✎ prompts and activities

Prompt: Using titles to find the essay

take the story you already want to write, and ask, Where’s the money in this? Then lead with the number. Maybe stick that number in your headline and subject line.

1. Make a list of your own everyday moments, encounters or events. Real or imagined. Fiction or nonfiction. (Fiction writers feel free to pull from your own life and share it with a character.) At this point, don’t worry about what your everyday moments mean and how each might connect to something else. Get the basic ideas down. And go ahead—share a

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Why, actually, are you doing this?

Think of a word or phrase that you see everywhere. Consider what this term means to you, and to others. What has the term meant historically, and where does it come from? Who embraces this way of characterizing the world, and who stands to lose out if we don’t actually unpack what’s going on here in this linguistic construction? What does this term... See more

Prompt: Pick a word that holds significance in your life. What did this word used to mean to you, and what does it mean now? How has the definition changed, and in what ways has it remained the same? You can answer these questions literally or use them as inspiration for a poem, personal essay, book passage, etc. I did the latter and wrote a relate... See more

Workshop: Read newspaper and magazine stories that have anecdotal leads followed by “nut” paragraphs that explain what the story is about. Notice if the level of language moves from the concrete to the more abstract. Find some stories about bureaucracy or public policy that seem stuck in the middle of the ladder of abstraction. What kind of reporti... See more