With the arrival of the autumnal equinox this week, the weather will be getting colder and days will be getting shorter. But fear not – the fall season is the perfect season to sit down and write! Open your laptop or notebook and get back into writing mode with these autumnal writing prompts. 

1.) Coffee shop meeting

Your character’s usual coffee shop is closed due to some unforeseen circumstances, so they decide to go to one down the street instead. Someone is waiting for them. What happens next?

2.) Leaves change

Your character looks outside their window to discover that all the leaves in their neighborhood have changed color except for one tree, which is still green. How do they react? What do they do?

3.) Spooky secret

A character comes across a dark secret about their family or friend of theirs. What do they do?

4.) Scenery

Practice descriptions of scenery by writing about an autumn scene in your own life. Describe a chilly morning or breezy evening from your point of view. Use the five senses – show, don’t tell!

5.) Football game

Travel back to high school or college and have your character go to a football game. 

6.) Animal life

Autumn brings plenty of animals out as they forage for the winter season. Describe them – maybe even assume their point of view!

7.) Pumpkin person

Who is that person sitting on a park bench with a pumpkin on their head?

8.) A day in the leaf

What happens to a single leaf when it falls from a tree? Give a leaf a name and follow it around for a day.

9.) Haiku

Write some autumn themed haikus. A haiku is a poem consisting of 17 syllables, with three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. Haikus traditionally evoke seasonal imagery, so it’s only fitting!

10.) Camping trip

What happens when a group of characters goes on a fall camping trip?

Already have an autumn story written? Contact us!

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Every good story has an established setting. Your novel has to exist somewhere – your characters can’t just float in space (and even that would be a setting!) Having a specific setting not only makes your story easier to understand, but can aid in the plot and characterization. 

These tips will focus on general fiction. For tips on worldbuilding in fantasy fiction, check out our blog post on fantasy writing.

Specificity

Choose a specific town or region for your novel to exist in. It can be a fictional town in an otherwise real place in the world, or the story can take place somewhere that exists completely in our world. Using the real world allows you to take existing qualities that may be relevant to your story (ex. a coal mining town having a hard-working populace.) Making up a city or town from scratch will allow you to tailor it to your story’s needs and give it the characteristics that make sense for your story. Give your town a specific name and geographic location. 

Setting and Plot Working Together

Along with choosing a specific setting, think about what the setting means for the plot of your story. A lot of plot tropes have to do with setting and plot being reliant on each other. For example, many stories begin with a character moving to a new place for a fresh start. The new place then introduces a conflict or an event that sets the story in motion (e.g. Bella moves to Forks, Washington in Twilight for a change of scenery sets off the events of the novel, and the town of Forks becomes integral to the plot.)

Even if the character doesn’t start the story in a setting unfamiliar to them, something else could happen in the setting that relates to the plot: a beloved business closes, a new landmark pops up one day, etc. As you sketch out your plot, think about how the setting relates to it. 

Senses

Describe your setting using the five senses. What does your character hear when they walk outside? What do they smell? Setting entails everything in the environment, not just geography. What do other people look like when they walk along the street? Are things old or new? Thinking about questions like these and answering them – when appropriate – will help you establish a sense of place for your reader using the senses. As the old adage goes, show, don’t tell. 

Time

In addition to what the world in your story looks and feels like, time is also part of the overall setting. What time period is your story set in? The present, the distant past? Making sense of time will help ground your story and help the other parts work together. It is easier to sketch out the town your novel takes place in if you have a general time period for it to be set in – for example, a novel taking place in a coal mining city in the late 19th century would be a lot different than a coal mining city in 2022.

These are certainly not all that needs to be considered with regards to setting in your novel, but they are here to get you started! Have fun as you embark on your writing journey.

For extra help, consider our writing coach program.

If your novel is already written and waiting to be published, contact us!

