c/creative-writing-prompts

Update: Finally gave in and tried the "show don't tell" prompt after avoiding it for 2 years

At a writers meetup in Portland last Tuesday, someone read their piece using that prompt and the whole room went quiet in a good way, so now I'm asking has anyone else found a prompt they wrote off that actually worked for them?

Found a weird trick for dialogue prompts at the bus station yesterday

I had to wait 45 minutes for a transfer downtown and got bored, so I started eavesdropping on the people around me. One guy was on the phone talking about how his dog ate a whole bag of flour and he didn't know if he should take it to the vet. Another lady was arguing with her kid about why they couldn't bring a lizard on the bus. I wrote down about 10 different lines of real talk people said, and now I'm using them as dialogue starters for scenes. The weird thing is, the actual conversations people have are way more random and interesting than anything I make up in my head. Has anyone else tried mining public transit for writing prompts? It feels a little creepy but the material is gold.

The day my writing prompt flopped so hard I almost quit

It was a Tuesday at the library open mic night back in March. I read a prompt about a talking refrigerator that falls in love with a toaster. Nobody laughed, nobody clapped, just awkward silence for 10 seconds. My friend Dave said it felt like a bad sitcom pitch. Has anyone else had a prompt totally bomb in front of a live audience?

Had a writing prompt bomb at a library open mic night

I read this prompt about a character finding a locked box in an attic. The crowd just stared at me. Nobody had any follow up ideas or questions. Has anyone else had a prompt totally flop in front of a live audience?

Hot take: hitting 1000 subscribers on my writing blog was kind of a letdown

I mean everyone acts like hitting that first 1k is this huge deal, but when I actually got there last Thursday it just felt like a number. Nobody in my real life cared and I was still staring at the same blank page the next day trying to finish a story about a haunted laundromat. Has anyone else felt like milestones are way overhyped for creative work?

Shoutout to my writing group for calling out my lazy ending

Last Tuesday I shared a short story in my online writing group about a guy who finds a mysterious key in his attic. After three pages of buildup, I ended it with 'and then he woke up.' One member said 'you just wasted 20 minutes of my life.' It stung but they were right. Anyone else ever get called out for a cheap twist?

Found a 2017 journal entry about writing prompts and it changed my approach

Last weekend I was cleaning out my closet and found a notebook from 2017 where I wrote down a random prompt about a door that only opens at midnight. I spent about 20 minutes trying to write something from it back then and gave up. This time I tried it again and wrote a full page in 10 minutes. Has anyone else revisited old prompts and had them click way better later on?

Met a guy at the gas station off I-35 who told me his life story while I was trying to fill up

I'm sitting there at 6am, barely awake, pumping gas before my morning run. This older fella pulls up next to me in a beat-up Ford Ranger, hops out, and just starts talking. No hello, no warning. He tells me he used to be a line cook in Austin for 22 years, then one day he wrote a short story about a talking armadillo that won some local contest. Now he's driving to Dallas to pitch a novel to a publisher he found on Reddit. I asked him what the book was about, and he said "It's about a mailman who discovers his route is actually a secret map to buried treasure, but every house has a different rule you gotta follow." I stood there for 10 minutes with the nozzle still in my tank just listening. Has anyone else had a stranger just unload a whole creative project on them out of nowhere?

The wild change in my dialogue after I stopped using fancy character names

I was writing this short story for months and every character had these elaborate names like Aurelius and Cordelia. Then last week I just switched to simple tags like Bob and Jane for a bar scene. Suddenly the conversations felt real and fast like people actually talk, instead of reading like a Shakespeare play. Has anyone else hit that point where fancy names just kill the flow of your dialogue?

Warning: I stopped outlining my stories for 3 months and my writing got way better

I used to plan every chapter before writing, but after 90 days of just starting with a vague idea and seeing where it went, my first drafts actually flow better. The key was letting character decisions drive the plot instead of forcing them into a pre-set outline. Has anyone else tried ditching outlines for a while?

Went from rewriting every draft 3 times to just one pass after I stopped outlining

For 2 years I plotted every chapter to death and still hated the result. Cut the outlines cold turkey on my last novel and the first pass actually matched what I wanted. Has anyone else broken a habit that made their writing worse?

I finally dropped $80 on a beat-up typewriter from a thrift store and now I can't stop writing terrible poetry

My laptop was too distracting with all the internet stuff so I figured a mechanical keyboard with no screen would force some old-school creativity, but instead I just keep hammering out weird rhymes about my cat knocking things off shelves, has anyone else gone retro and just ended up writing garbage?

