Stuck on a prompt choice for my writing group in Austin

Our group meets every other Tuesday, and last month I had to pick the next prompt. I was torn between 'A character finds a key that opens every door in their apartment building except their own' and 'A person wakes up with the ability to understand one animal, but it's a pigeon in the city park'. I went with the key prompt. It went okay, but two people wrote very similar stories about lonely landlords. Has anyone else had a prompt accidentally steer everyone in the same direction?

3 comments

3 Comments

sageross1mo ago

Prompt overlap happens all the time. The key idea might have felt too narrow. Everyone pictured the same physical building. If you'd picked the pigeon, the stories could have gone wild. One person writes a comedy about the bird's gossip, another a tragedy where it's lost its mate, a third a thriller where the pigeon sees a crime. The animal prompt leaves more room because the setting and the animal's "story" are both open.

terrybennett23d ago

Yeah, that reminds me of a writing exercise I saw in a book about creativity once. It was about how too much restriction makes everyone head the exact same direction, but too little freedom leaves you staring at a blank page. They said the sweet spot is a "specific but weird" prompt, like a pigeon that only tells lies or a key that opens a door to yesterday. Your point about the animal leaving room for the setting and the bird's own story is exactly that. It gives you two variables instead of one fixed image. The pigeon can be a witness, a victim, a trickster, whatever you want. That's way more room to play than a dusty old lock.

wyattrobinson1mo ago

But what if the pigeon prompt is too open? People might get stuck trying to figure out what a pigeon would even say. At least with the key, everyone had a clear starting point to twist.