Rant: Was totally wrong about those writing prompt generators

I thought they were all garbage until I tried one that gave me a prompt about a librarian who can hear books whispering. Got 3,000 words out of it in one sitting. Has anyone else had a generator actually spark something real?

3 comments

3 Comments

knight.mason13d ago

Felt that Jamie is being way too harsh here. yeah, some generators give you garbage like "a detective with a weird hobby" but the good ones dont just hand you a noun and a verb. they give you a specific conflict or limitation that makes your brain start asking questions. like why can that librarian hear whispers? what do the books want? thats the kind of weird logic that forces you to build a real world around it instead of staring at a blank page. if you have to fight a generator to get something decent then its trash but sometimes one hits your brain at the right angle and everything clicks into place.

the_jamie1mo ago

Nah, I gotta disagree here. Those things are basically just mad libs with extra steps. The prompt about a librarian hearing books is SO vague it could go anywhere, meaning you basically wrote that whole thing yourself. The generator just gave you a random noun and a verb. If you need a machine to hand you a premise to write 3000 words, you might not have had a real story in you. I tried one that gave me "a detective who solves crimes by tasting the last meal of the victim" and it was pure cringe. No way that spark was from the generator.

taylor_hayes251mo ago

Actually I used to think the exact same way until I tried one of those generators out of boredom last month. Got a prompt about a florist who can see peoples emotions through the flowers they buy and honestly it was so specific it weirdly clicked for me. I wrote 1500 words in one sitting and it was the most fun I've had writing in years. I still think most of them are junk but sometimes you get one that hits just right.