Tried a writing prompt generator and it broke my story completely

I used one of those AI writing prompt apps last Tuesday just to get some fresh ideas for a fantasy short I've been stuck on. The thing gave me a prompt about a knight finding a magical spoon that turns water into wine, which seemed silly but I went with it. After writing 3 pages, I realized the whole plot had no tension because the spoon solved every problem right away. I learned those generators don't understand story structure at all, they just throw random words together. My whole Sunday got eaten up fixing the mess and I ended up throwing out 80% of what I wrote. Has anyone else had a prompt tool actually make your writing worse instead of better?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan5432d ago

Jumped into one of those generators last month for a horror story and it gave me a prompt about a haunted house where the ghost communicates through fridge magnets. Spent like two hours on it and realized the ghost had no real motivation, it was just rearranging letters to spell out grocery lists and dad jokes. The prompt completely missed what makes horror work - tension and dread - because it was too focused on being quirky and random. Had to scrap the whole thing and start from scratch with the classic "something's in the walls" approach to get anywhere near scary.

felixm292d ago

Oh man, those things are total plot killers! They just don't get how a story actually works.

tessaperry2d ago

Right? It's like they read one book on writing and decided that's the only way to do it. I swear I've seen more stories ruined by that one rule than by bad grammar.