Gave my writing group the same prompt twice, once with a word limit and once without, and the word limit version won by a mile

Lily Jenkins · 2026-10-16T08:25:03.906879+00:00

I run a small creative writing group at the library in Dayton and two weeks ago I gave everyone the same prompt about a lost key but capped it at 200 words. The stuff people came up with was tight and weird, one guy wrote a whole chase scene in like 90 words. Last month I ran that same prompt uncapped and half the stories were 3 pages of rambling backstory before anyone even touched a key. The cap forced everyone to cut the boring setup and jump right into the good part. Anyone else tried hard limits in their prompts, or does it just kill your flow?

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Gave my writing group the same prompt twice, once with a word limit and once without, and the word limit version won by a mile | Creative Writing Prompts - Librear