. Write a “nugget” of information on each card.
  3. Cross-reference cards using their unique numbers.

+ a few more nuances:

  1. Title each card to make it easy to see the topic at a glance.
  2. Insert a card between two numbers using alphanumerics (e.g. 1a, 1b, 1c…) or a slash followed by further numbers (e.g. 1/1, 1/2, 1/3…).
  3. Create indexes (or “registers”) that collate multiple cards under a keyword or tag.

This article describes my (physical) implementation of the method. Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten was, of course, more developed and intricate, and tended toward different aims. Please see Further Reading below for more information.

A Brief History of Note-Taking

“Early compilations involved various combinations of four crucial operations: storing, sorting, selecting, and summarizing, which I think of as the four S’s of text management. We too store, sort, select, and summarize information, but now we rely not only on human memory, manuscript, and print, as in earlier centuries, but also on computer chips, search functions, data mining, and Wikipedia, along with other electronic techniques.” – Ann Blair

The dream of organised book notes has haunted writers and readers for millennia.

In Too Much to Know, Ann Blair details the concerns of scholars facing the flood of information following the invention of the printing press, and the increased availability of books, and of paper. During this period, the art of memory was replaced by the art of excerpting, which consigned information to paper in order to forget rather than to remember it.

Read More