Fun With Prompts

Here’s a fun game to fire up the writing juices when you find yourself blocked. Flip through a magazine or Internet sites, find an intriguing photo, and write a flash scene about it. If you’re in a writing group, everybody can join in. We’ve done this a couple of times over at Shapeshifter Seductions. One picture, five writers, five completely different entertaining stories, lots of happy readers. Wins all around.

I found the above picture in a Yahoo story on prize-winning wildlife photography. The panicked baby gazelle was being used as a teaching tool by a mama cheetah for her less-than-expert offspring. One suggestion from Savanna later, and I’ve got today’s blog:

Oh cud, LeeAnn thought as she pelted over the veldt with the Chodo brothers in hot pursuit. Damn horny cat boys. You couldn’t even go to the water hole without some blasted sack of hormones on legs trying to run you down.

She was faster than they, but just barely. The Chodos had just gone through an adolescent growth spurt and hadn’t gained full control of their new, lengthy limbs yet. And what fine limbs those were. LeeAnn had often spied on the boys in their human forms. Chet had the handsomest legs of the four, with strong, shapely calves. Kevin was the one with the sense of humor and heart-stopping smile. Killian was trying to grow a moustache to make himself look older, which LeeAnn considered a waste of facial fur. James didn’t talk much. With that killer bod of his, he didn’t need to. Puberty had worked the most wonderful miracles on all four of the boys.

Wait a ding-dong minute. Why the hell was she running?

LeeAnn screeched to a halt. She spun and confronted the cheetahs. Taken by surprise, the Chodo brothers tried to stop and ended up in a four-way collision, literally falling all over each other. They went down in a yowling, spotted heap of long limbs and tails. LeeAnn shook her head.

She straightened gracefully into her human form. The Chodos shifted automatically, prompted more by confusion than anything else. Four red-faced, lean and beautiful young men stared up at her. Somehow the power had slid out of their hands and into hers, and they were still working it out.

“So, boys,” LeeAnn purred, “who wants to eat me?”

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For a variation, try the first-line game. Somebody provides the first line of a story, and everyone goes from there. Here’s the first line of an unsold novel of mine currently moldering in the closet. Maybe you’ll have better luck with it. “The imp came at me out of nowhere.” Happy writing!