30 Writing Prompts For April 2022

Writers Write shares writing prompts and writing resources. Use these writing prompts for April 2022 to get you writing.

[If you want to find out more about creating a daily writing routine, read: All About Writing Prompts & Writing Practice]

This year we are using our daily prompts to improve our writing. This month I want to focus on dialogue.

Let’s practise

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is an important writing tool. It is a great way to bring your characters and your story to life. Dialogue has several functions.

It helps to show character.
It advances the story.
It gives information.
Adds conflict.
Creates white space.

A common misconception that writers have about dialogue is that it includes only the words spoken aloud by the characters. Dialogue includes so much more.

It includes:

The words spoken aloud.
The dialogue tags.
The body language of the character.
The inner thoughts of the viewpoint character.

We are writing for a modern audience and modern novels contain a lot of dialogue. It is an essential skill for a writer to master. Movie adaptations are also very popular and novels that contain a lot of dialogue are easier to translate to the screen. Dialogue is also one of the easiest ways to change telling to showing.

Read this post to learn about dialogue.

Craft book:

Instead of a craft book, this month I want to suggest that you find and read screenplays. You can learn a lot from screenwriters about telling stories through dialogue.

Homework:

Once you have read the posts I added above, use your daily writing prompts to practise writing dialogue. Use the prompts to start or end conversations. Use the same prompt twice, but change the meaning in the conversation. Let you characters ask questions, start arguments, tell lies and declare their love. Go wild with the prompts and make your characters talk.

I hope this will inspire you to try writing more dialogue.