I used to think writing prompts were cheesy until I tried one about a lost library book

Last Tuesday, I was totally stuck on a story, so I grabbed a random prompt that said 'write about a character who finds a library book checked out 50 years ago.' I figured it was dumb, but I wrote for an hour anyway. By the end, I had a full scene about a guy finding his grandpa's old engineering manual with notes in the margins. The specific detail of the 50-year gap made me think about time in a way I never would have on my own. Now I'm looking for more prompts that use exact numbers or dates to kick things off. What's a prompt with a specific number that got you writing something good?

3 comments

3 Comments

colemartinez2mo ago

My buddy got a prompt about a character who gets 3 wrong numbers in a row. He ended up writing this tense little piece where a guy waiting for a hospital call keeps getting calls for a pizza place that closed in 1987. The exact number of calls built this weird, specific dread. He said it forced the plot forward in a cool way.

markm2722d ago

Not sure I buy the whole "exact numbers build dread" angle. Sounds like your buddy @juliawalker just happens to know people who are really good at writing, not that the number itself is some magic trick. Maybe it helps some folks, but a good story's still gonna work without the clock.

juliawalker2mo ago

My friend wrote a whole chapter from "a character who has exactly 17 minutes to make a decision." Where do you find these number prompts?