Category: Writing Prompts

Posted in Writing Prompts

Simply 6- Minutes 5/23/23- Current Events

Posted on by Susan St.Pierre

We must make-up a story in only six minutes using the photo below as inspiration.

I was busy making my granddaughter toast as a news report played on the TV in the background.

“Today, the NAACP has advised all ‘people of color’ to avoid travel to Florida. They explained that Govenor DeSantis was outwardly unfriendly to minorities because of his ‘ push back’ on CRT in Florida classrooms.
A spokesperson further claims that the atmosphere there could be overtly hostile, even dangerous, for ‘people of color’!”

My application of Nutella to her toast became inadvertently hostile, when I heard that, producing a tear in the bread. I couldn’t help but comment.

” The use of fear as a political weapon is out-of-control. Getting what you want by misrepresenting the truth to scare people is ubiquitous these days! Do you know what ubiquitous means, Dear? It means something can be found everywhere.”

“Look Grandma! Even Goldie is trying to scare us to get attention! It IS everywhere.”

https://christinebialczak.com/2023/05/23/simply-6-minutes-welcome-to-the-challenge-05-23-2023/

Posted in Writing Prompts

Five Word Weekly Challenge 5/22/23 Fine and Dandy

Posted on by Susan St.Pierre


Granddad never threw anything out. What distinguished him from a hoarder was the clever method he used in repurposing his ‘treasures’. He never failed to surprise me with his ingenuity.
Granny was amazingly patient with his “collection”, but she demanded a neatly kept yard adjacent to her house.
They lived in a remote valley on a dead-end near a secluded pond. I didn’t know what I’d find there this year as I arrived to spend the summer with them again.

Granny met me first.

“So happy to see you, Charles! It’s been a ‘dog’s age’. Why you look ‘fit as a fiddle’, dear!”

“I work out a little. Thanks! Where’s Granddad?”

Granny and Grandad had a way of talking that always included cliches. They made me smile but I’d be afraid to try to count them.

“‘In a nutshell’, he’s ‘in hot water’ with me. I’d like to ‘knock his block off’! Look at the old skiff he dragged onto my lawn. I just finished ‘laying down the law’ to that man so he’s ‘licking his wounds’ behind the shed.”

“It looks like he intends to make you a little garden in the old wreck, Granny. It could be pretty with paint. I’ll help him make it nice.”

“‘Over my dead body’, Charlie! I have too much to grow to use that contraption for a garden. ‘Mark my words’ “you’re going to need a bigger boat”. The ‘long and short of it’ is he’ll have to keep it out of my sight.

“I’ll drag it around back then. Maybe we’ll just make it an herb garden. Okay?’

Granny waved me off and stomped inside.
As I rounded the corner inching the skiff along with a rope, there sat Granddad on an old stool. He was chuckling to himself.

“I heard ya talking to Granny. ‘Come hell or high water’ that ‘squeaky wheel always gets the grease’, doesn’t she. But I hope you know this is all ‘a blessing in disguise’, my boy. The ‘ace up my sleeve’ was ‘making a fuss’ enough to get her distracted into letting me keep the dang thing. It worked ‘fine and dandy’! I’m on ‘cloud nine’.”


https://gmgblog.ca/2023/05/22/five-word-weekly-challenge-2321/

Posted in Writing Prompts

Morning Inspiration: Prompt #241~ Making Their Own Changes

Posted on by Susan St.Pierre

Mary Ellen and Isha had remained friends since High School. They were known as the “Dynamic Duo” on their field hockey team. A center forward and right forward respectively. Isha would ‘feed’ the ball to Mary Ellen and she’d score. Their timing was extraordinary. They often wondered if the seasonal scoring record that they had attained had been broken yet.
After 15 years of text correspondence and phone calls, the ladies decided to meet in their old hometown to have a much overdue personal get-together.
As they sat outside of a pub, that they once snuck into as under-aged seniors, they reminisced about their ‘glory days’.
A young lady who overheard them, introduced herself as the current High School Field Hockey captain at their alma mater.
That’s when the conversation got really interesting.
The young lady told the ‘duo’ that the make-up of the team had dramatically changed since, even she, had been a freshman.
Two transgender persons and one identifying as a cat, were on the current roster.

