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Stories from writing prompts
- Thread starter Torbie
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Define a full length story. Flash less than 1k words? Short story? Novella? Novel? Trilogy or longer series?
If I use prompts, I tend to write flash or short stories. I enjoy the yearly december flash fiction challenge where a prompt is given each day. I have participated in the short story exchange where each participant gives a prompt and the organizer passes out prompts, followed by the guessing thread where we try to match exerpt to writer.
Trying to write a novel length space opera from a prompt generator might be an interesting challenge. But I probably have more ideas for more WiPs that I can use so I probably wouldn't use a prompt for longer than a short story.
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Oh, my sweet summer child, have you not experienced SISYPHUS? Which I am probably spelling wrong, but hang on, let me find the link...
The F/SF folks here do it twice each year. Once for Xmas, where one person provides a prompt and another person writes a story based on it as a gift. Once in summer, where the group chooses three prompts by vote and everyone uses the same prompts to write a story. Holy moley, the variety that comes from the latter story swap is amazeballs. (ETA and often, to my amazement and envy, a lot of the stories are novella length.)
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I'm not a fan of the concept outside of maybe contests.
However, some writers find things like prompts, fan-fiction, etc, useful for practice or learning the craft.
However, some writers find things like prompts, fan-fiction, etc, useful for practice or learning the craft.
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And some writers find prompts useful for just plain Coming Up With A Story Idea that leads to Something Eminently Publishable.
Every writer has different needs and methods to jump-start their stories. Use whatever works for you!
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Is the random caps part of some secret code? Are you National Treasuring me right now?!?!?!
Prompts for me are good for narrowing down a whole huge range of possibilities into something I can focus on and develop. Crossing multiple prompts can generate unexpected juxtapositions and new directions to explore.
I’m excited tonight because I just finished drafting a flash piece for a contest with a one-word prompt. Other stories might take the same initial direction, but one word isn’t a story - the other story elements have to come from somewhere, and come together from a certain perspective, that other stories from the same prompt won’t duplicate.
I’m excited tonight because I just finished drafting a flash piece for a contest with a one-word prompt. Other stories might take the same initial direction, but one word isn’t a story - the other story elements have to come from somewhere, and come together from a certain perspective, that other stories from the same prompt won’t duplicate.
I think the answer to this is going to be very individual — and also vary with the nature of the prompt. I’ve seen prompts as brief as a single word, or as long as a paragraph. They can be “write a story with this title” or “write a story in which [detailed description of a scenario”.
In any event, the output will vary vastly from writer to writer, and as @AnnieColleen says, the story is still ultimately yours, so I don’t think you need to worry about whether other writers are working from the same prompt. And what you do with the prompted story will vary from writer to writer to. Some people only want to use them for practice — but you never know when a story you wrote “just for practice” will deepen or feed into something you want to share with the world. And if it originated with a prompt, that’s really just fine.
In any event, the output will vary vastly from writer to writer, and as @AnnieColleen says, the story is still ultimately yours, so I don’t think you need to worry about whether other writers are working from the same prompt. And what you do with the prompted story will vary from writer to writer to. Some people only want to use them for practice — but you never know when a story you wrote “just for practice” will deepen or feed into something you want to share with the world. And if it originated with a prompt, that’s really just fine.
Torbie said:
I think it's great and perfectly fine. We're not clones of each other so the stories will nearly always turn out differently. I was one of the organizers of something similar way-back-when on another forum, actually, and the stories that were written varied greatly, even when the writing prompts had a narrow focus.
The same premise, yes - the same perspective, no.
Norsebard
Whatever gets you writing, I imagine, is good. To get a novel-length story out of a prompt is going to require some more work, sure. But so does every long story. (I only write short stories. It shows.)
And after all, every single idea that gets turned into a book will be prompted by something, internal or external. A prompt is just a starting point, and who knows, in the end the resulting story may not have a single thing in common anymore with the prompt that started it. Although if you're hired to write to a specific prompt, that might be a problem.
But otherwise I'm trying to picture where writing a story to a prompt would be a bad thing, and I can't think of any.
And after all, every single idea that gets turned into a book will be prompted by something, internal or external. A prompt is just a starting point, and who knows, in the end the resulting story may not have a single thing in common anymore with the prompt that started it. Although if you're hired to write to a specific prompt, that might be a problem.
But otherwise I'm trying to picture where writing a story to a prompt would be a bad thing, and I can't think of any.
I once wrote an entire novel off a prompt that was literally just a name - a first name/derogatory nickname combination. It wasn't even a prompt for a novel. It was a prompt for a character in a film. My brain just happened to take it in a direction that warranted writing a novel rather than making a short film. Note: the novel wasn't very good but I gained a lot of experience writing it. It was consigned to the dustbin of "as much as this was a useful experience, it is literally going nowhere" lol. One that I'm still working on was from a question on an education forum "I wonder what life was like for the very first half Neandertal/half Homo sapiens people?"
