Making Out of Love

Write your heart out…

True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the unbroken. -Jeff Foster

If you’re a Fool & the Page listener, you may have caught this recent episode on Queen of Cups and heartbreak.

I quoted author Rebekah Manley—who requested this card for the podcast—because I love what she has to say re: patience and self-compassion for the creative soul and the creative process (and how this aligns with Queen of Cups). “Sometimes you don’t feel like building your cup at all,” says Bekah. “Some days you feel like throwing it at the door and watching it crumble…but building your own cup can make you strong.”

Bekah says that by the time you’re ready to fashion it as a whole, “Maybe a few drops of those tears will go into that cup, maybe it will just be a memory…” But it’s okay to start. “It’s okay to start to build that blueprint,” she says, even if you’re not quite out of the anger stage and not ready to build out of love.

I’ve created some new guided writing inspired by the episode to prep you for the free Word Search session on February 8th, or to enjoy any ol time you find this post waiting for you and your writing life.

Guided Writing to Let Go With Love

1. Take a deep breath before you get started. Close your eyes for one minute. Thank yourself for taking this time. Thank the frost for settling in and the sun for melting it away. Thank the space around you. Take another deep breath, and then proceed.

2. What does it look and feel like when you create out of love, for the work and for yourself? Feel free to imagine all the possibilities here. You can include how/where you’re writing or making, as well as what exists in the immediate environment to aid in that beautiful mood (tea, snacks, pets, fancy pens, etc.) Write for seven minutes.

3. If you were to meet your main character—or your research subject, weaving, painting, or pottery—on an island, how would the two of you sit together and what would the water look like? Write for eight minutes.

4. If you were to release your heartbreak/feelings of rejection into the water, what shape would it take, and how would it sail away and/or sink? How would you bid it farewell? Write for seven minutes, describing what you hold and how you let it go.

1. For three final minutes, take stock. When does the work love you back? When do you feel embraced by the writing, the art, the music, the making? Take three minutes, or as long as you like.

2. Finally, one last breath. Thank yourself again for taking this time. Thank the space around you. Thank the cold and the heat. Thank your mind and all its storytelling layers.

Want weekly writing prompts? Follow @bluestonewriters on Instagram for Monday Writing Pauses, dropped each week to invite you to pause…write…breathe.

Rebalancing So-Called Light and Dark

Happy Winter Solstice!

Those of you who’ve studied with me recently know that I’m thinking a lot on these themes of light and dark, particularly as the planet shifts to rebalance the two. Let’s engage with the notion of light and dark to bring out unexpected elements in both our characters and our worlds.

I love the solstices as a time to reflect on what we’ve been up to and how that’s going to change in the coming six months, particularly for the creative life. It gives us a chance to set intentions for our writing process and also our works-in-progress: What characters/themes/places/emotions have we neglected or felt uneasy to explore? Can the growing light in our hemisphere inspire us to engage with these hidden corners that have fallen into shadow? Can it illuminate something in our own creative life that has been wanting to come forward—the need to try out a new medium, find a writers group, or experiment with a new tool for the daily/weekly process?

In our stories, as in our lives, we’re always navigating a balance between so-called light and dark. The prompts below will guide you to create new material (or revise existing work) by using these themes as well as set some intentions for your process in this coming six months of the growing light.

Guided Writing to Illuminate Possibilities

1. Take a deep breath before you get started. Close your eyes for one minute. Thank yourself for taking this time. Thank the sun for rising, and the moon for shifting shape. Thank the space around you. Take another deep breath, and then proceed.

2. Think on a place that feels full of light—either in your work-in-progress, in your real life, or in a world you’re looking to dive into for a new story. What does it feel like to be in this place, for you or your character? Write for five minutes, allowing yourself to engage with all five senses in this light-filled space.

3. Now, consider a theme/character/place in your story—or one that’s been hanging out in your imagination lately, trying to talk to you—that you haven’t wanted to engage with because it feels too dark. Too thorny. It feels shadowy and has lived in shadow. Write for five minutes, reflecting on WHY you don’t want to have a conversation with this theme or this character (or this real person, for the memoir writers among us). Allow yourself to speak freely here.

