Navigating Prompts: Hit the road

Take this word and shove it

Or rather—don’t. As we’ve mentioned before, judges and editors want to see you incorporate a prompt, not just include it. They want to see where you go with your own story, told in your own unique style and voice, with pieces they give you. But how do you do this when the words themselves are not your own?

Ready, set, go

This month, we’ll be taking working with one of our favorite prompt styles: the word, phrase, or sentence prompt.

Why is it here?

Let’s be real: we love this prompt style so much that we use it both in our fiction and our nonfiction Super Challenge competitions. So do a lot of other competitions or anthologies. It’s a great way to test a writer’s flexibility and attention to voice, nuance, and context. And it’s a pretty safe bet that writers won’t be pulling out their trunk stories for submission, or that it’ll be easy to tell if they did.

How do you use it?

At first glance, it seems simple enough.

At its most basic, “incorporating a word” means that you need to use the word clearly and correctly at some point in your story or essay. “Incorporating a phrase or sentence” means that you need to use the entire phrase, exactly as it appears, at some point in your story or essay—and in the case of first or last line prompts, at a specified point in your story or essay. Many competitions or calls for submission will also specify any rules related to punctuation, verb tenses, etc. For example, you may (or may not) be allowed to place a sentence inside quotation marks to make it a line of dialogue, or to change a verb tense (say to said, is to was, etc.) or pronoun.

But it’s trickier than it sounds. You can’t just jam the word, phrase, or sentence in there and then write the story you want to write instead around it. Like we said, this is testing your ability to be flexible, to match voice and vocabulary that might not be your own. Let’s talk about how to sit with and internalize that prompt until it really does become an organic part of your writing.

So what are the elements of an integrated word, phrase, or sentence prompt?

In general:

What are judges or editors looking for from you when they give you this kind of prompt? Some elements are purely technical: was the word or phrase used clearly and correctly? Were punctuation rules (if any) followed? Were any of the words of the prompt phrase or sentence changed? In many cases, breaking any of these technical rules is enough to disqualify your story or essay from a competition or publication. Other elements are more stylistic: does the word, phrase or sentence sound like part of the writer’s ordinary voice and vocabulary? This may mean that you need to adapt your writing style a bit to fit the word in. For example, if your word was “trifle” or your phrase was “hadn’t a sixpence to scratch with” and you ordinarily write in a broad, casual modern style, you might need to adjust the rest of your vocabulary so that the prompt doesn’t stand out awkwardly, or figure out a way to fit in a section of work that uses other phrasing (maybe a newspaper? Dialogue?).

Before we start getting deeper into how this works, let’s talk about voice. Because we’re going to be saying “voice” a lot, and it pays to make sure you understand what it means before you try to jump in and do it.

Voice is the way a writer uses, manipulates, and breaks the rules of language in order to sound distinctive.

Hemingway’s “voice” is short phrases, simple words, many sentences. e.e. cummings’ voice is to combine words and punctuation to make vivid imagery. Gabriel García Márquez used complex sentences and long words that ran together into archaic-feeling imagery. You couldn’t possibly mistake the voice of one of these writers for another.

You, too, have a distinctive voice in your writing. There are patterns to the way you construct your sentences, to how long you like your paragraphs, to how you like to combine description and action. The challenge to the word or phrase prompt is that it forces you to adapt that voice so that the word or phrase doesn’t stick out. Need an example? Here are the opening lines of One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of 20 adobe houses built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

And here are the opening lines of One Hundred Years of Solitude with a badly incorporated phrase prompt:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of 20 adobe houses built on the bank of the little river that burbles cheerily along between its warm grassy banks. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

See how that phrase sticks out? It’s written in a youthful, happy tone, it uses a word that’s elsewhere in the sentence, and it’s in the wrong verb tense. Now here are the opening lines of One Hundred Years of Solitude in someone else’s voice, leaving part of the last sentence alone as though it were a phrase prompt:

The first time I saw ice, my pappy had took me down to the river. That river ran past our little shanty town, maybe 20 houses or so, and it was the clearest water I ever did know. Down deep under it, you could see the way the stones were wore round like eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, so we pointed at em when we needed to ask for somethin.

The phrase still sticks out, right? Because it’s a complete mismatch to the author’s voice.

Understand voice a little better? Great. Now let’s talk about how to use these kinds of prompts.

Let’s be specific:

Word prompts

• To work with a word prompt, you need to understand what the word means and how it’s used. Don’t get cocky! Look it up. Infamous doesn’t mean “very famous” and bemused doesn’t mean “think it’s funny.”
• Once you know what your word means, read it in some sentences.
  • Use the sample sentences in the dictionary- they’re sure to have it right.
  • Use your search engine to find instances of the word in use, but make sure the sources are reliable. We love folks who post their writing for free, but they don’t always edit first, and their editors may not be professionals.
  • It’s important to understand not only the basic meaning, but the nuance and flavor of the word. Whisper and shout don’t mean the same thing, even though they’re both synonyms for “speak.” That’s obvious. Less obvious is the difference between whisper, murmur, mumble, and mutter. All of those are “speaking quietly” but they all imply a much different method of speaking. Whispering is aspirated, not voiced. Murmuring is voiced, but low, and it’s often comforting. Mumbling isn’t well-enunciated, and it has a flavor of reluctance to speak. And muttering can be hostile: it’s quiet speech that isn’t really meant to be overheard unless you’re doing it passive-aggressively. So you don’t want to have a mother mutter to a sick child, and your shy spelling bee competitor mumbles, not murmurs.
• Now try using it in a few sentences. Essentially, you’re giving yourself a sentence prompt. Get your friends or beta readers to read these sentences and see if the word makes sense where and how you’ve used it.
• Now you’re ready to write the rest of your… no you’re not.
  • Does this sound like you? If it doesn’t, you’ll need to adjust your writing (or edit it later) to sound like the kind of writer who uses that word.
  • Whether it’s a long “five dollar word” like brobdingnagian or prognathous, or a short pithy one like turd or heck, the rest of your work will need to support that word. Don’t leave either kind of word sticking out there as the only one of its sort.
• For heck’s sake please don’t write a spelling bee story. No, seriously. Nothing says “I couldn’t successfully integrate this word and honestly I have no idea what it means” like a spelling bee story. Remember the object prompt? If you could replace your word prompt with “banana” it’s not integrated.

