I find it interesting to look at the jobs the main characters have in stories. A disproportionate number seem to be writers, for example, since that is what writers know. There aren’t a lot of electricians as main characters though. Just for fun, I went back through the novels I’ve written to see what jobs…
Tag: writing prompt
Muse on Monday – February 9, 2026
I will admit I have not seen the 2002 movie Phone Booth, but I find the premise intriguing: a man is trapped in a phone booth and will be killed if he leaves. The whole movie takes place there. There is something limiting about having all the action in a story happen in one place,…
Muse on Monday – February 2, 2026
This past week, a lot of the United States has been enduring winter conditions they are not used to. It’s been cold and snowy but we’re used to it so it’s not as big a deal as it is in, say, Texas or Georgia. I’ve lived in cold areas my whole life and maybe because…
Muse on Monday – January 26, 2026
Story Prompt: January 26, 2026 Write a story where the character finds something in their food The stereotypical version of this is a customer in a restaurant finding a fly in their soup. However, try to think of where else this could take place (at a friend’s house, in a military cafeteria, cooking for themselves…
Muse on Monday – January 19, 2026
Imagine what we could call a courting scene. There are two people with a spark of attraction between them but they don’t know each other very well, maybe at all. Now take out any dialogue and look only at what they do, where they look, their posture, what they do with their hands. There is…
Muse on Monday – January 12, 2026
A story where the conflict is between two parties of very unmatched power is known as a David and Goliath story, from the story in the Bible of the shepherd boy who took on a 9-foot-tall warrior. Examples of this could be Star Wars, where the rebels take on the Imperial forces or Avatar where…
Muse on Monday – January 5, 2026
We don’t usually think much about time unless it’s at a demarcation point, like the new year last week or a birthday or other milestone. Time just flows by in the background of our lives. However, there are times when significant things happen quickly and we are very aware of how fast (or slow) time…
Muse on Monday – December 22, 2025
A lot of interesting stuff happens on the border between two things. That’s because there is inherent tension between the stuff on one side and the stuff on the other. Borders could either be in time or space. We are coming up on a border in time between 2025 and 2026, although this is arbitrary…
Muse on Monday – December 15, 2025
Don’t you love Christmas? What, you don’t? A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with the holidays: love, because it is supposed to be a great time of celebration with family and friends; hate, because it is often filled with stress over expectations and sadness that things aren’t the way they should be. With…
Muse on Monday – December 8, 2025
For most of my life, I haven’t really known my neighbors. We might say hi in passing but nothing more. I do know the neighbors on both sides of us where we are currently and we get along well, so that’s a blessing. Bad neighbors, on the other hand, are a nightmare since there is…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 