4. Now. We’re going to combine the two previous exercises; this is pure experimentation here. It might be weird. Invite your theme/character/place into the light-filled space. You can do this by dropping the character into this space and letting them hang out there, or by allowing the theme to weave into the place through a symbol, natural element, or even a new character. This is truly speculative thinking, and this is where you turn off your adult brain that tells you you have to get something “right” and turn on the malleable child brain that is willing to break things to find out what’s inside. Write for nine minute, allowing this interplay between light and dark, and allowing things to take new shapes as they enter new spaces, to be changed by the changing light.

5. Alright. Deep breath. What is being illuminated here, for your work and your writing process? How do you want to work in the coming half-year? What elements of your process do you want to keep alive, and which do you want to let go? Allow this time of shifting light to inspire your own subtle or dramatic shifts in process. Write for six minutes, jotting down ideas for your coming six-month timeline of the creative life.

6. Finally, one last breath. Thank yourself again for taking this time. Thank the space around you. Thank the shifting light. Let the work grow with you and change as the light grows and changes.

Want weekly writing prompts? Follow @bluestonewriters on Instagram for Monday Writing Pauses, dropped each week to invite you to pause…write…breathe.

Farewells

As this summer draws to a close, students are returning to classrooms, a few sleepy leaves are beginning to fall, and my time as a regular contributor to this blog is coming to an end. It has been a WONDERFUL few months of working closely with our lovely Claire and getting to know many of you through classes and the Apprenticeship Mentoring Sale, and I hope to keep seeing you in the months ahead! Many thanks for all your kind thoughts and words as we move into this new season together.

As I write this post, I am of course preoccupied with farewells and the types of endings and beginnings our characters experience. 

Farewells are often filled with different emotions that can feel confusingly inextricable, like grief, excitement, anxiety, and hope. These goodbyes invite breaks in the narrative that can serve as useful times of change and evolution, pointing our characters in fresh directions to move the plot forward. Without goodbyes, there are no stakes in the game, and our characters could never grow into the complex people we know them to be.

Perhaps greater than what a farewell leaves behind is the opportunity toward which it propels our characters. 

Goodbyes are chances to shake off lingering attitudes or habits that no longer serve our characters and offer them a kind of rebirth into an ever-changing world. With this week’s prompts, I encourage you to think about the things your character is ready to leave behind and about the opportunities that new space affords them.

Where is a farewell leading your character?

1. First things first, consider a time you said goodbye to something in the last month. This could be big, like a relationship, or small, like a lost pen. Whatever the subject of your farewell, think about the space it left behind and how you have filled it. Have you taken more time for yourself, found a replacement, or realized you never needed it at all? Write for twelve minutes.

2. Transitioning into our characters’ lives, think back to a time your character said goodbye to something in their childhood. Perhaps they lost a favorite toy, moved houses, or had a falling out with a friend. Settle into the grief of that farewell and the gap it left open. Feel how it affects their very body and consumes their thoughts, for however long a time, and write for six minutes.

3. In the present day, how does your character remember that childhood goodbye? Do they remember it at all? Maybe the grief has faded to a dull ache, felt only on dark and silent nights, or maybe they realized that farewell was for the best, however much it hurt at the time. Perhaps they even celebrate that once grief-laden moment, privy to some new secret that turned their memory on its head. Write for seven minutes.

4. Now, I invite you to consider what your character is most afraid of losing. To what person, idea, or item does your character utterly refuse to say goodbye? Sink into the emotion, whether it be love, obsession, or something else, that connects your character to the thing they fear losing so much that they’re not sure where their identity ends and that thing begins. Now, take it away. Write for ten minutes.

