c/creative-writing-prompts

28

dakota787•14h ago

My old writing teacher said to cut every adverb, but I think that's too strict

My professor in college told me to remove every single adverb from my fiction drafts. I tried it for a full year, and my writing did get tighter. But last week, I was editing a scene where a character says 'I love you' quietly, and just writing 'she said' felt totally wrong. The 'quietly' was needed for the mood. I think the rule helps new writers avoid clutter, but it can kill the right detail. Has anyone else found a middle ground with this kind of strict writing advice?

12

smith.anna•1d ago

Shoutout to the open mic night at The Rusty Quill that completely wrecked my writing process

I read a piece about a sentient coffee machine, and a guy in the back yelled 'I've seen this plot on a forum!' halfway through. Now I can't write a single idea without hearing that voice in my head, questioning if it's original enough. How do you get past the fear that every cool concept has already been done somewhere?

21

luna_sanchez•2d ago

Stuck between two opening lines for my sci-fi story

I was writing a story set on a colony ship and couldn't decide if it should start with the main character waking up from cryo-sleep or with the ship's AI giving a final warning. I went with the AI line, and it made the whole first chapter feel way more urgent. What's a tough choice you've had to make with a story's beginning?

21

leer12•4d ago

My kid asked why my story's hero always wins the fight

We were talking about my space pirate story over breakfast, and my seven year old just said 'but what if the bad guy is just scared, like when I have a bad dream?'. I had to stop and think about writing a whole scene from the villain's point of view. How do you make a bad guy feel real without making your hero seem weak?

27

bennett.luna•5d ago

Spent $40 on a random prompt generator app and it actually got me writing again

I was stuck on a story for days, so I bought this app that just spits out weird situations like 'a librarian who can only speak in book titles' or 'a heist at a candle factory'. It gave me this idea about a ghost who haunts a food truck, and I wrote two pages right away. What's the best money you've spent to kickstart a project?

15

robinson.quinn•5d ago

My story outline fell apart right before a big writing session

So I had this whole weekend planned to finally work on my novel, the first real writing time I'd had in months. I sat down Saturday morning, opened my notebook, and realized my entire chapter outline for the middle section made zero sense. I'd written it three months ago and now the character motivations were all wrong, the timeline was backwards, and a key plot point just vanished. I spent like two hours just staring at it, trying to figure out how I ever thought it would work. Ended up having to scrap the whole middle and just start writing from a single scene I knew was solid. Has anyone else had their planning completely fail them right when you were ready to go? How do you salvage a writing day when your roadmap is broken?

25

morgan.joseph•6d ago

Warning: I hit 1000 words on a single scene and everyone told me to cut it

I know the rule is to keep scenes tight, but this one needed every word to build the tension in the old lighthouse. Has anyone else kept a long scene that just felt right?

28

lucas63•6d ago

Update: I spent $45 on a 'magic' writing prompt generator app

I saw an ad for this app that promised unique, endless prompts. I bought it, and the first ten prompts were fine, but then it just started repeating the same five ideas with different character names. I mean, after two days it felt like I'd seen everything. Has anyone found a better way to get fresh prompts without hitting a wall?

11

bethjackson•7d ago

My $12 prompt book finally got me past that blank page feeling...

I was stuck for days, but flipping through its random first lines got three new stories started this afternoon, so what's a prompt trick that always works for you?

3

victor_lane60•8d ago

I was at the library and heard two people talking about a 'character flaw' as a plot engine

I was picking up a book on hold at the downtown branch yesterday and overheard a couple of students at a table. One said, 'My main character is too perfect, so nothing happens.' The other replied, 'Yeah, give them a real flaw, like they're a coward who has to act brave, or they're so loyal it gets them into trouble.' That simple idea stuck with me for the whole walk home. I always thought of flaws as just making a character likable, but I never saw them as the actual engine that drives the plot forward. Now I'm looking back at my own stalled story about a detective, and I think the reason it's stuck is because my detective is just smart and solves things. What if the flaw was that he never trusts his partner? That could create conflict at every turn. Has anyone else built a whole plot around fixing a single character flaw?

13

beth_sanchez•9d ago

I just hit 100 writing prompts in my idea notebook and it feels like a weird turning point.

I started jotting down one prompt a day back in January, and now that I'm here, I'm stuck on whether to start a new project or just keep collecting them.

3

jordan_walker•9d ago

A librarian in Portland gave me a writing prompt I still think about

I was looking for a book on plot structure last month and asked the librarian for help. She found the book, then said, 'Try this: write about a person who finds something they lost years ago, but now they wish they hadn't.' She wrote it on a scrap of paper for me. That simple idea stuck in my head more than any book I checked out that day. What's the best writing prompt someone has ever given you?

18

beth_patel4•11d ago

I just hit 47 different prompts about sentient household appliances in my notebook.

My toaster prompt file is now longer than my actual novel draft, so has anyone else accidentally built a whole world around a minor idea?

18

river_adams25•11d ago

Bought a $15 book of random writing prompts from a gas station

I got it for a road trip, but the prompts were so weird they actually helped me write a short story about a talking mailbox. It broke me out of a creative block I had for months. Has anyone else found a strange source for good writing ideas?

