Pro tip: skip the $89 prompt deck, it gave me the same three setups as a free wiki
I dropped $89 at a con in Nashville last month on a deck of 300 prompt cards because the booth guy said it would break my habit of writing the same diner scene over and over. I got home and flipped through all of them and counted, 240 cards were just a character, a place, and a problem tossed at you with no twist, basically Mad Libs. A free prompt wiki I bookmarked in 2019 covers the exact same ground and adds a genre and a constraint, which is what actually made me write something new. The ten cards that were any good cost me about nine bucks a piece when you do the math, and two of them were ripped straight from a writing class handout floating around online. My unpopular take is that most paid prompt decks are a comfort buy, you feel like you did something for your writing by owning them. If a prompt does not give you a limit to push against, like 500 words or no dialogue, it is just a daydream seed and you already have a million of those for free. What free or cheap prompt source actually got you to finish a draft instead of just staring at a nice card?