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Found an old writing prompt from 3 years ago that changed how I approach worldbuilding
Last week I was going through my Google Docs and stumbled on a prompt from 2021 that just said 'describe a city where the roads are made of glass over a river of light'. I remember skipping it back then because it sounded too weird. But now I see how that kind of specific constraint forces you to think about traffic, safety, culture, all that stuff. Has anyone else had a prompt they ignored for years that ended up being a goldmine?
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grant.nina1mo ago
The glass roads thing works better if you flip it - the light is what you walk on and the glass is just there to keep you from falling in. A river of light underneath changes everything about how you build foundations and what happens when someone drops their keys. Three years ago I probably would have made the glass too thick and missed the whole point about how a city adapts to having this weird glowing current running through it.
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spencerm461mo agoMost Upvoted
Honestly, I think you're close but the keys thing wouldn't really be a problem. The light is basically just energy or whatever, so dropping metal keys through it wouldn't do much except make them land in whatever physical stuff is underneath. If the light is what you walk on, the keys would just pass right through and hit the actual ground below. It's more like you're walking on a sheet of light that's held in place by glass walls on the sides, not a solid surface. So the whole point about how the city adapts is still good, but the keys thing is just a minor detail that doesn't really change anything about how the foundation works.
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