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Thought those "write a letter to your fear" prompts were cheesy until one broke my 4 month dry spell
Back in February I hit a wall with my short stories and started combing through prompt lists out of pure frustration. I kept seeing the one that says write a letter to your main character from the thing they are most afraid of, and I rolled my eyes every time. It felt like the kind of warm up exercise a workshop teacher hands out when they have nothing else planned. Then one Tuesday night I tried it for a story I had been stuck on since October, and about 20 minutes in I realized my villain had no idea what the hero actually wanted, which was the whole reason the middle of the draft was mush. The letter came out weird and dramatic but it gave me a line I ended up using almost word for word in chapter 9. I still think half the prompts floating around are filler, but this one did more for me in one sitting than 4 months of staring at the doc. Curious if anyone else has a prompt they dismissed as silly that ended up doing real work on a draft.
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rileynguyen5d ago
Honestly same thing happened to me with the "interview your villain" prompt. I thought it was the cheesiest thing ever, like who actually sits there asking their bad guy questions, but I was stuck on this fantasy draft for months and tried it one night out of boredom. Turns out my villain's whole motivation made zero sense and once I heard him "talk" I finally got why the hero kept beating him in every scene. Wrote like 2k words the next day after doing nothing for weeks. Half those prompt lists are junk but every once in a while one just cracks something open.
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