The Writer’s Idea Book by Jack Heffron includes more than 800 prompts. I randomly opened the book to “Chapter Fourteen: Your Fifteen Minutes.” Each chapter begins with a famous writer’s quote. Chateaubriand was assigned this chapter with: “Let us not be too scornful of fame: nothing is lovelier, unless it be virtue.”
Heffron was a senior editor at Writer’s Digest Books and Story Press.
He also wrote The Best Writing on Writing and co-wrote with Rusty McClure, Coral Castle: The Story of Ed Leedskalnin and his American Stonehenge.”
There were over ten prompts in Chapter Fourteen so I closed my eyes and pointed to this one:
“Write about a news event to which you have some connection. Did an important event occur in you hometown? Were you ever involved, even as a by-stander, in an event that the general public will remember?…Freewrite everything you can remember about the event, form the details and the actions into a narrative, research the event to add relevant background, speculate on its significance to you.”
Let me know if you used the prompt and what developed.
Wow. I want that book.
I got it from Amazon. Copyright date is 2011 so local bookstores should be able to get it for you too.