c/creative-writing-prompts

Showerthought: My high school English teacher told me to never use adverbs

Mrs. Patterson in 10th grade said they weaken writing. 15 years later I realize she was right for basic stories but wrong when I write horror scenes. Has anyone else broken a writing rule they were taught and seen their work improve?

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marywilson•4d ago

Found a weird trick for getting past writer's block using old receipts

I kept staring at a blank page for hours until I started copying random receipt items from my wallet into a story, and somehow it unlocked a whole scene about a diner waitress. Has anyone else tried using real-life junk like this to kickstart a prompt?

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taylorshah•6d ago

Hot take: those "show don't tell" writing rules kill gritty first drafts

I spend 4 hours on my last prompt submission trying to SHOW every emotion instead of just writing the story, and it came out flat as cardboard. Back in 2019 I would just blast out raw scenes with simple tags like "he felt angry" and people actually liked them better. Does anyone else think the emphasis on showing has made us overthink natural dialogue and pacing?

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angela_harris•7d ago

Pro tip: That writing prompt from 3 years ago finally clicked last Tuesday

I found this prompt in an old notebook from 3 years ago about a time traveler who only brings back bad news. I tried writing it twice and gave up both times. Last week I was stuck in a 2 hour line at the DMV in Austin and suddenly the whole story came to me. The time traveler keeps showing up at family dinners to warn them about burnt casseroles and lost car keys but never the big stuff. I scribbled the whole thing on a receipt in 15 minutes. Anyone else have a prompt sit around for ages before it finally worked?

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linda_dixon49•22d ago

Tried a 'villain origin story' prompt and my character ended up relatable

I gave my creative writing group a prompt to write a villain origin story set in a small town. Everyone wrote about tragic backstories and bad choices, but my character's motive was just wanting a consistent coffee shop after three kept closing on her. I learned that everyday frustrations can actually make a villain more human than some big disaster. Has anyone else had a prompt backfire in a good way like that?

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torres.thea•22d ago

Debate: Should writing prompts spell out the ending or leave it open?

I keep seeing prompts on here that basically tell you how the story ends in the first sentence. Like "A detective finds a cursed artifact that makes him immortal" - where's the mystery? But then there's the other side that says vague prompts like "a stranger knocks on your door" are too loose to work with. My writing group argued about this for 45 minutes last Tuesday over instant coffee. Which style actually helps you write more?

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spencer_owens58•22d ago

The big detail everyone forgets in fantasy prompts

I keep seeing prompts about royal courts or magical schools but nobody ever mentions how the plumbing works. If you've got a castle with 200 people, where does all the waste go? That's the kind of grounding detail that makes a world feel real instead of a stage set.

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michael669•23d ago

Had a talk with a librarian that flipped how I think about dialogue

So last Tuesday I was at the public library downtown looking for something to read and this older librarian named Carol asked what I was writing. I told her I was stuck on a scene where two characters are arguing about something stupid. She just laughed and said 'real people don't finish each other's sentences or have perfect comebacks. They interrupt, they trail off, they say the wrong thing.' Then she handed me a book of transcribed court testimony from the 1980s. I spent an hour reading through it and yeah, people talk in fragments and tangents all the time. It hit me that I've been writing dialogue that's way too clean and polished. Has anyone else found a weird source like old transcripts or voicemail recordings that helped your writing sound more natural?

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marywilson•24d ago

The 'show don't tell' rule gets pushed way too hard in writing prompts

I've been in this community for about 6 years now, and I keep seeing people post prompts that are basically "show, don't tell" exercises. Like describe a storm without saying rain or wind. But that rule works best in scenes, not in every single sentence. When I first started out in 2018, I tried to follow that advice literally for a whole short story, and my beta reader said it felt like reading a puzzle instead of a story. Has anyone else noticed prompts getting too focused on one writing trick instead of crafting an actual plot?

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evan_green52•24d ago

PSA: Don't let your creative writing group turn into a roast session

I was at a writers meetup last Tuesday at the downtown library and this guy named Mike tore into someone's opening paragraph about a haunted diner. He was laughing and saying the description sounded like a five year old wrote it. I felt bad for the girl who wrote it, she looked like she wanted to leave. The facilitator just sat there and let it happen. That night I started running my own critique sessions with a simple rule: no tearing people down. We do a round where everyone says one thing that worked before we even talk about fixes. It's been three months and the stories people bring in are way better now because nobody is scared to share. Has anyone else had a bad experience with a critique group that made you rethink how to give feedback?

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spencer_coleman•25d ago

Found a statistic about character deaths that wrecked my outline

I was looking up how many named characters die in popular fantasy series for a new prompt I'm building. Turns out Game of Thrones kills off about 60% of its named characters by the final season. That number made me go back and look at my own outline and I realized I only had 2 planned deaths in a 400 page story. Now I'm wondering if I'm being too soft on my cast or if high death counts are just a GRRM thing. Has anyone else run into this and changed their whole plot?

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taylor.reese•25d ago

That one writing prompt from my aunt changed how I see characters

My aunt Peggy, she's a retired librarian from Portland, handed me a napkin at a diner last summer with three words on it: 'The red door.' She said write one scene about who walks through it and why. I did it and suddenly my whole story got real because I stopped worrying about plot and just focused on one person's moment.

