Hot take: I wrote a whole novel based on 'what if a guy had a magic stapler' before I knew what a story arc was.

That was back in 2012, and it was 400 pages of a man just stapling things with increasing power. I finally took a class where the teacher said, 'Your magic stapler guy needs a goal beyond office supplies,' and it clicked. What's the dumbest writing prompt you ever took way too seriously?

3 comments

3 Comments

haydenwright22d ago

Four hundred pages is a full commitment to the bit. I'm just stuck on the fact that it took a class to get from stapling papers to stapling regrets. That's a long road for one office tool.

taragibson22d ago

Okay but 400 pages of escalating stapler power sounds kinda amazing though. Like, the real mistake was not having him staple concepts together. He could have stapled Monday to Friday to skip the work week, or stapled his regrets to a trash can. The prompt was fine, it just needed weirder stakes.

luna5193d ago

Remember that time I stapled my thumb to a tax form, which felt pretty high stakes to me.