December prompts (for January meeting)
- Traditional stories are sacred to the First Nations of Canada. These stories contain story-spirits and have transformative powers. They are so potent that they can only be told in Winter to preserve these powers. Winter is the season for important stories. The following prompts ask for stories set in Winter. Your stories can be prose or poetry, fiction or non-fiction.
- Best Time — Think of a time that was particularly important or significant to you. Either tell the story behind this time or use it to inspire another story. As always your story can be fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry.
- Sound of Snow — Describe the sound of snow. When can you make snow whisper? When can you make it shout? Or groan?
- The Snowman — The title is the prompt.
- Indoors and Out — Do you prefer to be indoors or outdoors during Winter? Why? What is your favourite activity?
- Warm This Winter Night — Share stories and poems to warm this Winter night.
- Writing prompts for the Holidays
- Bookstore conversations
- What should not be forgotten
- Five resolutions
- Acrostic Winter — Write a wintry acrostic poem using Winter. Make the poem profound.
‘Tis the Season: Winter and Christmas Prompts
- Try other prompts on our Christmas/Winter prompts page.
- Or try our Christmas Cracker and Fortune Cookie prompts.
- Dear Santa — Shawn Urban’s story, From Santa’s Desk, starts with a letter to Santa from a homeless orphan. Paulette Collins suggested that our 2017 December prompt be a letter to Santa from a child of our making who is in a situation we imagine. Write a letter to Santa from a specific child in a specific circumstance. Write from the child’s point of view.
From Observances to Prompts
- December observes new books, short stories, letter and thank-you note writing, plain English and banished words, the Arabic language, Haiku poetry and no-L compositions.
- A’phabet or No-L Day, December 25, is a playful observance, and a seasonally appropriate pun, in which writers write prose or poetry, fiction or non-fiction with no Ls in them. Try it out. Have fun.
- Read a New Book and Celebrate Short Stories — Write a short story in which something unexpected happens when you or someone else reads a new book.