5. Okay, that last one was kind of mean. Sorryyyy. As a balm, think of something your character IS ready to let go of, something that no longer serves them. Maybe they have outgrown a toxic family member, are ready to graduate from school, or need to let go of a harmful memory that haunts them at night. Catch your character in a moment of self-awareness, whether alone or with another character, and allow them to say goodbye. Write for eight minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

Propagation

I recently acquired several plant cuttings from my city’s downtown planter boxes, my pocket knife and tote bag surreptitiously in hand (don’t worry, I only took the overflow). Proudly placing my treasures in vases and settling them on a sunny window sill, I willed a few tender roots to emerge from their nodes. By now, several cuttings have grown roots over an inch long and are almost ready to be planted!

Stay with me for a moment, and imagine that my cuttings are your character of choice. They have just been removed from their home and transplanted into a new space, unsure whether they will ever feel the certainty of soil beneath their roots again.

I tend to think of inciting incidents like the slice of my knife against a stem. 

An inciting incident is the event that jars your character from their slumber, awakening them to a world of possibility, as well as a bit of discomfort. When characters are cut off from the life they’ve always known, they behave in a similar way to my cuttings, investigating their environment and deciding where and how to take root.

The total disruption involved in each instance invites both plants and characters into a new life. 

Like my cuttings, each character responds differently to being removed from its home and placed in a new setting. Some may take to their new context like a fish to water, while others may panic and self-destruct. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to use a few of my current cuttings as examples:

• Burrow’s Tail: Already growing aerial roots before I cut it and currently soaking up all the water I can give it.

• Creeping Stonecrop: Sending out sparse, thin roots a couple inches long to investigate its new surroundings.

• Brazilian Joyweed: Initially stunned, but growing stocky roots from two nodes that look thick and healthy.

• English Ivy: No roots yet, but unfurling downy leaves at its tips.

• Asiatic Jasmine: Dried up despite the water.

While there are infinite responses to change and new stimuli, this spread reveals a diverse sampling of the ways our characters might respond to a change in their own environments. For this week’s prompts, I invite you to consider the way your character responds to a sudden change (inciting incident or not) and to visualize that response through the lens of a cutting.

Creeping Stonecrop

1. For our first trick, envision your character in the moment of its “cutting.” At the time of an abrupt shift in the course of their life, how prepared are they for what lies ahead? Are they already seeking an adventure like my Burrow’s Tail? Or maybe they’re like my Brazilian Joyweed, utterly shocked and dismayed at this unexpected change in plans. Take stock of the internal resources at your character’s disposal, and write for six minutes.

2. Once cut, consider the resources given to your character to help them grow. In the case of my cuttings, those resources are sunlight and water. In the case of your characters, those resources might be affection from a mentor, an influx of cash, or the inheritance of an ancient purpose. Think about what elements of your character’s new life stand to aid them in their journey, and write for eight minutes.

3. Now, I invite you to consider how your character responds to the resources at their disposal in their new environment. Do they cautiously analyze their new life like my Creeping Stonecrop? Maybe they try to continue growing as they always have, without committing to new roots, like my English Ivy. Perhaps, like my Asiatic Jasmine, they simply cannot thrive in their new environment and decide to find something new. Write for ten minutes.

English Ivy

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

A Character's Mantra

I was inspired by an old tweet written by V.E. Schwab, a FANTASTIC fantasy writer I think everyone should read, and I’ve included a picture of it below (you can follow her here). In this tweet, she describes the process by which she creates characters by boiling down their traits into definable mantras.

What I love about this advice is that it forces us as writers to be concise. I don’t know about you, but I tend to wax long and alarmingly poetic when I fall in love with a new character. Unfortunately, that tendency can be a disservice to my character when I get caught up in their preferred bath bomb instead of their core drives. Creating a mantra for a character is a fantastic way to condense our convoluted thoughts into a phrase that is digestible and easy to revisit.

When we’re not sure what a character would do next, we can look to their mantra like a lodestone!

I recently experimented by creating mantras that centered around the characters I sketched in a previous prompt guide. As a sample, here are my tentative results:

• Rayna: There is nothing more important than freedom

• Leonah: Magic is too dangerous to exist

• Yules: People are not to be trusted

Of course, my favorite thing about Schwab’s advice regarding such mantras is her last point: “I make them break their mantra.”