Phrase prompts

• Phrase prompts build on word prompts, which sounds obvious but don’t take anything for granted. Know what the words mean, and look out for idioms that you might not be familiar with. “There’s a piece of cake over here” is different from “it was a piece of cake.”
• Once you understand the phrase, check the rules again. What are you allowed to do with it? Does it need to stay exactly as is? If not, what can and can’t you change? Does it need to be used at a certain point in the story? All of these things will narrow the possible universe of stories you can tell with the phrase.
• Time to use your phrase:
  • Do you need to make it into a complete sentence?
  • If it’s in dialogue, do the rest of the character’s lines sound like they’re in the same voice as the phrase?
  • If it’s not in dialogue, does it sound like the rest of the writing? Remember, this is the one part you can’t change, so be prepared to edit the rest.
  • Does your phrase contain a verb? The rest of your story will need to be told in a way that makes that verb be in the appropriate tense.
• Check your work:
  • If the phrase is long enough, see if a reader can find it without being told what it is.
  • If it’s brief, tell them once before they begin reading. If your writing is seamless it may still be hard to find. (At least one of our judges has a story to tell about the time they were absolutely unable to find the prompt, even though they knew what it was and had just read three other stories with it, only to do a search and find out that it was literally in the second paragraph of the story. It was that well-incorporated. Be that writer.)

Sentence prompts

• A sentence prompt is just a phrase prompt with a couple extra rules.
  • You’re not going to be able to add words before or after the sentence, so when you’re checking voice, consider the sentence length.
  • Sentence prompts are more likely to be “first line” or “last line” prompts, meaning you must use them at that point in your story.
  • Sentence prompts are more likely to lock in verb tense, pronouns, etc. so pay attention to that for the rest of your story.
• A few words about first line prompts:
  • Don’t just throw that line on there and then go on to tell a story that has nothing to do with it. Seriously we cannot tell you how often we’ve read a story that starts out like “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Jane looks up from her jumprope, which she is untangling, and laughs merrily. ‘Hi, daddy,’ she says to Aureliano. ‘You came home late!'” That’s weird, right? It’s not just us?
  • Verb tense matters A LOT with this one. Reread that example. Ouch, right? How about this one: “‘Many years later, he faced the firing squad,’ Bob says. ‘He’s not the only one, though. Many soldiers are there, staring blankly ahead.'” Dialogue is a great way to shift tense – a speaker may be talking about something that already happened while your story is in present tense, or vice versa – but you have to use the prompt tense for the whole dialogue.
• A few words about last line prompts:
  • Look, these are hard. From a first line you could go anywhere, but a last line you need to get to. That means pulling that sentence apart for any information that’s in it and making sure you set it up somewhere earlier in the story. If your last line is “Above us the stars came out, one by one” then you need to make sure that your characters are somewhere and somewhen that the stars will be visible but are not until that last line. And the stars need to be above them, not below or around them.
  • You can have fun with a last line prompt. Sometimes the prompt writer will give you a sentence that can function like a tornada. Or a punchline, or a moral, or… the sky might be the limit. Take the last line from the example above. What if the line were a pun? What if your characters were under a Broadway stage? Of course, you still have to set up the joke, but if that last line prompt hits you the right way, you should go for it.
  • If you’re really struggling with a last line prompt, try it as the first line. Write your story, then play with the chronological order until the last line is where it belongs.

Save yourself some trouble: don’t make these common mistakes

• DO cut and paste the prompt. Seriously. Don’t take the chance that you’ll remember a word wrong or misspell it or… Please just cut and paste it. It’s right there. Then HIGHLIGHT IT so that you know not to edit it. Don’t just use a different color font, that’s too easy to miss on your final proofread. Highlight it and take the highlight out when you’re done writing.
• Unless the competition or anthology tells you to, DON’T bold, italicize, or otherwise set off the prompt visually. It makes it much harder to tell if you’ve incorporated it seamlessly. Don’t worry. The reader will find it.
• Triple check the rules before you turn in your story. Were you allowed to change that verb? Is your prompt in the right spot?

Your turn!

Check out our weekly prompt posts and try to tell a story using the word, phrase, or sentence prompts given. Don’t forget to ask for help in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord if you’ve got questions – you can post a link to your draft or even a snippet of your story or essay (up to 250 words) for immediate feedback. Don’t forget to use content warnings where they’re merited, so that you can get the best and most engaged readers for the words you like to write.

What’s next?

Wondering what the year has in store? Here’s a handy roadmap!

Get out your map

Here's the general flow of this year's workshop series. You don't have to follow them in order, but you may find that one builds on the next.

September: Retellings

October: Style over Substance

November: Combination Prompts

December: Roundup

About the author:

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me