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Unpopular opinion: a $25 prompt deck helped my writing more than any class
I dropped $25 on a deck of 100 story prompt cards at a bookshop in Portland last fall, mostly as a joke. Half the deck is stuff like 'write a letter from a house to its owner,' and I figured I'd use it twice and shelve it. Then I started pulling one card every morning before work and banging out 300 words, and after 60 days I had 19 rough drafts, three of which turned into pieces I actually like. The other side of the coin: my writing buddy bought the same deck and says it just makes him write the same sad breakup scene with new names. So did I just get lucky with a gimmick, or is there real value in letting a random card tell you what to write next?
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the_charles27d ago
Man, I feel for your buddy because I've been that guy. Back in college I got one of those books with 642 things to write about and every single entry turned into some dude sitting alone in a diner thinking about his ex. Same diner, different ex. The prompts weren't the problem though, I was. I was just using them as a door into the one room I already knew how to walk into. What worked for you, I bet, is that you treated the card like a boss giving you an assignment you didn't pick, so you couldn't fall back on your usual thing. That house-to-owner one would never come out of my brain on its own, and that's kind of the whole point. So no, I don't think it's a gimmick, but I also don't think the deck is doing the heavy lifting. You showed up 60 days straight, and that's the part nobody can sell you for $25.
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