Writer's Prompts That Didn't Help Me

By Mandroid3000

Any budding fiction writer who has actually put pen to paper can tell you that 95% of the time you wish you hadn't. Stilted prose, murky characters, and pointless digressions into attempted literary waffling stare back out at you from the unforgiving page. Thousands of your horrible words go nowhere then double back for an extra round of stupeficiation.

I present below my self-penned list of prompts that I used to aid me in the creation of so much horrible fiction. I ran through this list every morning to get my creatives juices flowing; the process helped me decide which story to write, rewrite, polish, and post to understandly unexcited editors.

There are 100 “killer prompts” below (as I dubbed them to pump myself up). For several years these ideas were a crutch. They got me through many dark nights of self doubt, but they didn't help me in the daytime when it was time to sit down and write. I was so sure that in this list were the seeds of fame and fortune. Alas, the seeds were stale and the crops were twigs with crap hanging off them. I need to start afresh.

So I set them free, like a flock of doves that I want to get the fuck out of my face.

1. Openings to hook in the reader

1.“In ten seconds a hundred people will be dead because I will kill them and run away.”

2.“The monster had changed shirts twice since eating my sternum.”

3.“The British laser-guided pedalo was twee, but deadly.”

4.“As I fell to the rocks the secret that could save mankind fell with me (fortunately it was in a shatterproof canister, unlike my spine).”

5.“Suspended by hooks above the gallery floor, I appreciated the painterly touch. Thorstein was replicated a Jackson Pollock drip painting with my entrails. Sadly for him, I had no strength left to finally give him a good review.”

6.“If a hula hoop could be hooked up to the electric grid, her hips could light a medium sized family room for a few evenings a month. And she wanted to hire me to do her taxes.”

7.“'My brain burns,' screamed Lance Justice as wave-upon-wave of crickets flew into his gaping eye sockets and rubbed their wings together like boy scouts making fire.”

8.“When I was a child I didn't believe in violence. Now I don't believe in children.”

9.“I was in a grave thirty feet below the ground and I was dead. For now. The only question was whether to dig up or down.”

10.“Whose baby is this, because it looks like crap?”

2. Old monsters with new gimmicks

1.A ghost that doesn't like how you rearranged the living room

2.A ghoul that stays dead as long as you keep an eye on him

3.Werewolves are wolves all the time, but at a full moon some of them turn into guys and get eaten

4.The Hand With The Beating Heart – kill the man, The Hand kill you

5.The Loch Ness Monster – it is actually a fish spirit or something

6.Piranhas move to America because of global warming

7.Global warming moves to America because of global warming

8.The Radioactive Stoolie – he's untouchable!

9.A pasty man in a tanned man's suit

10.A frigid succubus

3. What if....

1.Dynamite made a comeback in grave robbery

2.Zombies ate every head in the world so animals with their brains in their asses took over

3.Jesus had triplets so the number 3 is behind every great event in history, which are all just signs pointing to World War 3

4.Pirates had the technology to put wheels on the bottom of their ships and drive on land

5.You got a magic pair of glasses that let you see what's happening five miles to the right

6.The whole world suddenly became one big basketball game, but no one knew for sure which hoop you were supposed to shoot the ball through

7.Someone realised that Swedish and Swahili were the same language

8.A mere mortal was given the powers of a patron saint

9.You woke up one day and the all the computers in the world had turned into cats

10.Someone had been secretly recording all those stupid songs you made up in the shower

4. Cute scenarios for romantic meetings

1.A man who is invisible meets a woman who is unvisible

2.They're in the manager's office for stealing the same burritto sauce

3.The cute sperlunker and the sultry moleman

4.“That's my venti, this is your grande. Boy did we get ripped off.”

5.An emergency trachectomy leads to love

6.Stalking diferent members of the same family

7.They have the same drug dealer, who they just found murdered

8.The only two patrons at a Melanie Griffith film festival

9.Strangers in an esperanto class

10.Two words side-by-side in a dictionary

5. Write a story that answers this question...

1.What if Manhattan was Atlantis?

