Hot take: most writing prompts are way too vague to be useful

I spent 6 months in a writing group where every prompt was like 'write about a door' or 'describe a memory.' Got nothing but boring junk out of it. Then one night a guy posted a prompt that said 'your character finds a locked door in their childhood home that has a note taped to it from their younger self.' That specific detail made my story actually come alive. Now I can't stand prompts without a concrete hook or a weird twist. Has anyone else noticed their best work comes from prompts with at least one weird rule or constraint?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_campbell5d ago

Honestly, that locked door prompt is gold because it gives you something to actually work with. I was in a workshop once where someone gave us 'write about a sunny day' and I stared at a blank page for two hours. Then another week the prompt was 'your character has to bake a cake for a funeral and the recipe is in their dead grandmother's handwriting' and I cranked out 5 pages that night. Specifics like a note taped to a door or a handwritten recipe force you to confront a real scenario instead of just floating around in vague feelings. Tbh, those weird constraints are the only way I've ever gotten past the boring stuff.

joel2805d ago

Ha, totally! Reminds me of this one time in a discord server where someone posted "write about a key" and nobody could make anything decent. Then someone said "the key opens a locker at the bus station that has a dead bird inside" and suddenly everyone had a story.