Fine. I admit it. I hate most writing prompts.
Why? Well, that’s a good question. I enjoy thinking up ideas for stories. But I rarely find that “traditional” writing prompts help me do that. I suspect that the skills for creating a good writing prompt are further from the skills for writing a good story than we might expect.
Many writing prompts start with a core idea that’s too specific. Most of my Story Idea Vault entries fall into this camp, sad to say. It can be hard for someone else to come up with their own spin on the monster beneath the monastery that kills the monks and whispers the future, or the student biologist who has to learn how to recognize thousands of deadly forms of alien life on sight. How do you find the twist on that to get you excited and feel like it’s now yours?
I think a good writing prompt needs to contain not quite enough information. For me, a good story idea starts with an unexpected leap of logic or connection between unexpected things. It starts in the gaps.
I like the Story Engine because it provides very small bits of ideas and shuffles them up randomly. Often, when I use it to generate story ideas, I find that the new ideas are inspired by the cards, but often don’t quite fit all the parameters. From a full sentence with characters and actions and setting, something like the phrase “architecture bomb” will lodge in my brain and grow into something else entirely.
An even simpler exercise that I like for ideation is to generate two long lists of words or phrases. Then align the lists randomly and start reading the combinations. What is a skeleton jar? A Rickroll engine? Sky games?
Again, it’s not anything like a full, coherent idea; more like a high-speed collider for linguistic nuclei. It’s that unexpected connection between unrelated ideas that tickles the muse.
Recently, I discovered another exercise in the same vein—something almost, but not entirely unlike a writing prompt.
Go into the music app on your phone (or your record collection, or a Spotify playlist depending on how old you are) and put on some music. For each song, try to come up with the “story of the song” before it’s over.
I don’t mean summarizing the lyrics (if there are any, and they actually tell a story). Those words might contribute. Is there a person on a bike? A mother? Jilted lovers? An old truck? A fast car and a gun?
You might find yourself picturing little scenes or images. They could relate to the lyrics, or they may be soundscapes. Check the band name, the song name, the album name. Look at the cover art.
Surprisingly few songs tell a straightforward story. They’re often full of loosely related tidbits with little gaps and dark voids in between.
If you look carefully, there are stories in those gaps.
Words Deferred 