I finally ditched the 'what if' prompts for 'what is' and my writing got real

For six months, I was stuck on those big, wild 'what if' prompts, like 'what if gravity stopped for a day?' They felt huge and empty. I switched to simple, grounded 'what is' ones instead, like 'a man finds his father's old watch in a pawn shop in Cleveland.' That one detail gave me everything: a character, a place, a problem. I wrote a 3,000-word story in a week, something I hadn't done in a year. The 'what if' stuff just made me think. The 'what is' stuff made me write. It forced me to deal with real people and small, true feelings instead of giant ideas. Anyone else find that shrinking the scope actually gives you more to work with?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_hannah7d ago

My last story started with "a woman finds a single red sneaker in a ditch by the highway." That one weird image did more for me than months of trying to figure out "what if time travel was real but boring." I spent so long world building for those huge ideas and never actually wrote a single scene. Now I just grab a tiny, solid thing and the people and the problems just show up. It feels like cheating, but it's the only way I can get words on the page anymore.

martinez.ryan7d ago

So @the_hannah, what was the very first question you asked yourself about that red sneaker?