I don’t know anyone who loves traffic, unless it’s your job to study traffic patterns. However, there are a lot of chances for conflict when you have hundreds of people driving vehicles in close proximity, each with their own emotions, personal situations and levels of distraction. That’s not including all the things that could happen…
Tag: writing prompt
Muse on Monday – March 2, 2026
Have you ever had to give someone bad news? Even worse, maybe you had to give it to a whole group at once. I had to do that recently, and it wasn’t fun. There is a whole range of emotions people go through when getting bad news, from shock to anger, to grief, depending on…
Muse on Monday – February 23, 2026
Have you ever read a story where an animal is a character in the story? These aren’t always fantasy stories or children’s stories (although they often are). There are several ways you can use an animal as a character in a story. Story Prompt: February 23, 2026 Write a story with an animal as a…
Muse on Monday – February 16, 2026
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…
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…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 