If you are looking for a more in depth writing prompt, one that comes from an experienced professional, check out the group Writers World.
I want you to write me a short story, essay, thought, with not a single use of TO BE verbs. To-be verbs are the front line of how passive constructions are built, and we are going to try our hand at NOT using them. This doesn’t mean you won’t have plenty of opportunities to use in your work, but in this exercise, you will refrain from using them. TO BE verbs are WAS, WERE, IS, ARE, AM, BE, BEING, BEEN, BECOME, BECAME
In dialogue (in between the quotes) you can use TO Bes, so resist using too much dialogue, and if you do, don’t count it toward your 500.
You will be checked to see if you used any TO BE verbs. Please do not!
Good luck, and I will leave you with one I wrote:
I remembered traveling to the store with Dad and my little brother Bobby. I wore a streamline blue tinted pair of sunglasses from my seventh birthday party, and Bobby had on a pair of pink swimming goggles. Bobby half turned in his safety chair and fired a power beam from an imaginary ray gun. Lost in being cool, I passed him off as juvenile. We started fighting, and unlike his usual fare, Dad never said a word - eyes straight ahead, mumbling to himself.
With five sons, Dad had two speeds: deafening threats, and high volume talk radio. I couldn’t understand why he did neither, just stared straight ahead, mumbling to himself.
The thud caught me by surprise and when we slowed to a crawl, pushing through a picket fence and stopping against someone’s porch, I asked, “What are we doing?”
Dad didn’t say a word, his head bowed as though saying a prayer.
“Dad?”
Bobby laughed. He pointed to a man running out of his house as though on fire with his arms raised and his voice pitched in a stream of obscenities my mother would have spanked us for. He came around to my father’s side and pounded on the glass, but Dad just sat there. The guy bent at the waist and cupped his hands against the window, stuffing his face in like a periscope. I ‘shushed’ Bobby. The man stiffened upright as though he’d seen a ghost.
He shouted to his wife, who stumbled out of the house to the backseat door of the car and opened it.
“You two fine young men need to come with me.” Her outstretched arms unhooked Bobby and he scrambled into her grip; I scurried in behind him and took her hand.
She pulled me along, and I twisted around to see the man run his fingers through his hair as though he’d just lost a bet, a big bet; the kind of bet that pisses you off. He thumped the top of Dad’s car and nodded to the lady. “Call the police.”
I didn’t see my dad again…until the funeral.