Welcome to the first day of the 2018 IFJM Celebration.
Here are your five prompts which YOUR CHARACTER can respond to or incorporate into his journal.
Remember you can incorporate all five prompts into your entry, or one, two… You can also ignore the prompts entirely. Just because you don't use them at the beginning of the month doesn't mean you can't use them later (come back each day for new prompts). And if you get frustrated with incorporating the prompts stop using them!
List A: Finish This Sentence…
Your character finishes this sentence or thought by writing about something he thought, saw, drew, noticed, tec. Sometimes it is a matter of filling in the blank as your character writes, or setting up a context where he is thinking about this.
My life is about…
List B: Questions
Begin journaling with this question and explore an event in your character's mind or develop a context in the journal in which the character will write about this. Or have your character write with thins obviously in mind, in which case you don't need to actually state the question because the character just writes about it and is obviously thinking about it. Of course your character can also be involved in a prompts project and respond just as he would to a prompt in a prompt project.
What would change look like today?
List C: Quotations
Have your character use these on the page in some decorative way, or as a way your character generates ideas to write about, or in journaling text because you are developing a context in which your character just came upon that quotation.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. Dorothy Parker
List D: Found Dialogue
These are statements that are overheard by your character. That means that you are out and about in your real day and decide to journal in your character's voice and while he's doing that he overheads this statement. Your character responds to it not you. These types of inclusions in the journal help to better describe your character's world, the place he lives, the people around him, and the attitudes of the people around him.They also give him an opportunity to comment back in his journal—to agree, disagree, or wonder and otherwise explore. Be specific as your character writes. Be specific about where, when, how, does he/she overhear this and WHO is saying it to Whom? How are those people interacting? What is the scene like? What are the sounds, sights, smells, weather like when this is overhead? How does your character feel about what is said? Or about the people who said it? About the person addressed? Maybe a partial statement sends your character off on a reverie about that topic, a related topic, or a past event that has been weighing on his mind.
My ears are my most attractive feature.
List E: Objects
Your character will draw the following items. He will either do it because he is following a prompt project, or because he (and you) are going out to do something that will allow him time to sketch such an item.
Bakery goods (or home baked items).