Writing prompts can spark your creativity, and they can also be used for marketing and reader engagement! Join author, editor, and publisher Janeen Ippolito to talk about quirky writing prompts.
Janeen Ippolito.com
Weird Writing Prompts by Janeen Ippolito
Video (from Twitch and YouTube):
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Transcript:
Laura
Hello. It is Tuesday night, at least where I am, so happy timezone to wherever you are and yeah, I’m Laura VanArendonk Baugh, and I still don’t have a catchphrase. And I am losing my freaking mind, you guys. Oh my gosh, today’s been such a ride and we very nearly didn’t have this stream. So I just got Internet back a few minutes ago. So we’re going to go as long as we have the Wi-Fi . Actually I have a hard line. It doesn’t matter. We’re going to go as far as we can. So please just bear with me. If something happens, we will we will do our very best.
Laura
And I just realized I can actually kill a couple of things to try to make the Internet stay up longer. We’ll see. Give me a second to make that happen. all those happened. OK, so we’re going to try to stay up, but.
Laura
Several things going on. As some of you may know, it is — well, you probably all know it’s July, but July is World Anvil Summer Camp World Building Challenge.
Laura
And along with that, because all the prompts I am bringing in (swoosh with sound effects) Janeen Ippolito to talk to us about writing prompts, so I have to I have to give you the the rundown on arginine, but I’m going to try to do it in a condensed form so we can actually still have a stream tonight because Janine’s got a lot of hats that she puts on.
Laura
So she’s an author of fiction, of nonfiction and of poetry. So she’s got all the categories going on. She is an editor. She co owns a publishing company. She consults with authors about marketing. She gosh, I need cue cards here. I’m going to run out of things. What else do you do? You have so many things. You podcast like yes. Right. Yes, because she does have a tag line because she is more together. Yes.
Laura
Oh, hold on, people, hold on. The people are telling me they can’t hear you. Why? How is that? Give me a second, because I can hear you and I see the little thing thingy flickering so somebody somewhere can hear you. Hmm, OK, I’m sorry, give me a second. I swear today, it is, I don’t know if Mercury’s in retrograde or whatever, so. OK, let’s go. ShyRedFox is saying, “give us Janeen’s words!” OK, hold on, I’m working on this, we’re going to see what’s going on. I do not know why is being like this.
Laura
Also, I have a dog who is having a minor breakdown because the search team is using my property tonight. So there are people outside hiding dead people and my Doberman does not understand why this is happening. So I am so sorry. Let’s keep going here. I know. All right. Say something for me, Janeen. Wow, why is why is that not coming through? Yeah, I know, it’s just grabbing me, which is so weird. I don’t know, this is bizarre, like I can see, I can I can see everything, I see where you should be. Thank you, thank you, Songbird in the chat is like, we’re here, we’re not going anywhere. Take your time to figure it out. Thank you so much because I’m over here, like, what the heck? All right. Let me see if I can do a little cheating over here. Yeah.
Laura
So while while I’m pushing all the buttons. Yes, yeah, a little interpretive dance to be great little ASL maybe. Yeah. Yes, so for those of you who are newer to the stream, a search and rescue group does train regularly on my property because I have acreage with woods and fields and all the things. So so it is not unusual for people to be hiding dead people on my property. Like, that’s normal. It’s just not something that my dog, you know, always understands. She doesn’t read the calendar, so.
Laura
Yeah, but she actually didn’t doesn’t care much about because we’ve done, yeah, so much training and she’s a bit of a honey badger anyway, so we made stuff that was really good. I do not know why this is not coming through, OK. I’m. I don’t think it’s you. I think it’s something to do and it’s something to do with with the zoom link. So worst case scenario, I will… Hold on. Hold on. It’s.
Janeen
Maybe.
Laura
OK, so now I suspect everybody except me can hear Janeen. Let’s check the chat and see if that’s the case.
Janeen
Can you hear me say something?
Laura
OK, it’s good. The chat can hear Janine, but now I can’t.
Janeen
So this is going to be a great. Favorite flower, favorite, I don’t know, your favorite flavor of ice cream.
Laura
I am going to make this work good. OK, so I will just lip read and eventually
Janeen
you will know by the answers if they start saying thingsice about cream, we’ll know. Well, life is always an adventure, right?
Laura
So close, so close. ShyRedFox wants you to tell all the secrets before I can get back here.
Janeen
Maybe I should try to introduce more of that, like I could do that because, like, she can’t hear me right now. So I could say all kinds of fun things about Laura. Um, I don’t know, like. Let’s see.
