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I thought writing prompts had to be fancy, then a guy at a Laundromat in Tulsa handed me an index card that changed how I write
Three months ago I was stuck on a story for two weeks because I kept trying to write these big, serious prompts like 'a detective haunted by his past.' Then I'm sitting at a Laundromat in Tulsa waiting on my dryer and this older guy next to me sees my notebook and asks what I'm working on. I told him and he laughed, pulled an index card out of his pocket and wrote 'write about the smell of your grandma's purse' on it. I tried it that night and cranked out 900 words in one sitting, more than I'd written in a month. Now I keep a jar of index cards with stuff like 'a receipt you kept for no reason' and 'the worst haircut you ever paid for' and I pull one when I'm stuck. The weird thing is the small stuff opens up way bigger stories than my old 'important' prompts ever did. So what's the most random prompt that actually got you writing? I need more for the jar.
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abby_cooper24d ago
Write about the smell of your grandma's purse" is so weirdly specific and I love it. My best one was "describe the inside of your dad's car console" and I ended up writing 1,200 words about my childhood, a divorce, and a petrified french fry. Before that I was sitting there for a week trying to force out some deep thing about life and death and getting nothing but a blinking cursor and shame. Turns out my dad's crusty cupholder had way more to say than my big ideas ever did. It's kind of funny how the dumb little stuff is what actually gets you somewhere.
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