Vent: That writing teacher who said "kill your darlings" was dead wrong for me

I had a creative writing prof at a community college in Spokane tell me to cut every clever metaphor I loved from my short story. I followed her advice and it turned into a flat, boring mess that read like a grocery list. Three months later I dug up the original draft with all my "bad" darlings and it got accepted by a lit mag after one round of edits. Has anyone else had a rule like that totally backfire on them?

Warning: That writing prompt trick I always ignored actually worked after I tried it at 2am

I used to think writing from a random object's perspective was just a gimmick... but I hit a wall on my short story about a diner in Tucson and gave it a shot with the old jukebox as the narrator. After 3 pages I had more ideas than I knew what to do with, and it broke me out of that loop I'd been stuck in for two weeks. Has anyone else had a prompt method they swore was useless until it saved their story?

Tried writing prompts with strict word counts for a month and my stories got way tighter

I used to ramble for 2000 words on a single prompt but after doing 100 word max challenges for 30 days my scenes feel way more focused. Anyone else find limitations actually make their writing better?

Hit 500 words on a short story and realized that's all it needed

I've been forcing myself to write longer and longer pieces trying to make things feel complete, but yesterday I finished a flash piece at exactly 500 words and it just clicked. No extra backstory, no filler descriptions. The whole thing worked because I stopped adding stuff. Has anyone else had a story tell you it was done way earlier than you expected?

My fuse box labeling system failed me at 2 AM last Tuesday

A storm knocked out power to half my house and I grabbed my flashlight to find the tripped breaker. I spent 20 minutes flipping switches because my labels said "kitchen" but actually controlled the bathroom. Turns out the previous owner just wrote what he guessed on the panel cover. I ended up turning every breaker off and on one by one to find the bad one. Has anyone else found their panel labeled completely wrong like that?

Discovered the 'stolen line' trick for dialogue prompts and it saved my stalled scene after 3 drafts

I kept hitting a wall with a character's backstory until I literally copied a line from a real argument I overheard at a coffee shop in Portland, and then rewrote it into the scene - has anyone else found lifting real talk from strangers fixes a flat story faster than any prompt generator?

Found a weird trick for breaking through writer's block with old prompts

I kept staring at blank pages for hours until I tried pulling up prompts from 2018 on this sub. Took one about a detective who loses their memory and rewrote it as a coffee shop scene set in Portland. Something about the age of the prompt made it easier to twist into something new. Anyone else have luck recycling really old prompts from the archives?

The librarian at my local branch in Portland changed how I outline novels after she showed me her old card catalog system

I was struggling with a messy plot for my fantasy novel and she pulled out a drawer of index cards from a 1950s card catalog and explained how they organized books by subject and cross-referenced them, and I realized I could do the same with my scenes and characters on physical cards instead of a digital doc, so now I'm trying that method for the next chapter of my draft and has anyone else tried using non-digital tools like index cards or corkboards to map out a story?

That writing professor told me to kill my darlings and I fought him on it for weeks

Dr. Harrison at Portland State kept telling me to cut the first three pages of my short story because they were just fancy scenery description. I argued with him for two weeks, saying it set the mood. He turned out 100% right - after I deleted those pages, my story actually started on page 4 and my workshop group finally engaged with it. Has anyone else had a teacher give advice that you stubbornly ignored at first?

Is it better to outline everything first or just dive in and write?

Spent 2 hours writing a story about a detective who solves crimes by eating burritos... only to realize I'd described the murder weapon wrong on page 1

I had the killer using a cheese grater but called it a whisk for 15 pages. Had to rewrite the whole opening scene because nobody gets killed with a whisk unless you're really creative.

Hot take: My best story came from a prompt that totally bombed at first

I was at a local writer's meetup in Austin and the host gave us a prompt about a character finding a key in their pocket. I spent 20 minutes writing a boring scene about a guy just going to a locksmith, lol. Then I flipped it, made the key open a door in his own house he never knew was there, and the whole story changed. That one rewrite turned into a 5,000 word short story that I actually got published. Has anyone else ever saved a bad start by just changing one big thing?

Hot take: Writing a prompt about a 'mysterious door' is way better than one about a 'magic portal'

The door makes you think about what's hidden in a normal place, but a portal just feels like a lazy fantasy shortcut. Am I the only one who gets more ideas from simple, grounded weirdness?