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Last month I hated writing prompts that gave you a first sentence, but then I tried one about a diner at 3 AM and wrote 10 pages.
I always thought those were too restrictive until I got one about 'the waitress who always knew your order before you sat down' and it opened up this whole scene I never would have thought of on my own - has anyone else had a prompt type they swore they'd never use actually work for them?
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wyattrobinson16d ago
Oh man, same here. I swore off first-line prompts for months cause they felt like the prompt was doing all the work for me. Then I got one that started with "The jukebox was broken and nobody cared" and I ended up writing this whole thing about a roadhouse that was like a time capsule from 1987. The trick for me was to treat the first line as a starting block not a cage. Use it to set the mood or the weird detail and then let your brain run wild from there.
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the_logan15d ago
Read something about how a strong first sentence grabs you like a good opening riff?
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henry_martinez15d ago
Fr that's how it goes sometimes. It's like how I hated podcasts for years until I found one about a topic I actually cared about, then suddenly I was binging episodes. Guess it's a reminder that our brains just need the right starting point to get going, whether it's a sentence or a song or a random conversation.
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