The Prompt is a brand new series for writers.
Presented and produced by Zoë Comyns, this series will be broadcast over 8 episodes on RTÉ Radio 1.
Our guest writers have set writing prompts and you can submit short pieces to the series, inspired by those prompts. Read them below. Get writing. And be creative!
Listeners/writers are encouraged to write short essays, pieces of fiction or poetry (no more than 750 words/3-5 mins reading time per piece) inspired by the creative prompt. Poetry can be shorter.
How to submit:
Read the below prompts, choose one, write your piece and submit it here.
NB: Please ensure you read the terms & conditions carefully - find them here
Deadline: Sunday 6th April 2025 12pm
1. Caoilinn Hughes
The Prompt – Embarrassment
I thought that an emotion for a prompt would immediately conjure up the sense of character in the writer's mind. Personally, I tend to start with a sense of character--it's sort of like tuning into an impulse, other than one's own. It's no use my describing the ocean in prose if I don't know who is looking at it--or at least have a strong sense that I want to know them.
I need characters to see something for me, in their own way, so that I will never see it the same way again. If the characters are rich, they will enrich me. There are obvious scenarios that come to mind when we think of embarrassment, but all of those should be run a mile from. Or at least, the writer should attempt to run a mile from them, even if they run in a circle, or run out of breath after a few metres. That could also be interesting.
About Caoilinn: Caoilinn Hughes's latest novel, The Alternatives, was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her second novel, The Wild Laughter won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award. Her debut was Orchid & the Wasp. Her short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, the BBC and elsewhere and have won prizes including the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year, The Moth Story Prize, and an O.Henry Prize. She was recently Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library.
2. Sinéad Moriarty
The Prompt – A World Without
Create a story set in a world where something we take for granted (music, TV, nature, voices, sight) doesn't exist.
I think when COVID happened we all realised the importance of music, art, cinema and crafts. I wonder would we have survived intact without any of that. Imagine if we lost the ability to speak or see or touch or hear or feel...
About Sinéad: Author of 17 novels (Penguin) and 4 children’s books (Gill). Eason books ambassador. Podcast founder/host. Literary judge.
Dave Rudden
The Prompt - Tearing It Down
Fiction for young people is often about the terror and triumph of independence - it's that first taste of agency, of carving your own path, and often that comes with resistance. Whether it's bringing down a sci-fi dystopian government or simply choosing to be yourself (while also figuring out who that person is) young adult fiction is about risking the old world to bring about a new one, and I think that's what makes it so exciting.
I welcome any interpretation of the prompt - it's just to get you started after all. In terms of the writing itself, I love a strong voice - which doesn't mean excessively poetic or flowery, but instead is about control and clarity. Balance the literary with the pragmatic. Don't forget your audience. Put as much of yourself - your insight, your imagination, the knowledge and experience only you have - on the page. And remember that good writing can happen anywhere, but great writing is found in the redraft.
My background is in speculative fiction (fantasy, horror, sci-fi) but don't let that limit you - genre is a construct and labels are for jam-makers. Write something great.
About Dave: Dave Rudden is an Irish author and scriptwriter. His bestselling novel, Knights of the Borrowed Dark won Children’s Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2016 and is now a syllabus text. He has also authored multiple works in the universe of Doctor Who. Dave has been an Ambassador for Ireland Reads since 2022 and is Writer-in-Residence for the Kids Love Books podcast on RTÉ and Artist-in-Residence at Dublin City University.
Mike McCormack
The Prompt: The patron saint of...
I hope that this prompt enables writers to envision some need or lack in the world which needs presiding over and that the writers will be able to dramatize that need or want. I would be very interested in seeing what sort of character steps forward to take charge of it and become the central figure in its story.
About Mike: Mike McCormack lectures in Creative Writing and is the author of four novels - Crowe's Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), Solar Bones (2016) and This Plague of Souls (2023) and two collections of short stories - Getting It in the Head (1996) and Forensic Songs (2012).
In 1996 his debut collection Getting it in the Head was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2006, Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award. In 2016 Solar Bones was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize and both the Irish Novel of the Year and Book of the Year Award; it was also long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. In 2018 it was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award. In 2022 a Rough Magic production of Solar Bones played successfully at the Abbey Theatre for ten days. His work has been translated into several languages and in 2019 he was elected to Aosdána.
Belinda McKeon
The Prompt: Shoes
Think of three pairs of shoes your character (this may be you, if you are writing something other than fiction) has had in their life. Childhood, adolescence, adulthood. For each pair, write a quick list of memories or aspects: physical features, where acquired, where worn, something which happened in that era, someone or someplace they bring to mind, etc. Then choose one list and develop it into a short piece of prose or a poem. Use the elements to build a scene, or use a single phrase from the list as a prompt.
About Belinda: Belinda McKeon is a novelist and playwright. Her novels are Solace (Picador, 2011) and Tender (2015). She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Maynooth University.
Wendy Erskine
The Prompt: Dark Horse
I chose it because as an idea it appeals to me. The unexpected. The individual people didn't rate or the individual people didn't notice. I like the idea of the person who keeps their skill or capabilities under wraps. But then, couldn't The Dark Horse be the name of a bar? Maybe for you it conjures up an actual dark horse, in a race, in a field. I'm not looking for anything specific in a piece of writing beyond being transported in some way by it.
About Wendy: Wendy Erskine is the prize-winning author of two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She edited the art anthology well I just kind of like it. She is a frequent broadcaster and interviewer, and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. The Benefactors is her debut novel.
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Lucy Caldwell
The Prompt: Irrevocable Change
Write a story in which there is an irrevocable change. The whole story can be a process of change – a woman, for instance, transforming into a fox – or the story can be building towards a moment of revelation, of epiphany. But crucially, by the end of the story, something needs to be fundamentally different than it was at the start – something needs to have been lost, gained, understood, apprehended, glimpsed. It doesn’t need to be huge, but we do need to understand that after this moment – for better or for worse – things will, can, never be the same again.
About Lucy: Born in Belfast, Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, most recently These Days, which won the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, three collections of short stories, Multitudes, Intimacies, and most recently Openings (Faber, 2024), and several stage plays and radio dramas. She is also the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber, 2019).
Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. In 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2021 she won the BBC National Short Story Award for All the People Were Mean and Bad and in 2022 she was the recipient of the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
Edel Coffey
The Prompt: An unexpected parcel
A prompt is simply an opening into a story. Use the prompt to brainstorm ideas, be abstract, don't go with your immediate or most literal interpretation. Don't hem yourself in. Give yourself some options to play with. And good luck.
About Edel: Edel Coffey is an Irish novelist and journalist. She has worked as an editor with the Sunday Tribune and Irish Independent, and as a reporter and presenter with RTÉ. She is a regular contributor to The Irish Times, and Books Editor with The Gloss magazine. Both of her novels have been number one bestsellers in Ireland and her debut novel Breaking Point won the An Post Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction Book Of The Year in 2022.
Find out more about The Prompt here.
