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Overheard a writing group scoff at prompt generators, made me rethink mine
I was at a café in Portland last Tuesday and heard a table of writers trash talk anyone who uses random prompt lists. One guy said, 'If you need a wheel to spin for ideas, you're not a writer.' That hit me because I've used those generators for 3 years and they've produced my best flash fiction. Why does the source of a prompt matter more than what you do with it? Has anyone else had a real gem come from a silly prompt tool?
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morgan.logan17d ago
What if those writers have been secretly borrowing ideas from newspaper headlines or overheard conversations and just don't want to admit it? I read somewhere that a lot of famous authors keep folders of random clippings and scribbled notes, which is basically the same thing as a prompt generator, just with extra steps. My best flash piece came from a generator that gave me "a lighthouse keeper who hates the ocean" and I ran with it for a weekend. The tool didn't write the story, I did. That guy in the café sounds like he's gatekeeping because he's scared his own ideas are running dry.
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