Laura
Why are you like this? Why?
Janeen
My mind is going really blank, except she has a really fun house and her dogs are adorable. And. I stayed at her house once in 2017, because I was there for Indy Pop Con, and she has really awesome books that like bring lots of pain. And lots of well, she has funny ones, too, but mostly like it’s doom, but in a good, positive doomy kind of way. To be honest, I’m not finishing them until she finishes the series and I get to the end and know there’s a happy ending. But if those of you who love her books, like right now, they’re really good stories.
Laura
I’m going to grab another headset, I’ll be right back.
Janeen
I have no idea if I’m still even if anyone could hear me, because I can’t see anything right now. But yes, I read her books. And. Otherwise, yay writing prompts, they’re awesome. You should use them because they’re fantastic and they can secretly help you conquer the world.
Laura
OK, hold on, I hear Janeen! Can everybody else hear Janeen while I hear Janeen?
Janeen
I can’t see the conversation, I just. OK.
Laura
Yeah, I’m looking so. OK, so somebody said ShyRedFox said yes, they are so good books. So I hope I hope that was, I don’t know what books they are, but they’re very good. OK, we did see. No, sorry. Nobody got to help hide any dead bodies. That, that, that’s although although I will say that the search team is always looking for volunteers and they are always looking for living volunteers. This is a safe thing to volunteer for. It’s actually a really sweet job. Like you just go sit in the woods and read a book until they find you. It’s fantastic. So OK.
Oh, you can hear us both.
Janeen
They can hear us both? Can you hear me? Yay!
Laura
This was way more effort than that should have been. I’m so sorry.
Janeen
I was a teacher for eight years. I know how to deal with weird, awkward gaps where you’re there at the big event on time and then they’re like, oh, sorry, teachers. You have to entertain people for like this whole time because. Yeah. For this, I’m trained. You guys are awesome, by the way. Way easier than third graders.
Laura
They can’t throw things at you.
Janeen
Yes. Well technically the third grader shouldn’t have either, but you’d be surprised .
Here they can’t reach you. So it’s all good. Yeah. They throw things that just entertains their cats. No, so Alena in the chat and I used to emcee every other year for Anime Central and so there’d be like three thousand people in the room and we’re emceeing for the masquerade. But then any time something went wrong, it’s fill the time. Right? So like I’d run downstairs because Optimus Prime is stuck on a ramp and I’d leave Alena interviewing a chair.
Janeen
There’s your saving grace. Just bring out Optimus Prime and the dinosaur. You’re good to go like.
Laura
Yeah, yeah. So going to fill time while I get up there. So, OK, let’s get let’s actually talk about, I don’t know, our topic. So unless you covered all that while I was gone and now we’re just in the wrap up stage.
Janeen
No, we actually talked about how I’m not going to finish your book series until I know you have a happy ending because I don’t trust you.
Laura
That’s legit. That’s pretty good. OK, so. Yeah, where were we? OK, hey, I had notes somewhere. Do we actually get through, did we actually introduce Janeen?
Janeen
I was like I was talking about the other things I do like, you know, podcast.
Laura
So Own Your Unique Words is the name of Janeen’s podcast. It is her catchphrase because she has one, like a marketing professional and yes, so Uncommon Universes Press. She is a CEO, right?
Janeen
I am the CEO of that. Like, I run it with a couple of senior partners, but as they like to tell me, I get to boss everyone around. They just get to do stuff. All right.
Laura
So so marketing strategist for hire, which is just really fun to say. Yeah. Just generally writing industry businesswoman, somebody who spends a lot of time in this field and probably has good stuff to share now that we can hear her.
Janeen
Yeah. So I tell people that, like, you do all these things and like I do all the things in one industry. So like if you want me to fix your car, I mean I will literally probably call Triple A or something for for like an oil change. I don’t know anything about a lot of things, but I do know about publishing stuff.S
Laura
Specialization. OK, yeah. So I yeah. She also she also has a thing for Otters.
Janeen
Yeah, that kind of happened by accident but I just went with it like I just thought otters are neat.
Laura
Accidental otters. It happens. Yeah. It’s the best of us. So, so yeah. If you, if you hang out on Janeen’s social media you will encounter otters. It will happen and and and some death unicorns.
Janeen
That was a dare that kind of got out of hand. But I’m okay with it so.
Laura
All right. OK, so yeah. Adults. Look at how professional we are. Super professional. Let’s talk about writing prompts. All right.
