The Ink Well writers are sharpening their proverbial pencils this week to tell stories based on the prompt, “talking in your sleep.” I love this prompt because it could take a writer in so many different directions. What if your character had no idea her spouse was having an affair, and it came out in the form of a confession while he was sleeping? Or if he began saying the name of his lover each night once he began to slumber? What if your character was married to a serial killer and didn’t know it, until he began to speak of it in his sleep?
What if a one character hears another character talking while sleeping, and it helps to solve a mystery?
Prompts get the imagination going. One doesn’t necessarily need a prompt to get started writing, of course. But there’s something so motivating about writing when you know that somehow the story must have that thread running through it. Or the prompt words must appear somewhere in the text.
Here’s a fun story. I recently wrote a “creative twist” story for a Minnesota publishing company’s annual anthology, called The Talking Stick. The publisher, The Jackpine Writers Bloc, accepted my creative twist story last year in The Talking Stick Volume 32, so I decided to send another entry this year for the upcoming anthology, The Talking Stick Volume 33. For the creative twist stories, you must include all of the provided words, which in this case were “haunt, long, water, dream, waste, back, push, breathe.”
Long story short, I wrote a story that just started to spring to life as I let this eight words gestate in my mind. About a month after submitting my story, I got a call from the publication to say that they loved my story and not only was it accepted but it won second place prize, which is $100. I was thrilled! And it was exciting to share the news with Write Club, my writing workshop community, as I also wrote the story using one of our group’s prompts!
Okay, this post is a bit more rambling than I imagined when I started. Let’s talk about writing communities.
In case you’re wondering about Write Club and The Ink Well, I’ll give a quick overview. These are the two writing communities I’m involved in. Write Club is a small writing group that I’ve been involved in for about six years. We write one story per month based on a writing prompt. This is how I wrote all of the stories for my short story collection, Somewhere in Minnesota.
If you’re intrigued by our online writing workshop, contact me via my website contact page. Otherwise, feel free to use our prompts for your own purposes.
The Ink Well community is a larger organization that is part of the Hive platform which is a social media and blogging site built on a blockchain, which means writers earn cryptocurrency for blogging — and that crypto can be converted to standard currencies. In this community, I am an admin. I sometimes post my short stories in the community, but not very often. I write weekly fiction writing prompts, and curate the stories that are posted based on the prompts. For example, you can see this week’s prompt, “talking in your sleep,” here.
The technicality is that you must be a member to be active in the community and see comments and so on. The good news is that anyone can join. (If you’re so inclined, there’s info on that at the bottom of each blog post. See the link in the next paragraph, for example.)
I hope you’re inspired!
Looking for Writing Resources?
I love to share tips and ideas about creative writing! Here are two treasure troves for you:
- You can find many of my tips and resources on my website, in the On Writing section.
- I also share writing tips in The Ink Well community on Hive. See the complete catalog for the full list of articles.
Have fun and keep writing.
About Jayna Locke
Jayna Locke is a Minnesota writer who has had a lifelong love of fiction. Her short stories have appeared in a range of literary journals, including Great Lakes Review, Portage Magazine, and Bright Flash Literary Review, as well as several anthologies. Her collection of short stories, Somewhere in Minnesota, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kirk House Publishers. She is reachable through her contact form at bit.ly/ContactJayna or on X at www.x.com/@jaynatweets.
Image credit: u_0f7jf8tu7s on Pixabay
About Jayna Locke
Jayna Locke is a Minnesota writer who has had a lifelong love of fiction. Her short stories have appeared in a range of literary journals, including Great Lakes Review, Portage Magazine, and Bright Flash Literary Review, as well as several anthologies.
Her collection of short stories, Somewhere in Minnesota, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kirk House Publishers, and indie bookstores. She is reachable through her contact form at bit.ly/ContactJayna or on X at www.x.com/@jaynatweets.