Mary Ellen and Isha weren’t exactly sure how to respond until ‘the senior’ laughed out loud. Her laid-back attitude surprised them by putting them immediately at ease.

She explained that the season for this year had thankfully just ended.

“That woke stuff isn’t going to last, you know. As soon as I graduate, I’m starting my own local “girls only” league. My dad is rich, and my mom is a lawyer. All of the ‘up and coming’ female athletes have vowed not to ‘try out’ at school next year and instead play for us. The only “game” they’re interested in is field hockey.”


https://nortinaswriting.com/2023/05/19/morning-inspiration-writing-prompt-no-241/

Posted in Writing Prompts

Simply 6-Minutes 5/16/23 Dad’s Revenge

Posted on by Susan St.Pierre

We are challenged to write a story about the photo below in only 6 minutes.

James Hale AKA “Tank” had been a biker since he could remember. He had the tats, the beard, and the rebel attitude that accompanied his lifestyle too. He never had any ‘brushes’ with the law but had seen lots of gnarly stuff go down. It was a life for “losers”.
Now that he had finally settled down and had kids, his biker club days were reduced to weekend rides, and he forbade any of his “brothers” to come to his house. He’d gotten through the rough life but understood how toxic it could be for his impressionable children. He wanted so much more for them.
His son, to his dismay, started sneaking around and showing an interest in a ‘gang mentality’, so Tank decided that he’d have to do something outrageous to damage the son’s ‘street cred’ to get him off that path.
Tank went so far as to show up to his fifteen-year old’s secret clubhouse dressed as a fairy. The “gang” laughed their butts off, but Tank’s son couldn’t live the embarrassment down and was ‘kicked to the curb’ by the punks.
Tank further warned his furious son that if his grades didn’t rise, he’d show up at school in the outfit and walk him home every day.



https://christinebialczak.com/2023/05/16/simply-6-minutes-welcome-to-the-challenge-05-16-2023/

Posted in Writing Prompts

Five Word Weekly Challenge 5/15/23- A Mother’s Fortune

Posted on by Susan St.Pierre


She squatted in order to keep their eyes level. Her four-year-old had just asked a hilarious and brilliant question.
“How come if you split a crumb in half, you get two crumbs not two half-crumbs?”
Listening to her children exploring and learning language was one fortune of many she’d been able to embrace from her decision to homeschool. She hadn’t realized how her life had been emotionally anemic and impoverished before. Her bank account was meeker, but her heart had become solvent.
Her eyes filled with pride and amusement.
“What a smart question! Let’s explore other simple things that work the same way. We’ll make a poster.”


https://gmgblog.ca/2023/05/15/five-word-weekly-challenge-2320/

Posted in Writing Prompts

Four Line Fiction 5/9/23 Weightlessness

Posted on by Susan St.Pierre

Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Tuesday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.

Our photo prompt:

It was the absolutely worst thing she could have been told about her developmentally delayed baby girl and the pediatrician sat patiently by, as she sobbed, before telling her about the definitive test he’d planned.

He highly suspected a rare untreatable cancer that had been growing in Hallie’s brain even before her birth 8 months ago.

Unable to eat or sleep she waited for the call from the lab and when she grabbed the phone on the first ring, she nearly tore it from the wall before hearing the words she’d prayed for, “We’re happy to report that the test was negative. There’s no sign of cancer.”

Hallie’s Mommy weightlessly walked out of her front door and straight down the middle of the highway -shedding all her desperate and dark “What ifs?” along the way -as there would be nothing that could ever paralyzingly frighten her again, like those expectations of losing her baby.

https://gmgblog.ca/2023/05/09/four-line-fiction-2319/