2.Why is that old man throwing his glass eye at that kitten?

3.What would be something even your doctor wouldn't touch?

4.Can we creatre a structure that it's physically impossible to make out of matchsticks?

5.What's it like to be a twig on Arbor Day?

6.How many times to you have to drop the elbow to bring down a rhino?

7.What if God made a code even he couldn't break?

8.How much unemployment would an idiot savant with a gift for comedy writing create?

9.How many boards could someone smash while skydiving?

10.Whither the Mayor?

6. At the midpoint, take a quick turn to mystery...

1.Casually mention that the story is taking place on Mars

2.Throw in a ravenous polar bear

3.Shout out to your homies

4.Put some random poetry in italics

5.Have an earthquake that throws clues out of the ground

6.Take the wrong medicine

7.Take the right medicine – medicine you take when preapring to kill

8.Suddenly, it becomes a musical

9.A package is delivered – a crow's head and a box of mint candy

10.Why is that masked wrestler following you home?

7. Highly intellectual writing experiments

1.What books would you think about during the zombie armageddon?

2.All fiction is political – so prove it with a unicorn story

3.Anti-heroes are old hat – so are anti-villains – try anti-supporting characters

4.Rewrite some Faulkner in blog form

5.Link the cliche that 'the butler did it' to the general exploitation of the working classes (try to get something about Nicaragua in there too)

6.Use something really mundane as a metaphor for your adventurers in the war against those giant rock lizards as well as your parent's marital difficulties

7.A burning angel just ran by screaming something unusual – what did he mean by that, and how does it relate to your first sexual experience?

8.Your father's soul is trapped inside a sock puppet – are you fisting his soul? Why or why not?

9.Alone in a world of curtains, do you pull them? Why not or why?

10.What would be the result of Keats writing the lyrics for a sports training montage song?

8. Conflict is drama. So is drama.

1.Two boats crash into each other and the captains argue over whose ship it is now.

2.Two dinosaurs want the same ice cream (note: this one is for the kids)

3.A man at war with his lack of musical chops

4.When God snapped Satan

5.A man tries to walk to work without touching the ground – an asphalt contractor tries to stop him to preserve his industry's reputation for necessity.

6.Two people trapped on a desert island argue about grammar; and they have no reference materials with which to ever solve the dispute

7.The world's most wonderful man and the people who hate him

8.All the thrills and suspense of a competitive Ebay auction

9.A man who wants to punch another man until he is dead

10.FIFO vs LIFO

9. Ruminate for 2500 words as you face death by...

1.Teutonic whippersnappery

2.Atomic firing squad

3.Internet obscurity

4.Hairlessness

5.A wild leap to a dangerous place

6.A snotty remark to a jackbooted thug

7.Some fat ass who is annoyingly good at fencing

8.Bad weightlfiting technique

9.The cruel words of a kind man

10.A ninja doing a star jump with shuriken between his toes

10. Write a story that could leads to this killer twist

1.“That's when I realised that the electricity hadn't been cut --- I was blind!!!

2.“The man you've loved all these years is secretly --- The President of the United States of America!!!”

3.“As the music started the truth struck me; they weren't a marching band --- they were a mariachi band!!!”

4.“That rib your tickling --- is from your own corpse!!!”

5.“I had jogged in a straight line right around the planet --- and not ended up where I started!!!”

6.“The boomerang wasn't heading for the walrus's head --- it was going to hit me right in the nutsack!!!”

7.“Somehow I'd managed to lose control of the Parliament and my bowels --- but, as careful readers of this tale will be able to piece together, that was my plan all along!!!”

8.“I know this is being narrated in the first person, but I swear to you that I knew this was a hoax.”

9.“Due to the simple act of not sleeping in the nude I discovered --- that I was the werewolf!!!”

10.“I prayed and God made it better for me.”