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A good exercise to help you write stories that really feel yours
Let’s be honest: writing is a craft that needs to be practiced over and over again before you’re able to master it. It requires time and dedication to produce good content, and this holds true both for fiction and nonfiction.
Even before you start writing, you have to face a question which might seem stupid until you find it blocking your path: what do I write about? If it is non-fiction it seems like an obvious answer: write about yourself, your life experience, a passion of yours. It’s not so immediate as it seems, but that is a good start. There is plenty of people looking for advice on something you know well, or sharing a passion with you, which will consequently enjoy reading your work.
But what about fiction? A general rule of thumb says that every fiction story sparks from a single question: “What if?”. It is immediate to see that this question can lead you anywhere: problem is, this anywhere is too wide, while creativity is a muscle which works best when it faces constraints.
As it is usually the case nowadays, the world wide web comes to the rescue: there are so many ideas generation websites just a “writing prompt” Google search away, waiting for you to click on them and begin your masterpiece novel or short story. I have tried a few myself, but as much as the prompts are…