Tried writing prompts with random generators vs. building from real life. One blew the other away.

I spent about 3 months using those random prompt generators you find online. Got maybe 2 usable stories out of 50 tries. Then last month, I switched to pulling prompts from stuff I overheard at a coffee shop in Seattle and old newspaper headlines from 1982. The difference was huge. Real life details gave me richer characters and settings without forcing it. Has anyone else noticed their writing gets better when the prompt comes from something they actually saw or heard?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannahs7110d ago

Coffee shop eavesdropping is pretty much a professional sport for writers anyway, so you might as well get paid for it. Random generators feel like eating plain oatmeal for a month, technically works but nobody wants to do it. Newspaper headlines from 1982 probably have more drama than most of the stuff on TV right now.

karen27510d ago

Honestly, that coffee shop thing is gold, I've gotten some of my best dialogue from just sitting quiet and listening to strangers argue about nothing. But here's what I'm wondering - when you pulled those newspaper headlines, did you find yourself sticking close to the original story or did you let it wander into something totally different? Because I tried that with an old missing person case from the 80s and I ended up writing a sci-fi thing about time travelers messing with the timeline. Like, the real life spark was there but the story went its own way fast.