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The following are some of the most popular forms of poetry:

Rhymed Poetry

As opposed to free verse, poetry can follow a specific rhyme scheme. Popular rhyme schemes often involve rhyming words at the end of a line. Some specific poems, such as the limerick mentioned above, stick to certain rhyme schemes.

Free Verse

Free verse poetry does not follow any rhyme scheme or set meter. Sometimes called blank verse, these poems often follow natural speech rhythms, yet are still written in stanzas and lines. Free verse poetry is actually a more modern invention, with origins in France.

Elegy

An elegy is a poem written to mourn the death or loss of a person. They are often written in elegiac couplets, meaning stanzas containing two lines, although today any poem with reflective, melancholy themes is said to be an elegy. The tradition of elegies dates back to the 7th century B.C. in Ancient Greece.

Acrostic

An acrostic poem is a poem in which the beginning letters of each line spell out a word pertaining to the subject of the poem itself.

Haiku

One of the more famous and well-known poetic forms, haikus are three-line poems. The first line of a haiku contains 5 syllables, the second contains 7 syllables and the final also contains 5 syllables. Haikus are of Japanese origin and traditionally discuss nature and the seasons. Nowadays, one can find haikus written about a wide variety of topics.

Limerick

A limerick is a short, humorous poem that is five lines long and uses the rhyme scheme AABBA. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the dominant meter is anapestic, with two metrical feet in the third and fourth lines and three feet in the others. Anapestic foot consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. 

Pastoral

Pastoral poetry centers on nature and man’s relationship with the natural world. It idealizes rural life and places utmost importance on nature. The tradition of pastoral poetry dates back to the Ancient Greeks.

Sonnet

The sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter. They can utilize several different rhyme schemes. Sonnets are typically thought of as pertaining to romantic themes, due to the influence of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, but they do not necessarily have to be about romantic relationships.

Have a book of poems you would like to publish? Contact us!

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Develop Your World
What sets fantasy apart from other genres is its immersive worlds. Take some time to think about and plan your far away fantastical setting of your book or books, either before or after you know the details of your plot. Having the mechanisms of your setting planned out will help you write the novel more smoothly. It will help you convey your world to your readers in a way that draws them in.

This not only means the physical landscape of the world, but the politics and culture of it as well. Every society has a culture with a set of rules and norms – even mythical ones. It is even more important to flesh these out ahead of time for a fantasy story than for one that takes place in our contemporary world, for both yourself and your audience. You may think you have your fantasy world entirely in your own head, but planning out the world can help you avoid continuity errors – elements of the plot that contradict a previously explained element. Use notes or a graphic organizer to sketch out your fantasy world, as well as the rules and norms for your fantasy society. There are many resources online to help you in this task.

Character and Narration
A similar amount of care and devotion should be used to develop your characters and their voices. Decide if your story will be told through first-person narration, third person limited, or third person omniscient narration.

First person narration will be told through a character with the use of “I” and an intimate knowledge of their inner mind, thoughts, and feelings. In third person limited, a reader has intimate knowledge of a main character and follows them. The degree to which they are known is up to you, the author. In third person omniscient narration, an outside observer knows about and follows many characters.

Deciding on what route to take with narration will affect the structure and flow of the story. Ask yourself: Is your story better told through one singular character, or many characters whose lives interweave?

Know Your Audience
Fantasy is an interesting genre in that it is quite popular with children, teens, and adults alike. It is unlikely, however, that your story will appeal to all audiences. It is important to decide who your audience will be – or, what the “rating” of your novel will be. A novel for teens should not have the same levels of violence and mature subject matter as one for adults. A fantasy book for children will be much shorter than one for middle grade students. Use discretion and decide early on who your target audience will be. Additionally, there are a number of subgenres within fantasy that might be worth considering – it’s not all wizards and dragons. Steampunk, magical realism, and urban fantasy are examples of other popular fantasy subgenres. Find your niche early on.