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davis.noah•27d ago

That one dude at the open mic who changed how I write dialogue

Last year at a poetry slam in Austin, this older guy named Phil came up to me after I read a piece. He said "your words are pretty but they don't sound like real people talk." Then he told me to eavesdrop at a diner for an hour and write down exact conversations. I did it at a Waffle House on 6th street and realized my characters all sounded like me instead of themselves. Has anyone else had a stranger give them writing advice that actually worked?

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blair_taylor32•29d ago

Hot take: Spending $40 on a beat up typewriter from a thrift shop changed how I write prompts

I picked up a rusty 1960s Smith Corona for $40 last weekend and typing out my story ideas on paper instead of a screen has made them way more vivid and weird. Has anyone else tried switching up their writing tool to break out of a creative rut?

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the_anthony•1mo ago

That poetry slam in Portland changed how I write dialogue forever

Back in 2018 I went to this spoken word night at a small coffee shop on Hawthorne. A woman got up and told a 3 minute story about her grandmother's kitchen using nothing but smells and sounds. No descriptions of what anything looked like. I sat there with my jaw hanging open because every single person in that room could SEE that kitchen. It hit me that I was wasting adjectives in my fiction trying to paint pictures when I should have been using the other senses. After that night I went home and rewrote a scene from my novel using only what my character could hear and smell. That one exercise fixed a chapter I had been stuck on for 6 months. Has anyone else had a live performance completely shift how they approach a specific writing technique?

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anderson.piper•1mo ago

Found that old trick of writing the ending first actually worked for me.

I was stuck on a fantasy story for like 3 months, couldn't get past chapter two. Then I just wrote the final scene on a napkin during lunch at a diner off Route 9. Knew where I was going after that, and the whole thing came together in about 2 weeks. Anyone else ever try jumping ahead like that and have it click?

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cole_baker•1mo ago

A beta reader told me my opening chapter was boring me to tears, so I literally cut the first 3000 words and started the story right when the action begins instead

They said nobody cares about three pages of my character eating cereal and thinking about his job, so I just deleted it all and began with him finding the dead body on page one instead, has anyone else ever had to kill that many of their own darlings?

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wadew51•1mo ago

Picked the digital planner over paper for my novel outline and it actually worked out

I was stuck on chapter 4 of this fantasy thing I've been pecking at for months. Could not figure out where the plot was going. So I had this choice: buy a nice leather journal and try the old-school bullet journal method, or dump it all into a Scrivener template. I went with the digital option because I hate my own handwriting. 3 days later I had the whole second act mapped out. The corkboard view just clicked for me. Has anyone else had a tool choice totally unlock a story block?

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ray356•1mo ago

Got told I was too precious with my characters, so I killed one off in chapter 3

A beta reader said my protagonist was too safe, nothing bad ever stuck to her. So I wrote a scene where a random car accident took out her brother and it totally unlocked how the rest of the story should go. Has anyone else gotten feedback that forced you to wreck your own plan?

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jackson.faith•1mo ago

PSA: A flat tire on I-95 taught me to always check my spare

I was stuck on the shoulder near Richmond with a shredded tire at 9pm, and when I popped the trunk my spare was flat too, so I had to call a tow truck and wait two hours, and now I check my spare every oil change, has anyone else been caught off guard like that?

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tessa_murray•1mo ago

Spent $80 on a writing prompt app and it basically killed my creativity

I bought a subscription to a popular prompt generator app, thinking it would give me fresh ideas. Instead, every prompt felt generic, like 'a character finds a key' or 'write about a storm.' I forced myself to use it for a solid month, and my writing got more predictable, not less. Has anyone else had a tool backfire and make their creative process feel more robotic?

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holly_reed55•1mo ago

I bought a $300 'idea generation' software package that just gave me generic lists

It was a few years back, and I was stuck on a story. The ad promised unique, tailored prompts. I paid for the full version, but all it did was spit out things like 'a character finds a key' or 'write about a storm'. I could have gotten that from a free website. It felt like a real waste. Has anyone found a tool or method that actually helps break through a creative block?

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rowan_thomas84•1mo ago

Serious question, why does every single prompt about a 'twist' have to be a big, dark secret?

I've been in this community for a while, and I swear, if I see one more prompt that's like 'your character finds out their best friend is actually their clone' or 'the kindly neighbor is a serial killer', I'm going to scream. A twist can be small and human! It can be finding out the grumpy old man at the coffee shop is a champion knitter, or that the quiet librarian writes surprisingly good romance novels. I ran a small writing group in Tacoma last year, and the best story came from a prompt where the twist was a dad finding his teenage son's earnest, heartfelt poetry about mowing the lawn. It was funny and sweet and REAL. Why does everything have to be so dramatic and grim? What's a good 'quiet twist' prompt you've used that actually got people writing?

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linda114•1mo ago

Appreciation post: A prompt about a lost key in Chicago three years ago got me writing again

Three years ago, I saw a prompt here about someone finding a single key on a bench in Grant Park, Chicago, and having to figure out what it opened. I was stuck on a story and that simple idea just clicked. I wrote a whole short piece about a locksmith finding it, which turned into my first finished story in ages. What's a prompt you found that just unlocked a story for you like that?

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stellaperry•1mo ago

Can we talk about those 'write a story from a random word' generators?

I always thought they were a total waste of time, just a gimmick. Then I got stuck on a project for a solid month, nothing worked. A friend made me try one, the word was 'moth'. Wrote a whole scene about a lighthouse keeper obsessed with them. It broke the block completely. Now I use one for ten minutes when I'm stuck. Anyone have a favorite prompt site that actually gives good, weird words?

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