Creating and Using Word Banks
Writing Prompt 10
Happy Monday, Noodlers!
Word banking is one of my favorite writing strategies when I’m not feeling particularly inspired. A great thing about creating word banks is that it’s something you can do when you’re bored. Then, when you want to write but are stuck, you have a file full of word banks to turn to.
A word bank is simply a list of words. How you use your word bank is up to you. I’m going to share some strategies for creating different kinds of word banks and ways to use those word banks.
Word banks can be a fun way to explore topics outside of your normal interests, a way to increase your vocabulary, and a great way to include others in your writing process.
Different ways to approach generating a word bank:
Open a dictionary, thesaurus, or any other book to random pages and select words until you have the number of words you want to use for your project. 5 to 20 words are usually good to start with depending on the length of your writing goal.
Ask friends or family to suggest words for you to use. This works really well on social media. The more diverse your friends and family the more diverse your word bank. Ask them to challenge you or to be silly with their suggestions.
Create a word bank from a poem that isn’t working. Take one word from each line and start a new poem using one word from the old poem in each new line. That’s what I did in this poem.
Listen to people throughout the day and set a goal to write down one word every hour or two. This helps to hone your attention to the world around you. Listen for interesting words.
You can focus on building a bank of a particular kind of word. Do you have trouble using nouns in your writing? Or do you use the same adjectives all the time? Create a word bank of new words to use in your piece.
Collect words you find interesting by writing them on small pieces of paper. Put them in a jar that you can pull words from whenever you want to write a word bank poem. Add to your jar regularly.
Create a word bank from a music album’s song lyrics. The goal isn’t to imitate the artist, but to change up your vocabulary or explore new themes.
Scan the titles on your bookshelf for interesting words. Or choose words from the titles of poems or short stories. Titles usually use strong words.
Create a word bank of unrelated words and give yourself the challenge of making unexpected connections.
Ways to use your word bank:
Use one of your words from your bank in each line of a poem.
Start or end each line with one of your word bank words.
If you get stuck in your writing, turn to your word bank to give you fresh direction or imagery.
Revisit a poem that isn’t working and use your word bank to inject new life and meaning by replacing existing words.
Use your word bank to riff. Start with one word and write as many words as you can that connect to that word. Do that with every word in your list until it triggers you to write about something.
Make connections between the words in your word bank. Start with one word and write other words or phrases until you make a connection to the next word on your list. Use this scaffolding to write a poem. The more diverse your words the greater the twists you’ll take to connect them.
There are so many ways to create and use word banks to help with writer’s block or to reinvigorate your writing. Have fun, experiment, and most of all write something great!
Feel free to share your work-in-progress or any fun ways you created or used word banks in the comments.
Great tool - word bank! Thank you for all of the great suggestions