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My friend said my prompts were too safe and it got me thinking
We were talking about a story I was stuck on and she just said, 'You always start with a character finding a key or a letter. What if the prompt was finding something that makes them forget?' It hit different because it wasn't about fixing the plot, it was about breaking my own habit. Anyone else have a go-to prompt structure they're trying to shake?
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brookef733mo ago
Sentient furniture is a fun start, but what if the furniture was slowly forgetting it was ever a chair?
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amyr573mo ago
Oh man, that reminds me of my weird phase writing only about sentient furniture.
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spencer4071mo ago
That sentient furniture thing you mentioned @amyr57 actually reminds me of a trick that got me unstuck once. I had this whole series of short stories where the furniture was aware of its own existence but couldn't move or speak - just had internal monologues. The real breakthrough was when I treated each piece like it had a specific memory issue, like that chair forgetting it was ever a chair idea. What worked for me was actually writing a scene where the furniture had to use its environment to communicate without any words at all. Like a lamp flickering to signal danger or a couch creaking in a certain pattern. It forced me to describe everything through action and physical details instead of dialogue.
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hill.jade1mo ago
Forcing myself to write a whole scene with no dialogue was the thing that finally cracked me out of my habit of starting every story with two characters talking. It was uncomfortable as hell at first but it forced my brain to think in a totally different way.
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