Loading…
5
Shoutout to the stranger who wrote a single-sentence story prompt that broke my writer's block
I always thought those one-sentence writing prompts were lazy, like how could six words help anyone. Then last Tuesday I was stuck on page 40 of a short story I'd been dragging around for eight weeks, so I tried one off a napkin at a diner in Akron that just said 'a woman returns a library book 30 years late.' By Friday I had 2,000 words and the thing had a real ending, not the fake one I kept forcing. Turns out the trick is the prompt gives you a person and a problem and your brain does the rest without you having to invent a whole world first. What's the shortest prompt that ever actually got you writing something real?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
ivan21119d ago
The part about the prompt giving you a person and a problem and your brain doing the rest really hits home. I had the same hangup, figured a six word prompt was just a gimmick for people who can't commit to a real idea. Then a friend tossed me "the last person on earth hears a knock" and I cranked out 1,500 words in two nights after being stuck for a month. It's wild how one little setup hands you the whole shape of the thing without you having to build a world from scratch first. Getting a real ending instead of the fake ones you keep forcing is the best part, honestly.
8