Can we talk about how my writing group's prompt game changed in just 2 months?

We used to get the same old 'write about a haunted house' stuff every week, it got boring. Then one person brought in a prompt from a site called Reedsy, about a character who finds their own obituary online. Everyone wrote way more interesting stories that night. Now we pull from three different prompt websites before each meetup, and the ideas are so much better. What's the coolest writing prompt you've found online lately?

3 comments

3 Comments

robert_jones2mo ago

That shift from the haunted house stuff to the obituary prompt is huge. It's like going from painting the same fence to getting a whole blank wall to spray. I saw one last week about a librarian who finds a book where the text changes based on who's reading it. Just that simple twist makes you ask so many questions right away. It beats another "dark and stormy night" opener by a mile. Good prompts just hand you the spark instead of the whole log.

the_hugo2mo ago

Totally! That librarian prompt is genius because it makes you build the whole world around one weird thing. Like, who wrote the book? What happens if two people read it together? It reminds me of a prompt I saw about a time traveler who can only go back to fix really small, petty mistakes. You get this huge idea from one little twist.

the_nancy22d ago

From painting the same fence to getting a whole blank wall to spray" - yeah, until you realize you still have to paint the damn wall and now you're staring at a giant bare surface with no idea where to start. But okay, I get your point. Those little twist prompts are great until you have to actually write more than a paragraph. I found one that was like "the last unicorn in the world works as a tax accountant" and spent three hours just trying to figure out if unicorns would even need to pay taxes. So congrats, you upgraded from bored to equally panicked but with better material.