“Spark” by Dusty Durston

I recently wrote about Spark Jr, Dusty Durston’s collection of writing prompts and challenge vocab for middle school writers.  Her new book, Spark, offers the same kind of creative inspiration for adult writers, especially for blocked writers.

There are forty story starts in Spark, all very different. Each prompt tosses readers into a dramatic scene, either a conflict or a major turning point in a character’s life, and then asks the reader/writer to finish the conflict or explain how our characters ended up at this point. While the prompts in Spark Jr had middle grades themes like magic, school bullies and new friends, these prompts are fully adult.  The mini scenes in Spark include tension-filled scenes of kidnapping, murder, fights and break-ups, and romance. Maybe “include” isn’t quite the right word — these story sparks work mostly by alluding to the dramatic events that led to this moment, and then inviting readers/writers to use their natural reader’s curiosity to start a new writing project.

The prompts in Dusty Durston‘s Spark are all about getting outside your usual writing zone, too, whether you’re stuck on  familiar characters, a tired setting, or just a generally stagnant WIP. The book encourages readers/writers down different paths or into different genres. There’s a completely wild range of styles and situations here, perfectly chosen to inspire a stuck writer into a different style or to just try something new as a reset before going back to your current WIP.

This is such a creative way to cope with writer’s block! I’m, uh, not always a fan of craft books about the writing process. (I was, uh, not always a fan of my MFA program, either.) But I’ve had so much trying challenges in writer’s groups, like including certain random objects or certain words in a new piece.  I’m often really impressed by what some fanfic writers can do in a ficlet or drabble challenge, too. Somehow these constraints and suggestions can really bring out creativity, and that’s how Spark works. too.

Spark is written by Dusty Durston and published by Novel Treasure Publishing.