This break FORCES character development, and it forces us to allow our character to evolve in a way that makes sense. They can evolve for better or for worse, but the change itself is inevitable unless we want a stagnant story (hint: we do not want a stagnant story).

This week’s prompts will be based around Schwab’s excellent advice, and I hope you take this opportunity to think about your character(s) in a new way and explore who they are at their very core.

1. I’d like to begin with a paraphrase of Schwab’s first question: What does your character fear? Perhaps they fear being alone, losing loved ones, or failing. Maybe their fear runs so deep they can’t even admit it to themselves. If you’re not sure what your character fears, consider what would make them feel ashamed; shame is often a window into our deepest fears about ourselves and others. Write for seven minutes.

2. Next is Schwab’s second question: What does your character want? Of course, the expression of your character’s deepest desires can shift over time, but their core motivation for ACTING probably stays fairly constant. Maybe they want peace for themselves and their family, to understand great mysteries in the universe, or to destroy an enemy. Whatever it may be, your character’s desires will be their primary motivating force. Write for ten minutes.

3. Schwab’s third question is: What is your character willing to do to get what they want? Perhaps they will sacrifice their reputation, betray a friend, or recant their religion. Thinking through your character’s intensity of desire and the ways that intensity is likely to be expressed will give you a good idea of how much you can take from your character before they do the unthinkable and break. Write for six minutes.

4. Now for the mantra. Taking all you’ve learned about your character from the last three prompts, list out as many potential mantras as you can in the time given. DO NOT OVERTHINK. Just write and trust yourself to find a diamond in the rough. Whether you’ve fallen completely in love with a certain mantra by the end or not, pick a working favorite to carry forward into the next prompt. Write for five minutes.

5. Lastly, I invite you to consider the ways that your character might eventually break the mantra that you have chosen. You previously explored what your character is willing to do to get what they want, so examining that space could be a good place to start. At what point will your character have gone too far, given up too much, or met their edge in such a way that they are forced to go back on their core beliefs or utterly lose themselves? Write for ten minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

A Little R&R

I have found that as a writer, it can be easy to always push our characters into new and demanding situations without providing any time for them to rest. In our pursuit of the story line, we can sometimes forget that it’s impossible to expect 100% all the time (both from ourselves and from our characters).

It’s for the plot!, you say, and you may be right, but I would like to suggest that allowing our characters space to breathe and regroup can tell us SO MUCH about their motivations and desires. What might your character think about in quiet moments, and who might they seek out?

Allowing for these places of rest can give your reader a glance into your character’s rich inner life, a life that is momentarily unprompted by external crises. 

These times of rest can look as different for each character as they do in real life! For me, rest looks like a good book and a sleeping cat curled up in my lap. For others, rest might look like a night out, a day spent crafting at home, or a literal nap. In each case, the REST comes into play when a character feels relaxed and able to be vulnerable.

It allows for a certain softening around your character’s hard edges and peels off a few layers of hardened shell.

Just for a bit, allow your character a slow, deep breath.

For these prompts, I invite you to consider what times of rest might reveal about your character and even how that knowledge might play into the more action-heavy scenes of your WIP. Enjoy!

1. First, let’s think about what rest looks like for your chosen character, old or new. Do they feel more at peace at night or in the daytime? In a building or in the great outdoors? If you’re not sure where to begin, consider what places stress your character out the most, and flip them on their heads. For example, perhaps your character feels stressed in a busy press room with all eyes on them, so you give them a quiet space of anonymity. Expand as necessary, and try to focus on the physicality of this place of rest! Write for seven minutes.

2. Now that we have our location, consider the specific people (if any) that might occupy your character’s restful space. Your character’s level of introversion/extroversion will probably come into play here, as well as the state of their closest relationships. Do they feel at rest with a family member, a friend, a partner, a mentor, or a stranger? If they are most at rest by themself, what object(s) do they seek out to feel at home? Write for eight minutes.