Laura
So. This is like this is all precipitated by your new book coming out, which is a book full of writing prompts, but there are lots and lots of books of writing prompts and frankly, yours are a little more fun. Sorry, guys. So could you, as I totally put you on the spot, could you give us a couple of sample prompts of things that are a little bit better than maybe some other writing prompts we have seen go by?
Janeen
One of my favorite ones, and this I use a lot in my marketing, but it kind of, you know, kind of have some ones you really can’t top in a way. And this one is you stick all of your characters in an elevator with an email and the elevator breaks down. What do your characters do?
Laura
And this is great because, like you get like I have a number of characters who be like, what is an emu and why is it looking at me like that?
Janeen
And some would kill the Emi right away. And then some would be mad if you killed the emu.
Laura
And then some would be killed by the EMU because seriously, like emus.
Janeen
Some you discover have a serious fear of birds you didn’t know about.
Laura
Yeah, some of them are like, why am I in an elevator? Like, you know, you’ve got lots of I’m not happy. This metal box that moves like there’s a lot of things to go with. So so I like. One of the things you talk about is taking prompts to explore characters and and I really hit on that because I’m going to say, oh, I’m going to step on some writing industry toes, but OK, fine. Anybody who has made it this far into the roller coaster is, you know, is dedicated at this point. But I hate character interview sheets and I really hate character personality typing. And I’m sorry, but I said it and it’s true and I’ll stand by it. So that is just, and obviously that works for a lot of people. But that’s not a thing that I can sit down in a workshop and do. I discover who my characters are by watching them do things. And I’m like, oh, I don’t think I would have said that to the emu, but now I know you would. OK, so so what you have done is you have condensed my process into a paperback. So I mean, on the one hand, wow, I feel so shallow now, but but practically speaking, it’s a useful it’s a useful thing.
Laura
So I guess would you. Would you typically want to start this, for somebody like me, would you tell me to do this early on in the process? Do you usually recommend people do this when they get stuck? There are many right ways, but what do you typically recommend for this one?
Janeen
For this one I usually say do it when you’re ready to have fun. And so that usually means if you’re really bored or you’re kind of in a playful mood, if you’re really grouchy or something or you’ve had a really bad day, like these prompts unlock your creativity and your intelligence to the power of play. If you’re not in the mood to play right at that moment, you’re going to find them frustrating.
Janeen
And then there’s certain personalities that really love character sheets, which I call like the driver’s license way of creating characters in the world. And that’s OK. And if you if you tend to like–
Laura
Obviously that works for a lot of people. So I’m not gonna say that people are wrong for doing it.
Janeen
No. And I tend to I usually do this after like long after the fact is created just to help categorize stuff, but don’t use it for creation very much because I just don’t think that way.
Janeen
So definitely use it when you’re curious, when you’re bored, when you need to figure something out and when you’re open to playing with things, you know. So go into it. This sounds a bit, but don’t go into these giant expectations that this is going to be the most profound experience in my life. That’s not why I wrote the book. This is the way that you can kind of sneak up on those really cool things. And so the authors who have really gotten a lot of out of this tell me it just came at me from left field. I had no idea that this even existed, like in my character. And I think a lot of times when you’re stuck in a problem or maybe you’re just stuck because you’ve been writing the same scene or book for a while and you’re just bored, you need to kind of sneak up on problems and tackle them from behind. And these questions are fantastic for that. And then they’re also fantastic for marketing, which is why I have two sections in the book, one that’s more for writing and one that’s more for marketing.
Janeen
And even with that, like they’re a fun way to market your book without marketing your book because it’s not marketing. I’m just saying, look, this is funny and cool in this funny and cool. Do you think this is cool? Do you want to know about this character more? And it opens up more low stress environment instead of the very direct. Here is my book, ta-da.
Laura
This is something we just keep coming back to here on the land of Laura, where I get to whine about all of my things and “I want to market without marketing” is a thing that we just keep coming back to because, yeah, I’m from the Midwest, like “buy my book” doesn’t flow off my tongue well. And so, hey, Janeen has a, is it I think it’s weekly or every other week at this point? I think it’s weekly.
Janeen
It’s the weekly one random question. I’ve been doing that since 2017. Yeah.
Laura
And that it was she’ll just put up like a random question like what flavor of ice cream does your character like, or why is your character chasing this.
Or one of my favorites that I did was your is taking off their clothes before bed. Where do they throw them on the ground? Do they put them in a basket, really not wearing clothes? Do they not care like all those things? And it’s one of those makes people feel slightly awkward, but it’s really great for oh, it’s showing a lot of things about your characters, including their sense of security, maybe the security of where they live. Of course, if they’re messy, you’re not messy, but you can just really expand and unpack that one in really fun ways.
