Illustration by Ana Hinojosa.

Illustration by Ana Hinojosa.

Happy August, Rooks! Our August theme, “Fill in the Blank,” lends itself really well to fun creative prompts. The first thing that I (Stephanie) thought of was an exercise based on one that my teacher used in that really cool Contemporary Fairytales class that I keep talking about. (Her name is Anca Szilagyi and you should check out her work.) She had us draw different fairytale archetypes from an envelope and use them to write a story. I found it really inspiring so I wanted to do something similar here. I am going to give you an archetypal character, a setting and a theme and you will then combine these three things to tell a story. Since I can’t reach through the computer and give you an envelope to draw from (though that would be pretty rad, especially if you all gave me candy in return or something), I’ve come up with another system of randomization. Here goes:

Character Type:

If your first name starts with the letter A-G: The Rebel
If your first name starts with the letter H-M: The Trickster
If your first name starts with the letter N-S: The Traveler
If your first name starts with the letter T-Z: The Innocent

Setting:

If your last name starts with the letter A-G: The Forest
If your last name starts with the letter H-M: The Sea/Sea-side
If your last name starts with the letter N-S: The City
If your last name starts with the letter T-Z: Outer space

Theme:

If you were born in the months: January-March: A Quest
If you were born in the months: April-June: Coming of Age
If you were born in the months: July-September: A Ghost/Supernatural Story
If you were born in the months: October-December: A Love Story

So take your character type (and I didn’t say that the character has to be your main character, just one who is important to your story), your setting, and your theme and get creative. You can tell your story in any form you want: prose, poetry, comic, collage, or other artistic rendition.

Send whatever you create along with your first name, last initial, age, and city/state to [email protected] with the subject line “Creative Prompt” by Monday, August 15 at 6 PM EST. ♦