History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Misheard Song Lyrics as a Story Prompt

| March 22, 2024

Have you ever misheard or misunderstood the lyrics to a song? If so, you’re not alone. In fact, there’s a website devoted to this, called KissThisGuy (after a mishearing of a Jimi Hendrix song). I think misheard lyrics could make a great prompt for a story. Whether you use one of your own or one […]

Fun for Friday: Seasons as Characters

| September 22, 2023

In connection with Monday’s post about seasons in worldbuilding, I’m thinking about seasons as characters. How would you write a character based on spring? Which elements of that season would you emphasize? You could write a character who’s all joy and rebirth and growing things, or you could write a character who’s like torrential downpours […]

Fun for Friday: Random Fun Facts = Writing Prompts?

| July 21, 2023

If you’re looking for a different sort of writing prompt, check out this list of random facts from Cosmo UK. Some of them may be things you already know, while others may be new to you! (I did not know that the Eiffel Tower is not always the same height–not something the French nuns taught […]

Fun for Friday: Writing Prompts for Non-Fiction Turned to Fiction

| May 19, 2023

Sometimes, even non-fiction writing prompts can be a good source of inspiration if you look at them from a fictional lens. For example, the writing prompts offered here are meant to be more of journaling exercises. But you could also use them to stretch your fiction writing skills by writing them from the perspective of […]

Fun for Friday: Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Writing Prompts

| May 5, 2023

If you like writing sci-fi, the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space has prepared a writing prompt based on objects in their collection, originally for a Sci-Fi Family Day. If the images of Smithsonian artifacts in that document don’t spark any ideas, you can also search their multimedia gallery to see if something there works […]

Fun for Friday: Micro Stories?

| February 17, 2023

If you’re looking for a potentially very quick writing prompt, check out this idea to write a micro story by filling in the blanks with an excuse. It may seem a little silly at first, but if you read through the post, it links to another post that explains this exercise and how it works […]

Fun for Friday: Song Shuffle

| April 15, 2022

Have you ever gotten a plot or character from a song? I certainly have, many times over. Drawfee recently gave their artists a challenge to create a character based on the first three songs that came up on shuffle. I think this would be a fun idea to inspire either a character or a plot […]

Fun for Friday: Wordle as Writing Prompts?

| February 18, 2022

If you’ve somehow missed the phenomenon that is Wordle, I’m impressed. The small white (or black), yellow, and green boxes are everywhere as people guess the word of the day. For me, it’s a nice way to start my morning and get my brain in gear. If you play Wordle regularly, and you’re looking for […]

Fun for Friday: Fireworks, from a Different Perspective

| July 3, 2020

Most readers of this blog have probably seen fireworks in person at some point in their lives. If you haven’t seen them live, you’ve probably seen video of fireworks. Or, if you haven’t seen them, you may have heard them or felt their booms rattle through your body. But imagine if you had never seen, […]