Laura
Yeah. And and and I honestly don’t remember if that prompt that you just mentioned made me think of this, like recall it, or if that prompt made me write it. I but I’ll really just give you credit for it and I’ll just say that you made this write.
Janeen
I’ll take it!
Laura
Yeah. But I have a character, you know, getting dressed in the morning and his clothes are not where he would normally have folded them neatly. And there’s like a ton of information that goes with that.
Laura
Yeah. And and so that is you the same kind of like, OK, why is this different? You know, and that’s actually a ton of information. And just little things like, you know, where would it normally be, what what would make that change, you know, of that kind of stuff. And, you know, I’m one of the things I love is I don’t know if there’s a right way to say this, but I call it writing in negative space. Yeah. So you know where we are. We used real paper for this event. Well, what do we normally use? Like, why isn’t why is this different? You know, so that kind of thing.
Janeen
So does that that’s an important part of good writing. I think people miss a lot of times. And when you when you come up problems really directly, because I am a very Problem-Solving kind of person. And so, you know, when you’re creating a character, until you know what they are, that’s kind of something you have to figure out, analyze. But if you just fill out a questionnaire that says, how does your character wake up in the morning, that’s just kind of like it’s so direct that it can be boring.
Janeen
But if you ask a question that makes you feel uncomfortable, although weird, it might reveal some awkward things about the character, like maybe maybe they’re not always in bed alone or something, or this thing or that thing. It kind of unlocks that part of your brain. It makes you think about. So those sort of empty spaces more, I think helps you to think about showing characterization in different ways than just being so very direct. And again, being too direct is a little bit like, you know, telling. Whereas these kind of prompts unlock your showing side without you feeling like I have to show something. Am I supposed to do that again? Why did the editor keep putting that on the manuscript? Things like that.
Laura
Freaking editors . Yeah, I loved what you said a little bit ago about trying to sneak up on the problem and tackle it from behind because, yeah, I, I am definitely if I just sit there and I’m like, what, why is this character motivated to do X? I just know I can’t.
Method acting. What is my motivation? Right.
Laura
I don’t know. You’re sitting in a chair staring at me, that doesn’t give me anything to work with. OK, like go out and do something, and now I can see who you are and what you’re doing. And I have a process that maybe shouldn’t be emulated, maybe I shouldn’t talk about, I don’t know. But, you know, if we were talking or about Shianan in my series, like, he was so grumpy when we started and I could not figure out why he was so mad all the time. He’s like, he’s not a fun person to hang out with at the beginning of the series. And he was he was actually a prince at that point. He wasn’t an illegitimate. And, you know, he’s like, well, maybe if I weren’t a bastard, I wouldn’t be such a bastard.
Janeen
There you go.
Laura
OK, now now I know, like and of course, that’s a huge plot thing, right? But but I just didn’t know. So, yeah. So I think that’s a very long way of saying getting into like looking at things from a different angle and and just tooling around doodling, just doodle with stuff and see how — sorry, I thought I was cutting you off, so I stopped.
Janeen
No, it’s fine and I can’t get into that creative mindset and just playing with things. And I do recommend, like I have a paperback of this come out, which has nice, large, friendly, big sections to write things and write things by hand if you can. It unlocks your brain and so many better ways than typing. Actually, my latest book, I finally figured out how to attack it by writing out by hand. And now I’m just doing this weird hybrid thing which I’ve never done before in 16 books. I’m kind of like, what is this?
Janeen
But, you know, I stare at screens all day when I work on client things. At the end of the day, my brain just did not want to sit there and look at a screen. There was no inspiration. So, you know, doodle it out, draw an image of what inspires you. If you’re creative, look at it and then draw the scene that’s in your head of these characters doing these weird things or something. I mean, use that scene for character art. Sky’s the limit, like go from that. And those kind of fresh raw moments are really what makes books really compelling to readers and more fun to write and and more fun to write.
Laura
This past week I’ve just been beating my head on, I’ve got a story they need to turn in on deadline. And I technically think I’ve just finished the first draft, so, you know, it’s fine. I got it till next week. We’re good. I got all kinds of time. And then I’m trying to get a thing ready to launch as a serial. And, you know, time is getting tight on that. So I’m just, you know, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, crunch, crunch. And it’s real easy to lose sight of the fact that stories are fun, you know, and like, that’s the point of it. So anything that can can kind of remind you that, hey, he remember why you got into this in the first place, you know, and so. So, yeah. So anyway.
Janeen
As I tell people, like, if you’re in it for the money, there are way easier ways.
