Writing prompts from Donald M. Murray's Write to Learn--Chapter 5

Chapter 5     Explore

3. Think of a famous or historical local figure you want to find out more about. Begin at the library with biographies about the person, and look in the online database or card catalogue for general information on your subject. Ask reference librarians what related materials are available. Then contact your local historical society and ask them where the personal papers and diaries of the person you have chosen are located and whether you  can gain access to them. Such papers, called primary sources, are often housed in university or local town libraries or special museum houses. Sometimes you need official permission to read them, but most institutions will cooperate with you if you are doing research.

6. With a group of classmates, take a sensory tour of a site--a favourite spot in the mountains, a beach, a town, a neighbourhood, or perhaps a place of historical significance. Ask each person in the group to be responsible for one sense--seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or touching--and to record as many sensory details as possible. Reconvene as a group, and write up a portrait of the site.

11. Walk through a cemetery and observe and record as many details as possible: names and dates, sizes and conditions of headstones, genders of the deceased, relationships, years lived, the vaults, status, and tombstones, the cemetery landscape itself. Write a history of the cemetery just from what you observe. Do you think some "residents" were richer than others? Later, go to the church or public office that keeps the cemetery's records and read them for more information. Visit your local library, and check out newspaper stories and other printed sources about the cemetery and the deceased. Then revise your history according to the new details you gather.

14. Take your daybook to a public space, such as a restaurant or cafe. Write down as accurately as possible the conversations of people who pass by or converse at tables in your vicinity. Pay attention to the sound and rhythm of speech, and record as many comments and dialogues as you can. Don't worry about following any one conversation through from beginning to end. Just try to catch the gist of what people are saying.

Murray, Donald. M. Write to Learn. Orlando: Harcourt Brace College, 1998.