The Conflict
Of course, it wouldn’t be a fantasy book without the plot – the central conflict that drives the story. Every story has to have an action that kicks off the plot and sets things into motion. From there, a character will have a mission or a goal. When you zoom out, you will see your main character or characters having conflicts with other beings, ideas, the nature of their world, or even themselves. Conflict will make readers care about the story and ultimately lead to the overarching message of the story. That message is entirely up to you. Ask yourself: what do you want to say with your book? What lesson do you want to teach?

Think About – But Don’t Necessarily Avoid – Cliches

As you take stock of your characters and your plot, you may find that you use cliches of the fantasy genre. The wise wizard, a prophecy that must be fulfilled, or a main character that is “the chosen one” are all examples of fantasy genre cliches. While some may say to avoid these devices, a more interesting approach is to use a cliche but to make it your own. Put a slightly different spin on these cliches, and they will no longer be cliches. Readers will take pleasure in something that is familiar to them, yet something new at the same time. For example, maybe the wise old wizard that mentors your main character isn’t really that wise after all.

Take your time to think about all of these aspects, and have fun as you embark on your fantasy writing journey.

For extra help, consider our writing coach program.

If your fantasy novel is already written and waiting to be published, contact us!

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One way to improve your action writing is by writing a scene with a simple premise: two characters get into a fight. This may sound overly simplistic, but that’s why it works as a perfect tool to practice action scene writing. An engaging action scene in manuscript format can’t be solely about the action taking place because simply reading about punching and kicking doesn’t translate the same way in a book that it does on screen. Instead, the focus should be on what is at stake on a character level.

By writing a scene based on this simple, you’re able to focus on the why behind the fight, rather than making the action exciting as we’re often feeling pressured to do. For example, let’s say we have two characters: Matt and David. Matt and David get into a fight, why? Are they two friends who had a falling out based on some dishonest behavior, only to wind up running into each other at a bar one night and having it out? If that’s the case, what was the lie and what did it cost each of them?

Or are they two strangers out at a club who bump into each other, a few harsh words are exchanged, and suddenly punches are being thrown? If that’s the case, what put them each in a bad mood? Maybe one of them just has anger issues, what has his anger cost him in his life? What could this moment cost him, should it get too out of hand? There is so much going on behind a fight and, in a manuscript format, focusing on these aspects is how you’ll be able to keep readers engaged and excited about the action.

Writing Prompt: Write a scene where two characters get into a fight. You can choose two already-made characters or create two new ones for the purposes of the scene. What is the relationship between the two characters? What caused the fight vs. why are they fighting (sometimes these are two different answers)? What are the stakes of their fight, both internally and externally? Put your dukes up, writers.

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A good villain intro scene should include two elements. First, they should cement the villain as someone formidable and memorable for the audience. Second, they should tell us as much about the type of villain they will become. Let’s first look at the example of Darth Vader, who is first introduced to the audience in the Star Wars film A New Hope. An epic fight scene ensues between the stormtroopers and the rebels onboard an all-white spaceship interior. Then, at the tail end of the fight, this masked figure cloaked entirely in black struts onto the ship, theme music playing beneath him. After a brief scene with R2D2 and C3PO, Darth chokes and kills a rebel trooper. This introduction not only uses color very strategically to make this villain immediately stand out, but the audience immediately sees him senselessly kill someone so they already know he is a formidable opponent.

Another great example of a villain introduction is The Joker’s introduction from The Dark Knight. Going into creating this scene, the writer and director know that their audience knows this character and it’s just about introducing this iteration of him in a fun and memorable way. The introduction scene involves a bank heist with men all wearing clown masks. As they expertly begin the process of robbing the bank, they speak about how they were hired by the Joker and what he’s like. As the scene unfolds, the heist becomes less and less seamless as the clowns begin to take each other out as they complete the steps for the robbery, citing that the Joker had asked them to kill each other so there would be fewer shares to divide amongst themselves. By the end of the robbery, there is only one clown left: The Joker.

