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Rant: I wrote 30 bad prompts in a row, then changed one rule and got 12 good ones
Three weeks ago I sat down at my kitchen table in Boise with a legal pad and tried to crank out prompts for a short story challenge. I got through 30 of them and every single one died by line two. Stuff like "a man finds a key" or "a woman hears a noise." I read them back the next morning and wanted to throw the pad in the trash. So I tried one small thing: I forced every prompt to name one specific thing and one specific problem in the first sentence. Something like "a plumber in Twin Falls finds a wedding ring in a drain and has to decide who to call." That was it. Same brain, same pad, same hour of the day. Twelve of the next 20 prompts were ones I actually wanted to write. I think the fix was that vague prompts give you nothing to push against, and a named who plus a named snag gives you a wall to lean on. Curious what rule you all use to keep prompts from coming out gray like my first 30 did.
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christophermurray5d ago
Ha, my prompts are still stuck in the gray zone.
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