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My writing group spent 20 minutes fixing a prompt that only needed one tiny twist
Last Tuesday at our library meetup in Boise, six of us got handed the prompt 'write about a door that will not open' and everyone jumped straight to locked doors, broken keys, and haunted houses. What nobody noticed was that the prompt never said the door was stuck, so the best story of the night came from a guy who wrote about a door that opens just fine but leads to a Tuesday he already lived. How do you all spot the hidden assumption in a prompt before you start writing, or do you just draft and catch it later?
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nathanking23d ago
Wait, a door that opens to a Tuesday he already lived? That is such a good twist and I'm kinda mad none of us thought of it. Twenty minutes of everyone pitching creaky hinges and skeleton keys and this guy just quietly writes a time loop. The prompt never said stuck and we all just filled in the blank without even knowing it. That part gets me, like our brains hear "door that won't open" and instantly build the whole haunted house for us.
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