This scene works well to get the audience excited for this villain for a few reasons. One, the bank robbery element establishes the Joker as the Gotham-style Batman villain that he always is in every iteration. Two, the fact that he turns his own men against each other establishes him as someone who isn’t just interested in a certain goal. If he wanted to assure that he got the money, he would’ve made it as easy for his men as possible. But instead, he made sure they all died in the process which means that he was more interested in creating chaos than the bank’s money. Finally, the quick pace, the sheer amount of death, and the callousness he displays shows that he is not only the type of person who likes to create chaos but that the violence we just saw wasn’t even a big deal to him. This fact makes him even more frightening.

Writing Prompt: Create a villain, this could be the antagonist in a story you’ve already created or one you make up for this exercise. Once you have a clear picture of them in your head, write a scene that introduces them into a story. This could be a scene from the POV of your protagonist, from an innocent bystander, from a victim, or even from the villain themselves (though the last would be the trickiest). Use the scene to tell the reader as much as possible about your villain and their motives up front. Also utilize the scene as a means of cementing your villain in the reader’s mind, making them both memorable and frightening to the reader.

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Putting one of your characters through a spring cleaning writing exercise is an excellent way to practice showing rather than telling your readers character details through scene-work. For example, let’s say your character is spring cleaning and decides to get rid of an old exercise bike. Have they stopped exercising and don’t plan to begin again anytime soon? If this is the case, is your character depressed or simply not a fan of exercise. Or did they instead get a gym membership and that is preferable to them? One item and the choices they make surrounding that item can say so much about who they are and/or their current state.

Let’s say your character is cleaning out their closet. What types of clothes do they hold onto and why? Do they donate some clothes as they go through their wardrobe? What sorts of clothes do they decide to get rid of and why? Perhaps some of their clothes have holes or stains in them, where did that wear and tear come from?

Is this person’s home already fairly organized or are they finding old pieces of gum in various drawers? If it’s the latter, that could perhaps indicate that the character is going through a hard time as of late. Or maybe it can show the reader that this person is just generally messy, their home and life mimicking one another.

What does your character have that is sentimental in their home? An old note their Mom left in their lunchbox back in their Middle School days? Ticket stubs from a movie they saw with their partner years back? Half of a ‘best friends’ locket? Anything sentimental will have a story behind it and, when the character sees the object in real-time, it provides you with the opportunity to tell those stories. And, whether the character decides to hold on or let go to these items, says a lot about their level of sentimentality and/or the state of their relationship with the person about whom the memory shows.

Writing Prompt: Take a character from your manuscript or create a character for this exercise. Write about a spring cleaning day for your character. If you choose to use a character from your manuscript, choose a spring cleaning day from a significant year in your character’s life. Presume your readers know nothing about this character and give them character details solely by using the action of spring cleaning. Highlight important items and details around their home, tell the stories behind them, and use action to show how they feel about these objects.

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How people choose to celebrate (or protest, quite frankly) Valentine’s Day can say a lot about them as a character. Perhaps your character is in a long-term relationship, but still refuses to celebrate the holiday remembering all the years that they hated it when they were single. Then maybe their partner chooses to celebrate it anyway, despite their wishes to the contrary. How would your character react?

On the other hand, perhaps it’s a day they look forward to all year and have extremely high expectations for. Will their partner live up to their Valentine’s Day expectations? If they fall short, will it cause some tension with the couple? Is their partner being lazy or are their expectations too unreasonably high?

Then you have the people who are single on Valentine’s Day. Does the holiday make them sad or bitter, causing them to become irritable toward others for the duration of the day? Do they try to make the most of it, inviting some friends over to give themselves a little less traditional celebration? Or perhaps they even focus on self-love for the day, treating themselves to some chocolates, flowers, and maybe even a relaxing bubble bath?

