This week’s creative prompt is Night. Each week we begin with a single word and expand it to inspire writing fiction, journaling and other creative activities. These creative prompts, are to give me, and anyone else who wants to join in, some inspiration for our creative work.

Definitions

night — the period from sunset to sunrise in every twenty-four hours, the night as the interval between two days

Night can be used as a noun or adverb.

Related

darkness, dark, hours of darkness, nighttime, dead of night, nocturnal

And don’t forget nyctophobia, the fear of the night.

Night being an old goth at heart, I like the night and all things dark. However, it also makes me think of rest and expectations for the day to come.

Let the prompt ‘night’ inspire you in any area of creativity that you are interested in:

• writing fiction
• journaling
• art journaling
• songwriting
• photography
• painting
• composing
• blog posts
• art therapy
• anything that could use a little nudge to begin

Let’s expand the word a little further…

Writing prompt

A Fiction Writing Prompt exploring the word night to stretch the literary muscles. No rules. No word counts. Simply write and explore.

It was dark. All was quiet. It was the night before…

Writing Prompt Expanded

Almost everyone knows the phrase, ’twas the night before Christmas’ even if they don’t know the rest of the poem from which it is taken. This phrase conjures up the expectation of what is to come.

This prompt is all about that magical conjuring. Something is going to happen, and before it does, your role as a writer is to set the scene. The prompt explains that it is dark, and then it offers the reason for that, it’s night… or is that the reason?

• Why is it dark, is the dark different to other nights?
• How will you keep the reader’s attention once you declare what the night is before?
• Who is narrating, is it a non-performing character or someone in the story?

The context for this prompt is entirely up to you. The challenge is to describe the situation. How does what will happen after affect what is happening now, in the before? Will your fiction describe happy or sad events? A scary moment and impending fear?

Enjoy, the choice of context is yours, but if you are writing something scary, and it is the night, you may want to leave a light on.

Quick fiction writing

Set a time limit, use the following random prompts and write a short piece of fiction.

• Character: vampire
• Place: beach
• Item: no coffin

Journal prompt

Do you count nights or sleeps until an event, or do you count days? I have been doing both recently as I wait for something. And there will be more about that in the blog soon, I am certain. But before the blog, my journal is and has been full of countdowns.

When it comes to writing in our journals, we may pick them up at specific times, as soon as we wake from the night, or at night before we go to sleep. It doesn’t matter when, but it made me think that night is more than just something we can put in our journal.

Three ideas for your journal

• Create or use a black page, and add a single, simple item to be with you at night
• paint a nighttime scan full of stars, galaxies, and the moon
• keep a record of how long you sleep each night

Theory of General Creativity

I now have ‘night’ written on the board above my computer. I am confident it will inspire me on my creative journey this week.

• capture things that light at night with your camera
• use night (and day) as metaphor when creating some music or a painting
• remember night as a rhythm of life, a downtime, before we had the availability of so much light, we had to take a break

Let ‘night’ inspire your music, photography, and painting this week.

Finally…

As always, these creative prompts are optional and entirely open to your interpretation. Use them as a starting point for a short story, something a little more grandiose, or any creative project or idea.

As mentioned before, this isn’t a ‘challenge’ but the prompts can be used that way if you want. If you do create anything using them, I would love to see or hear about it. Leave a link in the comments below, or tag me #thecreativeminimalist on any social platform.

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