3. With location and people explored, consider what activities your character finds restful. Perhaps they feel at home crossing swords with a friend or swimming in their private lagoon. Maybe they would rather cook themselves a decadent meal or finish up the quilt that’s been lingering at the corners of their mind. Whatever the case may be, try to find the activities (or lack thereof) that calm your character and settle them into a place of relaxation. Write for six minutes.

4. Finally, I invite you to imagine a physical softening that takes place in your character when they feel at rest. This softening can be literal or metaphorical. Regardless, think about how relaxation might be represented in your character’s body. Do they unclench their fists or jaw, feel scales smooth into flesh, release tension between their eyes, or feel the ice in their heart melt down to pool in their stomach? Focus on the tactile images of what rest feels like for your character in whatever way makes sense for you. Write for five minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

Through Different Eyes

I’m thrilled to have just finished Dr. Suzanne Simard’s new book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (you can follow her on Instagram here)! In particular, I was struck by the distinct humanness of the forests she describes, by trees’ need for community and symbiotic relationships with those around them.

“Trees need to be near one another, to establish in receptive soil, to join together to build the ecosystem, mix with other species, relate in patterns that produce a wood-wide-web, because the forest becomes resilient from this complexity.”

This emphasis on relationships got me thinking about the ways the environment can reflect or contrast with the lives of our characters. Getting comfortable with the interconnectedness of our characters’ environment can open up completely new worlds to explore by developing our settings and deeply rooting our readers in the sensory moment. I’d love to zoom in on a few aspects of nature with you and give these usually-silent observers a chance to speak.

“It is a philosophy of treating the world’s creatures, its gifts, as of equal importance to us. This begins by recognizing that trees and plants have agency.”

How do parts of the environment interact with and influence one another?

For this week’s guided writing, I’d like us to focus on the natural environments in which our characters live, whether a literal forest or a few stubborn tufts of grass growing up between slabs of concrete. By exploring the environment’s perspective, you may gain a new understanding of a scene or character that adds complexity and depth. Happy writing!

1. To get us started, consider your current environment where you’re writing. Is it stormy or still? Humid or dry? Buzzing with insects or silent as the grave? Without worrying about any characters (unless you really want to!), look around and examine the environment in as much detail as you can muster, noticing how each sense interacts with the world around you. Now, write it out as though you were describing your surroundings to a friend. Write for six minutes.

2. Next, examine a new or pre-written scene in your WIP, and jot down a quick list of environmental factors (taking no more than two minutes). Consider the air quality, temperature, and especially any plant life near your character. When you’re finished, choose one aspect of the environment that you noticed, and use it as a thread of continuity throughout your scene, weaving it into your character’s thoughts, dialogue, and senses. It’s almost as if a particular aspect of your character’s environment has a gravitational pull and gently tugs your scene back to its center. Write for ten minutes.

3. This time, consider the same or a different scene, and write from the point of view of an environmental factor. Perhaps the dead leaves skittering by your character’s feet have something to say about the centipede crawling past, or maybe a swaying willow wishes your character would get out of their hair. Whatever the case, write from the perspective of your character’s environment and describe the scene through their eyes. Write for nine minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

Slowing Down

Last week, Michigan’s gorgeous Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore graced my eager eyes for the first time. As a gal who loooooooves rocks and trees, let me just say I was blissfully floating on another plane of existence. 

While drifting around on my personal cloud of happiness, I was struck by the enormous variety of plant life and geological formation found in a single location. I don’t know about you, but I tend to take writerly inspiration from my immediate surroundings, especially from the natural world. 

However, I too often glide right over opportunities to discover fresh nuance and meaning because I cease to see the magical in the mundane.

It can take a drastic change (like a first-time trip to Michigan) to remind me to slow down and simply look. Surprise surprise, I snapped more pictures than was good for me, and I’d like to share a few with you today. To that end, I want to try a photo-based writing exercise. (Apologies for any questionable photo quality; I’m a writer, not a photographer!)

For each picture below, I will prompt you to respond to a story I believe it tells. 

