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My prompt about a lighthouse keeper turned into 9 pages of backstory and zero story
I was sitting at my kitchen table in Akron last Thursday working from a prompt about a lighthouse keeper finding a letter, and around midnight I realized I had written 9 pages and the keeper still hadn't opened the envelope. I got so wrapped up in his childhood and the town history that I forgot the actual point of the prompt. What I did was set a rule for myself: the thing the prompt asks for has to happen within the first 200 words, then I build out from there. Does anyone else fight this, and how do you catch yourself before the backstory eats the whole piece?
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