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Heard a guy at the Phoenix library say 'a prompt is a dare, not a recipe' and it's bugging me
I was at the Burton Barr library downtown two weeks ago waiting for my kid at the teen section, and these two older guys at a table were working on short stories. One of them read something the other wrote and said that line: a prompt is a dare, not a recipe. I wrote it on the back of a receipt.
Here's my issue. I've been using prompts in a journal for about two years. I pick one, write whatever comes, then stop. But after hearing that line, I went back through and counted 34 entries that all followed the same shape. Quiet opening, something small goes wrong, soft ending. Same recipe every time.
So I tried treating one like a dare. The prompt was just 'a locked door.' I wrote it as an angry voicemail from a landlord instead. Took 20 minutes and felt weird the whole time.
How do you know if a prompt is daring you or just handing you a mold?
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thea_carter21d ago
Honestly the 34 same-shaped entries might not be a mold at all, that might just be your voice. Most writers have a thing they circle back to, and calling it a recipe makes it sound bad when it's really just your style. The voicemail thing took 20 minutes and felt weird, but was it actually good? Weird doesn't always mean better.
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