Heidi Burke
- Jul 8, 2021
- 3 min read

3 Questions with Weird Writing Prompts (blog tour)

So to celebrate the launch of my friend Janeen Ippolito's new writing prompt book, Weird Writing Prompts, I'm answering three of her random questions from the book!

Get more out of your writing prompts! Weird Writing Prompts is a short book loaded with questions to jumpstart your creativity, dive deeper into your characters, and rev up your book marketing. Oh yeah, and some questions are weird. Like “trap your characters in an elevator with an emu” weird. Because everyone needs a little weirdness to refresh their writing lives!

Grab this book to:

-Get Deep & Random - Expanded prompts with ideas to make your characters epic, plus absurd situations to unlock your creativity with play

-Get Sharing & Marketing - Author-centric questions to fuel your marketing brain and help with social media content creation

It’s time to refresh your brain, supercharge your story, and have fun with your marketing!

Reserve your pre-order!

Because it's my current "Work In Progress" I'm answering these questions for Power-Up, the first book in my new YA Spinoff series to the Supervillain Rehabilitation Project (hopefully coming sometime this fall).

Those characters are:

Jake Lucas--a snarky 16-year-old supervillain who was raised in his family's gang.

Laleh Ashe--a fifteen-year-old daughter of wealthy, influential superheroes who got in trouble for acting out when she went vigilante and freed a bunch of lab ferrets.

Marco Reyes--a friendly, optimistic fourteen-year-old who ended up in trouble when his fire powers manifested unexpectedly and he accidentally set his apartment on fire.

(Prism and Fade are also around for this series, so I'll bring them in when interesting).

Question One: Your characters all receive a shot of truth serum that lowers their inhibitions. What do they do?

Jake: Literally draws blood biting his tongue because he does not want to do this. Nope. Nope. Nope ... oh gosh he just needs a hug! Please someone, hug him!

Laleh: Judges EVERYONE! Yeah, you thought she had opinions before, but she was holding back to be polite, and you will now know what she thinks of the way Jake eats Popcorn and, oh, my, gosh, Marco, would you just be quite for thirty seconds? Please!

Marco: Tells everyone present how cool they are, how much he loves them ... then goes off on a tangent about Saturday morning cartoons and cereal.

Prism: Overshares about her and Fade's ... relationship. She's mostly just bragging. It's insufferable. Fade wants to die.

Fade: (I feel like we've seen Fade knocked down to this level of vulnerability at least twice during the series but ...) vacillates wildly between telling everyone how irritating they are and declaring how much he cares about them ... then he kisses Prism really hard hoping she will not tell anyone about that one weekend ...

Question Two: What is one physical or mental attribute each of your characters wish they could have? Why?

Jake: Super strength, no question.

Laleh: I mean, I have to pick a superpower or mental trait because it would be really shallow of me to want to have smaller feet. Like, it would be nice to be able to find some cute shoes in my size and not feel like a duck in flipflops ... but yeah, that would just be shallow (half-hearted laugh).

Jake: ... your feet are, like, tiny.

Laleh: Compared to yours, but you're like all over the place with your arms and legs, and you're a dude. Girls aren't supposed to have big, honking feet.

Jake: I never noticed.

Marco: I think you have nice feet. Like they probably help you balance, right?

Laleh: ...

Marco: Is it weird that I've always wanted a tail?

Question Three: Your characters are trapped in a broken-down elevator with an emu. How do they escape? What happens to the Emu?

Laleh: First things first, how are we going to save this emu?

Jake: Seriously? That's the first thing?

Laleh: It's a sentient creature, Jake! It has feelings!

Marco: I've named him Al.

Laleh: Based on my knowledge of exotic birds--

(Jake's eyes almost pop out of his head he's rolling them so hard)

Laleh: She's probably a female.

Marco: So Allie?

Jake: You both realize my powers allow me to just get out of here, right? One more word about the ostrich, and I'm leaving you here with her, him, whatever.

Laleh and Marco: It's an emu.

Jake uses his powers to slip under the cracks in the door.

Marco: Do you think we should've tried to stop him?

Laleh: Nah.

Uses her electronics manipulation powers to restart the elevator.

Laleh: I think we'll be fine.

Buy the book!

Kindle

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Autographed paperback!

www.janeenippolito.com/weird

Website: https://janeenippolito.com/