Welcome to this month’s writing challenge prompt!

Writing about intense emotions isn’t always easy. The act of creative writing can feel therapeutic, but words don’t come naturally if you’re trying to grasp the emotion driving your scenes.

This month, pick one emotion before selecting characters, plot points, or even genres. You could select from possibilities like:

• Anger
• Love
• Sadness
• Betrayal
• Joy

Next, write five different scenes that evoke that emotion in different ways. You’ll have to practice thinking about the emotional weight of a scene and its usefulness.

For example, I could pick disgust. Next, I’ll make a protagonist—let’s imagine a middle-aged man in a horror novel. The first scene (maybe a few paragraphs or pages) could be him discovering rotting leftovers in his fridge. Yuck. Disgusting.

The next scene would be the man at the grocery store watching a customer berate a young teenager behind the cash register. My protagonist feels disgusted with the customer. No one should treat others that way.

Another scene could be the protagonist sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store. He watches the teenager walk out for a breather and transform into a giant monster with six eyes and spider legs. The creature waits in the shadowed alley next to the store and devours the customer after she walks out to her car. My protagonist feels disgusted, but with terror threaded through it.

Do that five times to practice driving each scene with emotional weight instead of character development or plot progression in mind. You can switch characters and genres if you want to. It’s all great practice in becoming more confident with writing scenes and using emotions as a bigger writing tool.

Want to see our previous challenge prompts? Check them out here.

You can also find helpful resources over on my mega list of helpful sites.