1-MINUTE PROMPT:
Music connects us to people and places in a very particular way. What pop song evokes a certain person or place for you? Take a lyric from that song and imagine it’s a line of dialogue spoken by one character to another. What would the second character say in response to this line?
5-MINUTE PROMPT:
Children’s songs are intended to be memorable, which makes them relentless earworms. Think of a classic nursery rhyme and imagine you’ve been tasked with adapting the lyrics from it into an advertising jingle for a hotel chain or car rental agency.
10-MINUTE PROMPT:
People sometimes get so overcome with emotion that they burst into song. Maybe it was you singing in the shower, or maybe it was a drunken bachelorette party on the subway that got everyone warbling. Whatever the situation may have been, use your real-life remembrance of an impromptu sing-along to create an article written from a first-person perspective.
20-MINUTE PROMPT:
Did you ever find yourself at a friend’s house while his band practices for their next gig or accidentally collide with a high school marching band as they stroll by? Remember an experience where you happened upon something musical. Take the details of that event and write a scene where the musician or musicians are playing a wedding. Is the music a great fit or a disastrous choice? Set the tone of the scene with the music, then keep writing to see what happens next.