Not sure why lots of scenes would have to be written from the same premise. The story needs to be internally consistent, but it doesn't need to stay true to the original prompt. Literally no-one is going to say "oh, you wrote this from the prompt (add thing here) but there was no trace of (that thing) in your actual story!" Prompts are good ways to spark creativity and get you thinking, but that is all they are. The story that results from them is entirely yours to take any any direction you please.
I'm sure most people here have heard the legendary Jim Butcher story. He was arguing online with someone that execution is more important than a good concept, and got them to give him two stupid prompts, Pokemon, and the Lost Roman Legion. He then wrote a bestselling series called Codex Alera based on them.
Undoubtedly if you were given those two same prompts you'd come up with something completely different than Mr. Butcher, but also those prompts were enough for him to come up with a solid fantasy series.
I guess my point is use whatever tools help you get a story out.
Undoubtedly if you were given those two same prompts you'd come up with something completely different than Mr. Butcher, but also those prompts were enough for him to come up with a solid fantasy series.
I guess my point is use whatever tools help you get a story out.
Some of my best short stories have come from prompts. But, like any tool, the have their place and they are going to work better for some folks than for others.
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Years and years ago, when many of the participants were not the same people who are there now, we collectively created a writing prompt at Erotica, gave ourselves a set amount of time to write, and shared the resulting stories. It was fairly brief and each story had to incorporate certain physical items.
IIRC, four or five of those stories sold, mine among them. The stories were nothing alike. Someone reading them in an anthology would probably never have realized they came from a single prompt.
So no, I have no issue with someone writing based on a prompt that wasn't of their own creation. It can be an excellent springboard for something entirely original.
Maryn, diving coach
IIRC, four or five of those stories sold, mine among them. The stories were nothing alike. Someone reading them in an anthology would probably never have realized they came from a single prompt.
So no, I have no issue with someone writing based on a prompt that wasn't of their own creation. It can be an excellent springboard for something entirely original.
Maryn, diving coach
I think, on top of what everyone has said about people taking ideas in very different directions, you could just as easily argue that a writer's "common themes" are a sort of prompt. And yet people can come up with many different stories over the course of their writing career, even if they're all based on the same core theme.
Kinda want to do this again, now. Not that I was involved in it the first time.
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I guess I was thinking novel length, but it wouldn't matter really. I suppose that specifically trying to develop a novel length plot from a short prompt might be an annoying challenge if it were done simply as a challenge. I was thinking more of a situation where an ordinary prompt writing exercise catches your imagination enough to want to develop it.
Thanks for the perspective! The concept of less than 1K words is new to me, and would be very challenging.
I'm sure people take one simple prompt in infinite different directions. Sounds like fun.
That's more the situation I was thinking of, being inspired by a prompt as a story idea to develop further.
The idea of crossing multiple prompts hadn't occurred to me. That sounds fascinating!
You're right about the prompt not being the story and how much has to be added to make it one. That would be even more true with one word prompts. I was thinking of a single sentence prompt setting up the premise for a scene. "A man walks his dog in the park and meets an alien." sort of thing. Still true that a lot has to be added to make an entire plot line, but the basic premise will be more recognizable in the finished product.
Thank you for the perspective! You've basically gotten to the heart of my question, sharing with the world something that started with a premise given as a scene or story prompt.I think the answer to this is going to be very individual — and also vary with the nature of the prompt. I’ve seen prompts as brief as a single word, or as long as a paragraph. They can be “write a story with this title” or “write a story in which [detailed description of a scenario”.
In any event, the output will vary vastly from writer to writer, and as @AnnieColleen says, the story is still ultimately yours, so I don’t think you need to worry about whether other writers are working from the same prompt. And what you do with the prompted story will vary from writer to writer to. Some people only want to use them for practice — but you never know when a story you wrote “just for practice” will deepen or feed into something you want to share with the world. And if it originated with a prompt, that’s really just fine.
Thank you! The point about different perspective is important.
I think it's great and perfectly fine. We're not clones of each other so the stories will nearly always turn out differently. I was one of the organizers of something similar way-back-when on another forum, actually, and the stories that were written varied greatly, even when the writing prompts had a narrow focus.
The same premise, yes - the same perspective, no.
Norsebard
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If the prompt must feature in the final work, as for a contest, then yes, the premise will be recogizable (though it may be just a throw-away line in the story). But for writers who use prompts to get the juices flowing, the prompt may get deleted entirely in revisions -- which is just fine, as it has done its job and served its purpose.
Thank you. That's more or less the situation I'm looking at--a prompt catching the imagination and turning into more. In this case though, I was thinking of one sentence scene prompts, so a little more detail in the prompt.
Talking about lots of scenes from the same premise, I was thinking of others using the same prompt and writing scenes from that premise. My husband pointed out to me that most ideas given by prompts aren't even original to the prompt. There really is nothing new under the sun.