Tag: Ideas for writing Christmas stories

Use the Five Senses to Describe … Your Christmas Kitchen

Writing prompts for Christmas

If you love to bake and cook during the holidays, and love to write as well, here’s a writing prompt for you: use the five senses to describe … your Christmas kitchen.

My husband is a fantastic chef, and I’m the baker. So my Christmas kitchen is a bakery. Here’s a list of things I notice while whipping up my family’s favorite Christmas treats.

  • SIGHT: Shiny silver mixing bowl. Sprays of white flour or sugar on the burgundy counter. Brown or tan batter. Oily film on cookie sheets. Glowing screens on stove. Black wire racks.
  • SMELL: Cloves, cinnamon, chocolate.
  • TASTE : Quick tastes of sweet chocolate or batter.
  • TOUCH: Heat from the oven. Rumpled sugar and flour bags. Smooth utensils handles.
  • HEARING: Swish as flour or sugar is poured into a measuring cup. Sound of spatula mixing batter. Conversations. Laughter. Banging batter off utensils.

Now I can take those observations and work them into a story. Like working ingredients into the batter!

*****

I viewed the wreckage as my niece and nephews sat beached on the couch and watching Charlie Brown and Snoopy figure out the true meaning of Christmas with the smug smiles of kids who’ve eaten way, way too much sugar and know it.

Flour and sugar sprayed on every horizontal surface. My silver mixing bowl dull under a coating of flour. Tan batter from the apple bread smeared across the counter with few stains clinging to the backsplash, a reminder of when Noah and Ollie dueled with batter-covered spoons.

Myla hopped off the couch and dashed over to me. “Did we make enough cookies for Christmas dinner?”

“We have a dozen chocolate spritz cookies and ten gumdrop cookies.” I wiped back my bangs and warm chocolate came off my fingers. “That’s not nearly enough for the whole family.”

Myla stared at the two plates of cookies. “I thought you said we needed to make six dozen.”

“You guys sampled a lot.”

Noah twisted around, looking over the back of the couch. “Mom and Dad aren’t coming to get us until after lunch tomorrow, right? Could we bake some more tomorrow?”

“Could we?” Ollie echoed, plopping down beside his brother.

I smiled. “I guess we’ll have to.”

*****

Describe your Christmas kitchen. Here are more Christmas writing prompts.

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Use the Five Senses to Describe … Your Favorite Christmas Decoration

Christmas writing prompt

When I reviewed which writing prompts and questions have been the most popular, the ones where I asked you to use your five senses to describe a setting have been by far the most viewed.

So I’m giving those prompts a holiday twist and asking you to use the five senses to describe your favorite Christmas decoration. My favorite is my mantel. I love pulling together a variety of decorations to make what is basically a work of art.

So here’s my list of some of the many things I put on display, using my five senses.

  • SIGHT: A lot to work with here. The garland is, surprisingly, pine green. The lights in the garland are multicolored. Red candles. Transparent hurricane shades. Many shades of red from Santa Claus’s coat to the ribbon on Rudolph’s neck. A color photo. A pencil sketch. Dull brown of the iron stocking hangers.
  • TASTE and SMELL: Nothing for those senses, unless my garland was made of real pine.
  • TOUCH: Another bonanza of sensations. The iron stocking hangers were cold when I got them out of the bin in the basement. Smooth hurricane shades and candles. Soft fur or cloth. Smooth plastic bricks. Bumpy, cool plaster figurines. Smooth glass or porcelain. Feathery fake birds.
  • HEARING: Not much for this sense except the crackles, crunches, and squeaks as different materials rub against the garland. Although I did find out that Rudolph is musical. I pressed a spot on him, and his song came out in a static-y, off-key way, like the battery is just starting to lose power.

So how could I works these sensations into a description? Read on!

“I need someone to decorate the mantel,” my boss Sandra said. “The box for it is …”

“I’ll do it!” I raised my hand.

The mantel in the old house that was now an antique store sat above a fireplace in what must have been the parlor a hundred years ago. And the man who’d visited us five times in five days without buying anything was hanging around in there again.

“The box is in the basement,” said Sandra.

Not my favorite place in the old house with its rickety steps, stone walls, and smell of dead air, but I got the box and spread the prickly fake garland on the mantel.

The man, maybe forty, was frowning at a roll top desk.

I placed a smooth hurricane shade on the mantel.

He moved over to a wall covered in paintings and photographs with more stacked against the wall on the floor.

