Typescript posts a new challenge each Wednesday to encourage creativity and inspire conversation. Feel free to talk about the challenge or share your writing results in the comments section below by leaving an excerpt and/or a link to your own site or blog.

The spark of inspiration can be found anywhere you choose to look. From a title of a song to a sketch found on a napkin, from an overheard conversation to a jumble of words, these stories are waiting to be discovered and told.

Note: This week’s post comes from friend, fellow writer, and writing challenge-enthusiast Nean Burkholder. Many thanks to Nean for helping out with this week’s challenge! Check out her poetry on her blog and follow her on Twitter.

One of my favorite writing prompts is the “Word Play,” based on random phrases found in places like spam mail, recycled into poetry and prose. What happens when random words, seemingly unrelated are thrown together into the same piece of writing? That’s for you the writer to decide.

Words come alive and certain words have their own personalities. We all have words that are favorites, words that roll on our tongues, are just fun to say, or that evoke particular images for us. Today, we revisit Word Play with version 2.0, where we take some of those words and invite them to party together. What will happen when these seemingly unrelated words with little to nothing in common are forced to interact? Will they spend their time in nothing more than small talk? Or will they delve into deeper conversation and reveal mysteries that will astound the world? It’s your turn to decide!

One of the most fascinating aspects of writing is the ability to manipulate words and language to convey your intended meaning. Words have so many meanings within their own definitions, and coupling them with others can produce something not entirely expected but altogether magical. There are a thousand ways to describe an object, person, or place, and so, too, are there thousands of stories just waiting to be plucked out of the imagination and put to paper. Sometimes all we need to create that initial spark of inspiration is a word (or three, or four, or five…).

Challenge: Choose five or more of the words below with their “strong personalities,” and throw them together into a “party” in your poetry or story. Use each of the words you choose at least once and experiment with having them interact with one another in unexpected ways:

nostalgia, burning, reticent, nonchalance, blue, serenity, quite, wrung, felicity, caramel, tempestuous, linoleum, pancake, kumquat, Ragnarok, bamboozled, bequeathed, nifty, disquiet, barnacle, Mesopotamia, irregularity, labyrinthian, slipstream, verisimilitude, zodiac, bow, carnage, wren, bamboo, unique, shadow, mirror, chaos, frequent, resuscitate, laughter, scattered, bubble, susurration, squiggle, design, issues, certainty, momentous, whispers, slumber, assonance…




What are some of your favorite words, the ones that are beautiful, or sad, or mysterious, or… whatever? What interesting ideas can you come up with to make these words dance in ordinary settings?