Feel free to discard or alter my interpretation in favor of our own if something different strikes your fancy! Regardless, I invite you to take at least a full minute to study the photo each prompt describes. See how many details you can notice, and you can even make a list of your observations if that’s helpful! 

1. Consider this first photo of a rocky outcrop. If you look closely, you can see that a tree is planted on a pillar of solid rock, and a few wiry roots are all that connect it to the rich mainland. Without that connection and support, it wouldn’t be long before the tree died and toppled into frigid water below. Now, reflect on a character (new or old) that you have placed in a situation far outside their comfort zone or realm of expertise. What is their connection‒their root system‒that sustains them through those otherwise untethered times? From what source do they draw when all else has failed? Write for eight minutes.

2. Now, observe this second picture that reveals Indian Head Rock. Can you make out the profile of a face? You might even see an eye and an ear! I invite you to consider the ways humans are poised to see humanity and fellowship in places some consider dead and unresponsive. We see faces in cliffs, in water, in smoke, in folds of fabric, and everywhere else you might care to look. Think about your character in a desolate place, away from obvious signs of human life. In that place, where do they see themselves reflected? To what aspects of their environment do they relate, and how does that relationship develop? Write for ten minutes.

3. Lastly, take a look at this third picture of a shallow cave. Its sandstone layers have eroded over the years to form a soft hollow space away from the wind and waves, or perhaps a dangerous abscess that threatens its stability. So often, it is the sudden changes in our lives we notice most clearly, but incremental shifts can add up before we know it. For this prompt, consider a slow erosion that takes place in your character, for better or for worse. Maybe they gradually shed a protective shell of arrogance after persistent call-outs by a friend, or maybe a sliver of ice seeps into your character’s heart, its expansions and contractions gently weathering away their joy. Whatever you choose, take note of the small, almost inconsequential, moments that make up this process and how they combine to create monumental change. Write for seven minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

Family Past, Present, and Future

Family can be a tough topic to navigate, both personally and in our writing. There are infinite numbers of family dynamics that range from mostly healthy to utterly devastating, each one alternately hopeful and troubling in their own unique ways.

In my own writing, I have recently been working out my characters’ roles within their families by writing them as both children and adults, discovering the continuities and changes in their lives over time. For instance, one of my characters has grown into a chronic people-pleaser after fruitlessly striving to meet his parents’ expectations, while another is following a revenge quest to bring justice against those who perpetrated her mother’s death. 

Our characters’ relationships with family often directly influence their core motivations and values.

Exploring the way these motivations and values show up in our characters’ lives can allow us to better understand their actions and ring true to our readers, making our characters increasingly complex and sympathetic.

The echoes of our characters’ families often ring loud in their present and future.

The following prompts are an invitation to discover some of the dynamics that have seeped into your character’s subconscious and show up in their present day.

1. As a warm up, consider an average day in your character’s childhood. Did they spend their afternoons exploring vast underground caverns? Or perhaps they pickpocketed on the streets of London with a ragtag group of urchins. Maybe they even learned spellwork from a wise mentor and got into explosive scrapes when their magic backfired. Whatever the case, I invite you to write out a day of no consequence, a day so ordinary that your character would not even deign to remember it. Write for nine minutes.

2. Most siblings swing wildly from singing obnoxious duets to arguing over the slightest inconvenience, and our original characters are no different. Imagine your character for a moment, surrounded by their siblings or by friends so close that the difference is moot. How does your character interact with them? Are there inside jokes, passive aggressive remarks, sneaky projectiles, and whispered secrets? If your character is an only child through and through, how does that affect their relationships with other people? Write for six minutes.

3. Now, consider the way your character interacts or interacted with their parents/guardians. Did they have a supportive relationship built on mutual trust? Or perhaps they snuck around and kept secrets from an overbearing adult. Whatever the dynamic, consider how that type of relationship now shows up in your character’s relationships with children or mentees. With your character now in the parental or guardian role, how do the legacies of their own experiences with adults translate to the next generation? Write for eight minutes.

