Those overused writing prompts from last year? They actually made my writing worse

I used to think all writing prompts were basically the same, just a way to get words on a page. Then I spent a few months pulling from those generic lists you see everywhere, like 'write about a character who loses something important.' My stories kept feeling flat and predictable. It wasn't until a friend in my critique group pointed out that my last three pieces all started with someone finding a mysterious object that I realized the problem. Those prompts were pushing me into the same tired patterns over and over. Now I'm way more picky about where I get them from, usually making my own or using ones from local writing meetups instead. Has anyone else noticed their writing getting stale from using the same old prompt generators?

3 comments

3 Comments

elliot_gibson2714d ago

Ugh, same here. I once realized three of my submissions to a writing contest all involved someone finding a key, which is just embarrassing when you think about it.

nancyn6914d ago

Oh man, I feel that so hard... I once spent a whole weekend trying to write a story about "a letter that changes everything" and ended up with five different versions of the same mailbox scene. It was like my brain had a default setting for "character finds a note and suddenly their whole life makes sense." I had to stop and read all my old stories just to see the pattern, and yeah, it was pretty embarrassing. Now I only use prompts that feel weirdly specific, like "write about someone who accidentally adopts a garden gnome" or something totally random.

lilyp3711d ago

My 42nd attempt at a story last year started with a character finding a locked diary... then I realized I'd written basically the same opening in four other stories that month. It was like my brain was stuck on a loop, cycling through "character discovers a hidden box, character finds a strange photograph, character gets a mysterious voicemail." I finally broke out of it by writing a prompt for myself that was "write about a character who doesn't find anything and that's the whole point of the story," which was honestly refreshing.