21

oliviac22•12d ago

My worst writing week ever started with a broken coffee maker

Last Tuesday, my trusty coffee machine gave out right before a big deadline. I had three short stories due for a contest by Friday, and my brain just would not work without that first cup. I tried writing at the library, but the silence was too loud, you know? By Wednesday, I was so stuck I almost gave up. Then I remembered a tip from an old writing blog: use a random object as a prompt. I grabbed a weird blue button from my junk drawer and wrote a whole page about where it came from. That silly exercise broke the block, and I finished all three stories by Thursday night. Has anyone else used a random physical thing to kickstart a story when they were totally stuck?

28

dylan265•14d ago

My writing group keeps using the same 'chosen one' prompt every week

It's always 'you find out you have secret powers' or 'a prophecy picks you', which gets old fast. How do I suggest something fresh without sounding like a jerk?

9

smith.anna•14d ago

I used to think writing prompts were just for beginners

I was at the library last Tuesday and heard a published author tell someone, "I still use that 'write from the villain's grocery list' prompt to break blocks." It made me see prompts not as training wheels, but as tools anyone can use to find a new angle. Now I keep a list of odd ones on my phone. What's the weirdest prompt that actually worked for you?

11

allen.ruby•15d ago

My writing app said I hit 50,000 words on a single story and I felt sick

I opened Scrivener last night to check a scene, and the project stats box popped up like it always does. The word count at the bottom just said '50,127' in plain black text. I stared at it for a full minute because I've never stuck with one idea long enough to get past maybe 15k. This is just a weird fantasy thing about a clockwork city, and I guess all those little 500-word sessions added up. It's a huge number, but now I'm scared to actually read it back. Has anyone else gotten paralyzed by their own word count?

16

kelly_ramirez96•16d ago

Just found out the average novel is way shorter than I thought

I was looking at some old publishing data from 2018 and saw that the average published novel is only about 80,000 words. I always pictured them being over 100k, easy. This makes me wonder if we put too much pressure on word count when starting a story. Do you guys aim for a specific length, or just write until it's done?

13

mitchell.wade•17d ago

Question about a writing prompt trend I noticed on a site last month

I was browsing a big prompt site and saw the top 50 prompts from January versus April. In January, about 70% were simple one-line fantasy or sci-fi setups. By April, that dropped to maybe 30%. The new top prompts are all these complex, multi-part scenarios with specific rules and constraints, like 'write a dialogue where every sentence is a lie' or 'describe a city where memories are currency, but only from the view of a forgetful banker'. The shift happened fast, over about 90 days. It feels like the bar for what's considered a 'good' prompt got a lot higher, almost overnight. Has anyone else had to change how they come up with ideas because of this?

5

hugo645•18d ago

Hot take: I started writing my stories from the middle, not the beginning, and it fixed my 6-month writer's block.

Everyone says to outline the start first, but I got stuck every time until I wrote the scene where my main character finds the hidden letter in the old Seattle bookstore, then worked backwards and forwards from that point.

26

ryan_kim63•19d ago

I used to think writing prompts needed to be huge and epic

For years, I'd only start a story if the prompt was something like 'a wizard must stop a galactic war.' Then, a workshop leader in Austin told me 'the best conflict is in a single room.' So I tried a prompt about two people arguing over a thermostat. I wrote more in that one afternoon than I had in the previous month. Has anyone else had better luck with small, simple ideas?

13

derekcarr•20d ago

Pro tip: I spent $300 on a 'premium' writing prompt generator app that just gave me the same ideas over and over.

I bought it hoping for fresh story starters, but after a month I realized it was just recycling the same five basic plots (like a detective with amnesia, you know, that old chestnut). Has anyone found a better way to get genuinely new prompts without spending a bunch of cash?

27

karen_martin•20d ago

Tried writing a story from a prompt about a sentient coffee machine and it turned into a horror piece

I saw a prompt here about a coffee machine that gains consciousness. Everyone in the thread was talking about writing cute, funny stories. So I tried it, aiming for something light. But as I wrote, the machine got really paranoid about being unplugged. By the end, it had trapped its owner in the kitchen. I learned that a prompt's suggested tone doesn't have to be a rule. It can be a starting point that leads somewhere totally different. Has a prompt ever taken your story in a direction you didn't plan at all?

22

milesh89•21d ago

A writing group in Portland told me my characters all sounded the same

About two years back, I joined a small writing group that met at a library in Portland. I was really proud of a short story I'd written, but after I read it, one of the members, a retired editor named Carol, gave me some hard truth. She said, 'Miles, I can't tell your teenage hacker from your seventy-year-old gardener in their dialogue. They all just sound like you.' That hit me hard. I went home and really looked at my work, and she was totally right. I started doing character voice exercises, writing pages of dialogue for each person before I even began the story, just to hear how they'd talk. It felt silly at first, but it made a huge difference. Now I'm way more careful about giving each character their own words. Has anyone else gotten feedback that made you completely change a basic part of your writing process?