Prompts Unchained

This week, we took a little break from our chain story, Tune In Next Time, and instead posted a couple of dusty prompts that we found while tidying up in the Writing Cave. It’s interesting how different they are from what we’ve gotten used to as the chain has lengthened beyond all limits of sanity.

For one thing, they were created using the Four Elements generator, which tends to impose a bit of structure implicitly. After all, the scenario and the main character are two of the elements it dictates. On the other hand, it doesn’t create any requirements for using specific phrases, as does the Stichomancy generator. Thus, the end results tend to have a different flavor.

The biggest difference, though, is that these writing prompts were meant as standalone fiction. The episodic approach that we take with the chain story is deliberately pell-mell, and we make a game out of setting the next person up in a weird situation (not to mention our relentless pursuit of bonus points for incorporating the required phrases in order).

What really stood out about this week’s prompts was that they managed to have definite beginnings, middles, and endings without being any longer than our typical installments. Seeing them really took us back to the days when we’d use writing prompts to kick off our weekly critique meetings. Of course, even then we were prone to merging them collaboratively into one cohesive-ish story world. (In this case, by “we” we mean Jen.)

A writing partner is someone you like to write with, who likes to write with you back.