Writing Prompt – Tiny Diary, Big Secrets!

If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a great online project starting over at https://www.ourcoronadiary.com/ with a huge resource of writing and drawing tips from LOADS of great authors and illustrators.

A couple of my writer mates were involved in putting the project together and kindly invited me to supply a diary themed writing prompt. So here it is:

TINY DIARY, BIG SECRETS!

  

One of the best things about keeping a diary (at any time) is that you can be totally honest about how you feel. Have a rant, vent some spleen, write down all the things you’re too polite to actually say out loud! Be honest and get any frustration, fears and anger you might be keeping to yourself, out onto the page – it might help.

For instance:

• What’s the worst part about being stuck indoors?

• Who is the most annoying person you’re confined with?

• What do you miss about life as it was before?

But also, what’s the best part about being in lockdown? See if you can think of one good thing to go with every bad aspect!

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OR … you could use YOUR experience to write about somebody else – a fictional character who finds themselves in confinement. They might not even be in our world or time! 

• Who are they?

• Where are they?

• What is their ‘prison’ like?

• Why can’t they leave?

• What would happen if they managed to escape? Will they try?

• How do they pass the time in confinement?

Sometimes it’s easier to write about how YOU feel by giving your feelings to a fictional character and seeing how THEY deal with the situation. A fictional character can say and do things that maybe you can’t.

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To give a twist to this challenge, try writing or drawing your diary on very small pieces of paper. (They will be a lot easier to hide from prying eyes if they’re small!)

Maybe your character in confinement isn’t supposed to be writing so they have to hide their diary too? Or perhaps paper is in short supply, so they have to write on whatever scraps they can find.

The idea is that your story will be physically confined to a small space too!

For example, you could take a sheet of A4 and cut it into long thin strips (like bookmarks), then write or draw a comic strip on those. If you have some very small Post It notes, you could use those. You could even cut up a sheet of A4 to make a tiny book to write or draw in!

What’s the smallest space you can find to write a story? It would be great to see how you get on, and how small a space you managed to squeeze a story into!

Have fun and don't forget to check out all the other great ideas and suggestions over at the Our Corona Diary project.

Stay safe and all the best,

Dave