The world (especially when it’s fiction) has a way of surprising people or changing their minds as well. A character could wake up bitter on a day they hate and then a chance encounter could completely change their entire attitude. For example, perhaps your character wakes up Valentine’s morning feeling bitter and annoyed at the romanticism surrounding them. They head to their local coffee shop where they have a ‘meet-cute’ with someone to whom they’re attracted. They end up getting their number and agreeing to meet up later that week for dinner. Suddenly, what started out as one of their least favorite days has turned out kind of romantic for them. Will their new positive attitude hold up for the rest of the day? Or will the romantic bombardment be too much for them to stay chipper?

Writing Prompt: Take a character from your novel or a character you’ve recently created. Choose any year of their life and write about how they chose to celebrate Valentine’s Day that year. Show the reader how they feel about the holiday and their attitude for the day using the actions and plans they choose to make, dialogue, and mannerisms.

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There are many things that can be considered ‘habits’ that you could allow your characters to exhibit. Perhaps they unconsciously bite their nails or play with the split ends in their hair. Or maybe they crack their neck or roll their eyes too much. It could also relate to speech, perhaps there is a certain phrase that they overuse out of habit.

A habit can also apply to something broader as well. Maybe your character has a habit of being late or being self-destructive when things seem to be going well in their life. They could also make a habit of getting back together with their ex or being selfless to a fault. Or perhaps they laugh when they’re uncomfortable and cry when they’re happy. These may feel like broad character traits but if your character makes a habit of doing them then they could be considered a habit of theirs.

Oftentimes habits can be unconscious, but they can also be chosen as well. People can choose to make a habit out of certain behaviors because they think it will better them as people. For example, people can make a habit of working out more consistently or being kinder to themselves. They can even attempt to replace bad habits with good ones. So let’s say they have previously had a habit of being selfless to a fault. Perhaps they make a goal for themselves to catch themselves when they do that and to try to consider their own feelings more frequently.

Writing Prompt: Either choose a character from your manuscript or invent one for this exercise. Make a list of five habits that your character has, they can be mannerisms or consistent broad behaviors. Now put your character in a scene, it could be anywhere with anyone. Your challenge is to write out the scene and allow the purpose of the scene to play out while also making your character’s habits clear. Their habits cannot be the subject of the scene in this exercise, you must show the reader the habits without making them the centerpiece of the scene.

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When she gets home at first she hates it and faces some clumsy but cute setbacks like missing her bus or falling into the snow. Then she runs into her old high school boyfriend and/or high school crush who now runs a bakery or small coffee shop. They have some sarcastic banter because she only respects business and he’s a humble small-town baker so he doesn’t respect business, of course.

She starts to warm up to the town, and in turn baker boy, and starts to feel the magic of Christmas. Sometimes real magic is involved, but not always. Then, surprise, business boyfriend shows up and she’s forced to then choose between the two sides of herself. Spoiler alert: she 100% of the time stays in the small town and becomes the accountant slash helper at the baker boy’s shop.

Needless to say, Hallmark movies can be cliche and predictable. But for those who love them, they are also addictive. There’s a sort of comfort to the predictability as well as the colorful, bright, and cheery overall tone. They’re full of happy accidents, totally unrealistic turns of fate, and lots of bed and breakfast inns, local bakeries, and gazebos.

Now, picture putting your protagonist in the midst of this cliche and cheery town that we see in Hallmark movies, where there is an almost magical level of holiday spirit. Would they blend right into the plot, seamlessly fitting the role of the lead? Would they be confused, thinking they’ve stumbled into another dimension? Or would they just be downright angry and annoyed when a local inn owner told them they were the only one who could save their business (even though they’ve never met before)?

Writing Prompt: Put your protagonist or one of your characters in the midst of your favorite Hallmark Christmas movie. Because you won’t really have to think about the plot structure, focus on how your character would react differently to circumstances than a typical Hallmark movie protagonist. Don’t be afraid to have some fun with the juxtaposition and add some humor or even darker undertones, let your protagonist take the reigns!

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