November is NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, when many bloggers pledge to blog every day of the month. Because it can be challenging to come up with things to write about every day there are many lists of NaBloPoMo writing prompts to give people ideas for blog posts. This is one of those, but it’s also a bit different than most other writing prompt lists.
Most NaBloPoMo writing prompts suggest the subjects of potential blog posts. I know those sorts of writing prompts are helpful to some people, but I am rarely inspired by being told what to write about.
The most effective way for me to combat writer’s block is to force myself to break out of the standard 500 word blog post format. I’m inspired by challenges of structure. I’m the sort of person who sees a list of 20 two-sentence horror stories, and I immediately want to write 20 more two-sentence horror stories.
Here are the sort of prompts that inspire me. These 30 blog writing prompts are based on form instead of subject. They don’t suggest what to write, only how to convey whatever your chosen topic may be. They could even be used in conjunction with other writing prompts by taking a subject prompt and executing it in one of these formats. Give them a try.
- Make a list. (You’re soaking in it.)
- Write a blog post in the form of a letter.
- Make an alphabetical list of 26 items starting with each letter of the alphabet.
- Transcribe a real interview.
- Write an imagined interview.
- Write a blog post in the form of a press release.
- Make it rhyme.
- Take a picture (or a few), and publish a wordless post.
- Make a list of things that start with the same letter.
- Write a post in longhand and publish a picture of it.
- Write an obituary. (It doesn’t have to be for a person.)
- Share a bunch of Pinterest pins.
- Draw something.
- Start every paragraph with the same phrase.
- Write a post that begins and ends with the same sentence.
- Write a haiku (or several).
- Share a bunch of YouTube videos.
- Write a sonnet.
- Write a fake job posting or want ad.
- Write a recipe either for food or describing something else using a fake recipe format.
- Create a Venn diagram.
- Share a bunch of stock photos or GIFs.
- Do a video blog post (vlog).
- Write a review (such as of a book, movie or restaurant).
- Write about an adult subject as though it were a children’s story.
- Write a fake commercial or movie trailer voice over script.
- Write without adjectives or adverbs.
- Piece together letters like a ransom note.
- Write a list of instructions.
- Black out a news or magazine article to reveal only certain words. (See the blackout poetry of Austin Kleon as an example.)
Good luck to everyone doing NaBloPoMo. I will not be joining you. I posted 24 Halloween blog posts during October, which was exhausting enough.
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Kim Z. Dale 