Writing prompt #3 – Storybird

Storybird is a very easy way of creating an e-story using picture sets shared by various artists. It’s easy and it’s cool.

Once you have an account, you can browse existing stories or just click create and write your own.

I whipped one up in a matter of minutes (so it’s not great) but it looks good! You can read my story here. Once you choose an artist, you just drag the pictures you like onto your page, then keep creating (or deleting) pages until you’ve finished.

You can write your own story or collaborate with a friend.

If you scroll down this page, you can search images by theme.

I like the way you can use somebody’s shared art. The artist I chose is Dwell Deep (Sam) and you can read a little about her here. She has a website and a blog. It’s a good feeling to have created a story in collaboration with an artist.

 

Writing prompt #2 – Are you ready to play Five Card Flickr?

Photo by Serenae on Flickr

Are you ready to play Five Card Flickr?

It’s a quick and fun way to write a story using Flickr-generated images. In fact, you can write it right there on the website.

It’s simple –

Firstly, you choose one out of five images randomly selected for you, then you get a new set of five from which you choose another image – and so it goes until you have 5 images which form the prompts for your story.

Once you have your 5 images, you enter your title, your username and write the story itself. Then, after you prove you’re not a robot by typing in the CAPTCHA, you save the story and it’s shared with others. You’re famous.

You can use the pictures in any order. Try to choose images which give you a location to set the scene, character or characters you can develop, and leave a picture which you think will inspire an ending (logical, surprising, shocking, hilarious…)

There are different ways you can write your story –

• rhyming poem
• unrhyming poem
• prose
• short play
• song
• in any language

Don’t forget to grab the photo credits at the bottom of the page. If people share stuff with you, you should always credit them – it’s good manners.

Have a go!

I’ve tried this activity in class, so if you want to read about the experience, click here.