Laura
Oh, rob a bank! So much faster. You’ll feel better about yourself.
Janeen
You may as well make it fun along the way. And like if you’re not in it for the money, then you definitely should be making it fun along the way.
Laura
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Janeen
So either way there’s no harm in making it more fun. And I think sometimes at a certain point, especially as, I think a lot of newbie authors get to a place, they feel like they have to be very serious because they want to be taken seriously. And that is you get professional, you start thinking everyone’s looking at me. I can’t think about this. I can’t be goofy or funny. I can’t do this because, like, I am a serious author and all the serious author books are well, I mean, they’re really serious, like, they’re awesome. There’s a lot of great authors–
Laura
because everybody’s on the back cover going [serious face].
Janeen
Yeah, yeah. They take themselves very seriously and that’s great. But that’s not the only way that you can handle this. And sometimes you just need to realize, you know what, like I am making things randomly out of my head. This has zero impact whatsoever–
Laura
I am having arguments with my imaginary friends. All right, guys like this is how this goes.
Janeen
Like, Stephen will just look at me. He’s long past the point now of thinking that I actually know these people like in real life, which when we started dating, he was like, do you know someone? No. Then why do you care so much? Because they matter.
Laura
ShyRedFox in the chat says, yes, yes, yes. For the fresh raw moments. So yeah, absolutely. That that is that is why we got into this. You know, it wasn’t actually for the millions of dollars we roll around in like Scrooge McDuck.
Janeen
No. And with so many books coming out nowadays and, you know, people can get kind of insecure because there are so many books being published, like every single moment of every single day, having books that are fun and fresh and unique to like the way you see the world through these questions is a great way to make yourself stand out. And you might as well, because that’s, you know, something that no one else can really copy, OK? They can’t copy your awesome random brain. They just literally can’t. So far. Thank God we don’t live in that cybertech universe.
Laura
Yeah, yeah. And and this is just going to soapbox for a second while we’re here. But I’ve had several people say to me, like in the last, period of time, “oh, well, I don’t write super, like you write angsty emo epic fantasy and I just write, you know, fun stuff” and I’m like, fun stuff is important, like real. And also, did you notice 2020 went by? Like having some fun stuff was a good thing.
Laura
And yeah. So like, there is not you don’t you don’t have to be super serious to be valid or legitimate.
Janeen
Well and more than that, and this is something I work with different artists and I work with a lot of different kind of authors. And one thing that I always have to nudge authors who write that very deep style, which I have, you know, written. My fairy tale retelling is like a very intense sort of book. So I have logit cred now, but I went there. But the thing is, you have to have that contrast of something humorous in some way or something lighter in some way, or your darkness will just be like one long glommy zoomy gloomy deathy thing.
Janeen
You have to have that bit of contrast in there. There is no real reason to not know how to add some well-placed lighter moments or something, because otherwise your angst will have no texture. Right. And it won’t stand out.
Laura
And there are no stakes. Like even in the grimmest grimdark, what are we fighting for? If there’s nothing worth if there’s nothing not grim and dar.
Janeen
And the thing Is the horror authors I work with because I have a couple of those. They get that like, they get that they have to have those moments.
Laura
Oh, horror people are great at that. So I apologize for the barking. There are dead people being found in the field.
Janeen
I love that this is just like a thing on the show.
Laura
It’s not usually a problem but but yeah. This is the way we go.
Janeen
She’s trying to do her job. She’s trying to tell you people are out there.
Laura
She is. She’s like, do you know people are digging up things in our field? Yeah. It’s it’s a thing. So right now, yeah, it’s a cornfield, so let me just add and give you the full visual so you can imagine whatever you want to picture. As we were talking about horror authors–
Janeen
The cornfield works great with that!
Laura
— who are are really good at balancing lighter and heavier elements. So because that’s what makes horror work, right. Yeah.
Janeen
Oh it does. A hundred percent does.
Laura
Yeah. So yeah. So I’ve got, I’ve got prompts and I’m creating things that, I’m discovering things about my characters that I had no idea, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t know that they felt this way about salad. But now, now I do. And you know, I’ve got all these things so. So how can I — this is great, but actually I was kind of writing and angsty, IMO, epic fantasy, and I didn’t know how salad was going to fit into that. You know, what do I do with those those things that did get me thinking about my characters. But it’s not a direct translation into my manuscript.
Janeen
OK, so you never know when things are going to come up with characters and such things and you really never know what’s going to attract readers. And that’s the other amazing side of this, is that even readers of angsty dark fiction love some laugh