That one writing prompt trope that keeps showing up in every contest

I've been browsing writing prompts here for about 6 months now and there's this one thing that bugs me every time. People keep writing prompts where the main character discovers they have a secret superpower or hidden destiny, but the twist is always that it was inside them all along or something like that. It feels lazy after the tenth time I see it. I get that starting fresh is hard, but why not take a real situation like a character finding a weird old letter in a library book and build from there? Last week I saw a prompt that was basically just "You find out you can talk to animals" with zero conflict or setup. That's not a prompt, that's a starting line. What kind of small, weird detail makes a prompt actually grab your attention enough to write a story about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

bailey.jennifer15d ago

Used to love those lazy reveals, but you're totally right.

quinn16115d ago

My buddy tried one of those lazy reveal prompts once in a game he was running. Set up this big mystery about a haunted mansion, and the twist was just "oh it was all a dream the whole time." His players were so mad they almost quit the campaign. He had to scramble for weeks to fix the lore and make it make sense. Now he just gives them weird clues like a door that only opens if you knock backwards. Way more fun that way.

stella_scott9615d ago

Yeah I used to be one of those people who thought any twist was automatically cool just because it surprised you, but honestly this post kinda made me rethink a lot of my favorites. Like bailey.jennifer said, at first I was all about those big reveals but now I see they're kinda just... easy? What really grabs me now is a prompt that gives me a specific weird detail to work from, like a character whose shadow moves wrong or finds a note that only makes sense if you read it in a mirror. It's way more inspiring than being handed a power with no stakes attached.