I used to think writing prompts were just for beginners

I was at a bookstore in Seattle and overheard a guy telling his friend he'd written a whole novel from a prompt about a lighthouse keeper who gets mail for the dead. He said it forced him to build a world around one weird rule. That stuck with me. Now I see prompts as a tool to jumpstart a story you wouldn't have found otherwise. What's the best prompt you've ever gotten a real story from?

3 comments

3 Comments

alice_allen525d ago

That "build a world around one weird rule" thing is exactly it. My friend wrote a whole short story from a prompt about a town where everyone's shadow is a day behind them. It forced her to figure out the logic of how that would even work, which was the whole plot. She never would have come up with that on her own.

elliot_roberts25d ago

That shadow prompt @alice_allen5 mentioned is genius, it makes you solve a puzzle just to get the story going. My best one was about a chef who can taste lies, which spiraled into a whole mystery. Prompts are just creative cheat codes, honestly.

karen_carter25d ago

The chef tasting lies prompt is a perfect example. It forces you to ask so many world building questions right away. Can he taste white lies, or only big ones? What if someone believes their own lie? Suddenly you are building a legal system or a restaurant scene just to explore the rules. That initial constraint does all the heavy lifting for your imagination.