Season 3 - Episode 7: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL - Spooky Scary Prompt Slamdown

Who's ready for a professional author to take you through going from prompt to story idea? We certainly are! Join Ken today as he goes solo and performs a live brainstorm!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It's time for a spooky, scary, prompt slam noun.

(00:10):
My name is Ken Mears and welcome to Writer's World.
Alright, so today's episode is going to work a little bit differently than usual since

(00:39):
Melissa and I have not been able to get together recently to work on any episodes.
So I am doing it on my own with a little bit of help from her on the side.
So how today is going to work is Melissa has provided a spooky, scary Halloween prompt
for me and I am going to, using that, develop a basic plot line for perhaps a short story.

(01:03):
And that way I will explain kind of how my thought process goes from a prompt into a
story and that will hopefully provide you guys some insight.
And it's just a fun little Halloween-y special.
So the prompt that Melissa has created for me is a Halloween horror movie gone wrong.

(01:26):
So my immediate thoughts are perhaps we start out the story with a group of teenagers maybe
watching a movie in their backyard.
It's cold outside.
Full moon is up and they are all just kind of enjoying this scary movie.
When they start noticing something odd it seems like a lot of the characters are glancing

(01:51):
at them perhaps.
And somebody maybe will notice this and be like, hey guys, why are all of these monsters
and mass killers looking at us?
And the reason that my mind goes immediately to that is because what else could possibly

(02:11):
go wrong with a horror movie night other than perhaps the movie coming to life?
So I would imagine that perhaps as the story would continue the movie would just kind of
grow closer and closer to home.
They would maybe start seeing familiar places like their local hangout spot and that kind

(02:32):
of thing and they might be thinking that's kind of weird until eventually maybe it climaxes
at they see themselves from behind and they've got these monsters or horrible serial killers
like right behind them and they are ready to strike and that could be where it ends.
Now to kind of explain my process behind that is obviously every story needs to move towards

(02:58):
a climax, right?
And the climax of this is obviously them realizing that they are the movie perhaps and I think
that a lot of conflict can be derived along the way with people being like, nah, they
just probably just filmed at our local hangout spot.
Oh no, there's no way this is real as other people are realizing that this probably is

(03:22):
real and they're kind of freaking out.
That's kind of my thought process on turning that into a story and if I were to actually
write this into a short story, I know I would for sure start with opening line like the
movie night was going just fine until the monsters saw us or something like that.

(03:43):
You need a good attention grabbing opening line, something that really makes people wonder,
ooh, what is this story?
Where is it going?
What leads up to this person saying what they are saying?
So that's just kind of my thought on this prompt and I would love to hear your guys'
thoughts on what you would like to do with that prompt.

(04:06):
I would love to hear even some stories come out of this, the writing prompt slam down
session and I hope that today's episode was helpful.
If you like our podcast, maybe make sure you share it with your friends and family.
We are available on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter at Riders World Podcast Official

(04:30):
and if you would like to support us, we do have a Patreon at patreon.com slash ridersworld
and without further ado, I think that is about it for today.
So, I've been Ken Mears and keep on riding.