History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: May 2021 Prompts

| April 30, 2021

May is Mermay in the art community, and I like to turn a lot of art prompts into writing prompts. So the first column of this month’s prompts are from the Mermay 2021 list. And while these words are geared toward inspiring artists to draw mermaids, you may come up with different ideas for your […]

Fun for Friday: Superhero Writing Prompts

| April 16, 2021

I’ve got superheroes on my mind lately, as I’ve been working on some Cobalt City stories and proofreading a friend’s Cobalt City-adjacent novella. So for today’s Fun for Friday, check out theseĀ superhero writing prompts. They’re in the form of first sentences/paragraphs, so you may want to make some changes to make your story a little […]

Fun for Friday: Fiction Friday Prompts

| April 2, 2021

There are loads of websites that post writing prompts, but I definitely prefer the ones that are geared toward fiction. Fiction Friday is from a few years ago, but there are 39 posts tagged for that topic on the Author Bank website. You could sift through the list to see what grabs your attention, roll […]

Fun for Friday: April 2021 Writing Prompts!

| March 26, 2021

It’s nearly April, and at least in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s springtime (for whatever that means for a given latitude)! The words for this month are a mix of springtime words and other, random words, but hopefully the multiple meanings of some of these words will provide an interesting combination! I’ve also added a photograph […]

Fun for Friday: Friday Five Prompts

| March 19, 2021

I was recently looking for some new writing prompts, and I stumbled across Long and Short Reviews’ Friday Five Prompts. This lists out five word prompts for every Friday in 2021. And while we’re already part of the way through the year, there are still plenty more weeks to enjoy! I love playing with word […]

Fun for Friday: March 2021 Prompts

| February 26, 2021

It’s nearly the beginning of March, so it’s time for another month’s prompts. The words this month are all pretty random, though I suspect you could get some March or spring-inspired pieces out of what I’ve included here. There’s also a photograph of a marching band that you could work in with the other prompts […]

World-Building Recommendation: World Roulette

| February 24, 2021

One of my recent Kickstarter rewards was the World Roulette Deck from Light Grey Art Lab. It’s a deck meant to assist in world building for creative projects, with a really interesting setup on the individual cards, which are meant to be stacked and layered in interesting combinations as you’re creating a world. As the […]

Fun for Friday: AtlasObscura for Writing Prompts

| February 19, 2021

If you like weird places and things of the world, AtlasObscura is a great site that collects information about all sorts of unusual things. You can navigate it by picking a country or city, or do searches for other specifics. Their Twitter feed is also a great way to get random ideas for writing prompts, […]

Fun for Friday: Story Starters

| February 5, 2021

When I’m writing a story, I have to start at the beginning. I have to come up with a first line that I like, and then I can get started writing the rest of it. If you’re stuck on finding a first line, check out these story starters for some ideas! If you want to […]

Writing to a Title

| February 1, 2021

Many authors find that coming up with a title is considerably harder than writing the story (or book, or poem) that needs the title. However, some authors start with a title and write their story to fit that title. But first, you need a title. The good news is that there are random title generators […]