Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Tuesday prompts

Tuesday Prompt: 2012 #18

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Write about a person in an awkward situation.  Maybe she caught someone reading her diary or she found someone’s diary and had just flipped the cover when the owner stepped into the room.  Maybe he just realized the speech in his hand was the one he had decided was too raw for this audience and had written another, at this moment still on the kitchen counter where he had left it the night before to replace the one he had nixed.  But here he is standing at the podium one speech in hand, the other largely but not completely memorized, its hard copy version a long way off.  What does your character do?  Set the stage and let your character react to his or her situation.

Tuesday Prompt: 2012 #17

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Stormy times coming.

It is time your character went through some tough times.  What is the worst that can go wrong?  What is second worst?  Now write about your character and have that second worst thing happen. Get your character almost through it, then the worst thing happens. How will the character cope?  Who comes to his aide?  Will he accept the help or work it out alone? 

What would be a small ray of sunshine in all this, nothing big or miraculous, just something to give a stress break?  Give him that little bit of brightness, then head him back into the storm with that brief break to supply a little faith and determination.

Tuesday Prompt: 2012 #16

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Start off your character dancing: fast or slow, rap or rock. Just have them dancing and slowly add environment. Is anybody watching?  How would the character feel if someone was?  Who? What if the character thought it was one person, but it was another?
Okay, take it for there.

Tuesday Prompt: 2012 #14

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beating heart

On page 440 of my copy of A Tale of Two Cities is a wonderful last line of a chapter.  Though it means one thing in the context of the book it is in, think and write about what else it could mean.


The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.

Tuesday prompt: 2012 #13

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Inspirational frog and teacher.

Write a letter of thanks to the person you hold most responsible for your writing ability.  Explain what that person gave to you that added to who you are as a writer.

My most responsible person was a third grade teacher named Miss Mann.  She was stern, creative, formidable, knowledgeable and caring.  She started out as my first grade reading teacher and then turned up as my third grade classroom teacher.  She taught me to appreciate books and then taught me the desire to write. At the end of my first grade year, she made me promise to write her stories over the summer. She supplied me with her address, and she wrote back each time. She would send her letters written on fanciful writing paper and suggest that I write a story about whatever was pictured on it. I only remember one, a giant green bullfrog whose mouth supplied her writing space.  I don’t remember what I wrote, but I do remember what her reply was.  Write another story and be kind to your little brother.  I suspect the frog ate him.

So Miss Mann, wherever you are out there, Thank you for developing my imagination, for being the person I knew would always read what I wrote and tell me to do it again.