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I ignored writing prompts for 3 years because they felt like training wheels, then a guy in Portland handed me one index card
I always thought prompts were for people who could not come up with their own ideas. Then at a writer meetup in Portland last month, this older guy gave me a single index card that just said 'write about a door that should not be there.' I wrote 900 words that night, more than I had written in the previous two months combined. Now I am wondering if the trick is not the prompt itself but the limit it puts on your brain. Does anyone here use prompts as a warm up, or do you build whole stories off them?
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samrodriguez19d ago
It works the same way as a fence in a big yard. Give a dog the whole park and it just stands there sniffing the air, but put up a fence and suddenly it runs laps like a maniac. Same thing with a menu at a diner that has 80 items, you stare forever. Hand someone a list with 5 options and they order in 30 seconds. Your brain is no different. The limit is not the cage, it is the thing that finally gives it somewhere to go.
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