4. In a slightly shifted vein, consider your character in the role of caretaker once their parents or parental figures are unable to care for themselves. Depending on their past with those parents, your character’s attitudes and actions may be quite different. Does your character set their life aside to affectionately attend their loved one, place them in a carefully researched institution and throw away the key, or refuse to take responsibility altogether? I invite you to explore the nuances of this powerful role reversal and how that plays out in your character’s psyche, perhaps as a scene between them and their bedridden guardian. Write for ten minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.

Finding the Wonder

While TAing Claire’s most recent Weekday Warrior Mini-Retreat at the Writing Barn, I was captivated by the idea of rediscovering wonder in our work. Over three hours, we talked all about the things that inspire us and the parts of our world that send shivers of delight down our spines.

If you’ve been working on a WIP for a while, you probably know that as a project slogs on, its initial excitement can drain away into resignation and apathy. 

HOWEVER, one way to rekindle that spark is by trying a different creative outlet to use alongside your written work. This outlet could take the form of drawing, painting, sculpting, creating mood boards or playlists, writing a song, creating a collage, recording yourself speaking aloud, or even an improv dance routine (no judgements here)! 

Whatever we do, it is an act of creation, and sometimes shifting the way we express that creativity can open up new doors and solidify ideas. 

Our characters are more than our words!

I took this concept and created a few sketches of characters with whom I’ve recently been wrestling, which are pictured here. Taking the time to think out various physical characteristics and outfits gave me a chance to explore their personalities separately from a written description, considering how they would express themselves to the outside world in different contexts. It also allowed me to figure out what the heck I’m doing in regards to my story’s fashion, which will end up being quite integral to the plot. 

For these guided prompts, I invite you to stretch your creative muscles and try something new. 

1. For a warm up, let’s start with a more traditional writing prompt, shall we? Consider your character in their daily life. How do they express their own creativity? Perhaps it’s something traditional like painting, or perhaps your character creates beautiful items through woodworking or embroidery. For a more *troubled* character, they could even uncover creativity through the use of a few sharp knives or an exceptionally hot fire poker (yeesh!). Think about how their creative outlet feels to them and how it is perceived by others, whether friends or strangers. Write for ten minutes.

2. Now that we’ve gotten a little more comfortable with alternative forms of creativity by living vicariously through our characters, let’s try something new ourselves. Pick a scene, new or old, that you feel has lost its spark. Instead of immediately trying to write your way out of a hole, try creating a mood board! This can take the form of magazine clippings on copy paper, Google images on a fresh word doc, or even a fancy Canva spread. Whatever medium strikes your fancy, go wild and try to capture the atmosphere and aesthetic of the scene you want to write, and see where that takes you. Create for twelve minutes.

3. Amping things up a liiiiiittle more, choose a character with whom you have been struggling, for whatever reason, and draw them. Stick figures are celebrated and honored here! Truly, the simpler your design is, the more you will be forced to choose the most important visual elements of your character, which can help clarify their internal landscape as well. If you’re like me, you might even discover entirely new aspects of their personality! Draw for eight minutes.

4. For those of us who are less visually inclined, I invite you to choose a setting in your WIP or from your mind and create a playlist that you feel best represents it. If you’re considering a broad swath of farmland, folk music might be right for you, while if you’re thinking of a bustling city, techno could sound most accurate. If you have a Spotify account, that can be a wonderful way to compile these songs and even share them with others! If you would rather write out a physical list of titles or arrange a new playlist in your phone’s music app, that is also fantastic. Create for six minutes.

How did it go? Did you dig it? Subscribe to The Fool & the Page for more guided writing and cosmic conversation.

KAY TEEKELL is Claire’s Summer Communications Associate and fellow creative writer. She has five years of writing and editing experience that ranges from content writing for blogs and magazines to grant writing for nonprofit organizations. Kay is passionate about the power of storytelling and strives to amplify voices that might otherwise be forgotten. She is excited to use her artistic and literary skills in her professional aspirations and will continue to develop her talents for the rest of her life.