Writing Dares: The 2016 Collection
Does your muse feel starved of creativity? Feed it a helping of writing dares! They’re fun, they’re flavourful and they’re packed full of wordy goodness. Bon appétit, dear writer.
We’ve all been there: the scene is guttering like a candle in the wind and now the entire story threatens to fade away before your eyes. Your writing has lost the spark that kept it alive, kept it absorbing and dynamic and fresh. You need to return that spark to it if you want the story and your interest in it to survive. But how?
Allow me to introduce the writing dare. It courts conflict. It’s unexpected. It’s different. And it’s what’s going to rekindle your sputtering scene.
What is a writing dare? It might be a line, a secret, a character, an animal, an event... The list goes on. Your challenge is to include as many or as few of them in your story as you want.
Interested? If so, then...
WRITERS, I DARE YOU TO...
Have your character find a secret room hidden behind a school locker.
Cut the power in your next scene.
Send a plague sweeping through your story world.
Include an out-of-control vehicle in the next scene.
Have your character find a cracked mirror that doesn’t reflect the room they’re in.
Give a passing remark made in an earlier scene new significance. How will it affect the relationship between your characters?
Allow your protagonist to be recruited by an antagonistic force.
Have your characters find a voodoo doll in the next scene.
Take your character on a walk through the woods. They find something surprising there.
Send one of your cast on a blind date. Who do they meet?
Have your character begin to remember things—things that never could have happened to them.
Have your character inherit a strange family heirloom.
Drop an amnesiac into your next chapter. Who are they? Where did they come from?
Give your story an unhappy ending. Dash your characters’ hopes but have them learn an important lesson.
Have your antagonist held at gunpoint in your next scene.
Change your story’s setting—not in place but in time. Will you step back into the past or forward into the future?
Lead your character to an old journal. Who did it once belong to?
Send a stampede through your current chapter.
Sabotage a character’s relationship with fatal attraction theory.
Have a ghost give your protagonist an eerie warning.
The Writing Dare Archives
2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015
or return to the Inspiration Station for more prompts