What did he find so interesting in this room?

The antique iron stocking holders chilled my hands as I spaced them on the mantel.

Now he was examining a velvet settee.

As I nestled the smooth, glass blown ornaments in the garland, the man seemed fascinated with every object in the room. No, not quite. He didn’t look at anything in the center of the room. Just the items set against the walls.

The man appeared to look at each of the paintings leaning against each other. But he actually seemed more interested in the wall behind them.

I lifted a Santa doll to the mantel and then lowered it.

Was the man more interested in the room than the antiques? But why?

Here are more Christmas writing prompts.

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Let Your Christmas Traditions Inspire Your Writing

Let Your Christmas Traditions Inspire Your Writing

There are probably a million published Christmas stories, both fiction and nonfiction, from short stories and novels to devotions and theological works. One way to make your story unique is to let your Christmas traditions inspire your writing. Mining your own experiences can lead to a one-of-a-kind Christmas story.

I could write an epic over my relationship with Christmas trees. As a child, we always cut a live tree. Some Christmases we hiked through a farm to find the perfect one. Other times we bought already cut trees at the Lutheran Church. One year, my sisters and I went late to the Lutheran Church and found the seller gone and a few lonely trees discarded at the edge of the parking lot. We had a free tree that year.

My husband grew up with fake trees. To him, real trees are dirty, difficult , and fire hazards. Our first Christmas in our new house saw us battling over which tradition our new family would observe. I came home from work one evening and found a tree stand in the living room. It’s one of my sweetest memories.

Now my kids and I tag a tree at a local tree farm on Thanksgiving weekend but don’t cut it until a week before Christmas, so the tree is fresh and less likely to spontaneously combust. Two years ago, I wanted a big tree for our two-story living room. The only big one without a brown needles and large gaps was a towering Scotch pine. But it had a lot of bare trunk that I thought we’d cut off. I measured it with the homemade ruler the owner provided. It seemed as tall as the one we got last year.

But I couldn’t weigh the tree. It turned out to be the heaviest tree we’d ever got. Things started to go wrong when my husband told me to grab the tree as our youngest sawed the truck, and while I put on my gloves, it fell on him. After we hauled it off him, my husband, kids, and I could barely drag it to the front of the farm. The tree was too big for the chute the owner used to tie the limbs down, so he had to tie it without mechanical help. It took my whole family and the owner to lift it into the bed of our truck.

We wrestled the tree through the front door. Then I decided we should call my dad to help stand the tree up. I have a weak shoulder and didn’t want the tree to fall on husband a second time.

This story can be used in many different way. As a humorous piece. As an illustration of the state of a marriage, such as couple who are quarreling draw closer as they engage in the tradition of selecting and decorating a tree.  As a family drama, such as a visit to a tree farm reveals problems in a family. Since this is a Christmas story, I would have those problems solved, or at least addressed, by the end of the story.

How would you let your Christmas traditions inspire your writing?

This article is a repost from two years ago. For more writing tips about using Christmas, click here. Clicker here for a great article on Christmas stress and the writer.

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What’s the Ending?

I love the expression on this little guy’s face, so he inspired me to include him as a prompt. What’s the ending of a story in which he’s the main character? I’m thinking a middle grade story, possibly a mystery. Here’s my ending:

Okay. So the squad and I didn’t deduce the identity of the thief who stole Mrs. Haines’s jewels. But we did find the jewels and that helped Mom arrest Mrs. Haines’s cousin. We’ll be the best private detectives in town by the time we’re in fourth grade.

Although the biggest mystery of all remains unsolved. My Santa trap didn’t produce any hard evidence. But I’ve got a whole year to work on it. That fat man won’t escape me next Christmas.

For more prompts about endings, click here.

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Monday Sparks — Writing Prompts: What’s the Christmas Story?

romancew-596094_1280Although Christmas is over, I have one more prompt for the holiday. Romance is the one genre I find the most difficult to get interested in. So if you are inspired by this photo to write a scene for a Christmas romance, especially if you are a seasoned Hallmark Christmas movie fan, please share below.

I can stand romance better if it’s part of another genre, like mystery or scifi. Or how about all three?

The woman in the photo is an alien disguised as a human to conduct Earth research for her doctoral thesis. She’s fallen in love with the man, who has recently discovered during the holiday season that his girlfriend is literally out of this world.

The woman’s professor comes to Earth to oversee her research and is found dead. The aliens send detectives to solve the case, and the woman is the prime suspect.

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