Jul 05, 2024 by HL Bernabe, in Reading and Books

Currently, I'm reading The Measure by Nikki Erlick. This book really reminds me of an author who was given a juicy prompt and ran with it. In my imagination, Erlick was reading a list of prompts and came across this: What if every adult in the world suddenly was able to learn how long they would live? What would happen? And fireworks exploded in her brain as the possibilities presented themselves. Then she ran with it.

It would be lovely to have a prompt elicit that sort of clear vision of what a story can be. For me, prompts are a lot more... esoteric. They evolve into something that sometimes is not what you would first think when you hear a prompt.

For example, for Kaz and my  story The Paragons of Virtue, the prompt/theme was treasure hunt, and the secondary thing had to be dismembered body parts. So we came up with a very gruesome story about a treasure hunt for body parts that accidentally got shredded by a boat propeller (with some fun unexpected twists).

Cthulhu's Buttcrack is a story inspired from those two words as a prompt. It ended up being a story in the vein of an Abbot and Costello sketch comedy bit.

I get prompts from my writer friends, from my employees, from ChatGPT, and I've even subscribed to some prompt newsletters. The way a prompt is structured often depends on the source. For example, a prompt I got from ChatGPT was: "**The Dwarf's Infitinite Mine:** A dwarf discovers a mine that produces whatever the miner most desires. But when the village becomes obsessed with the riches, the dwarf has to convince them that not all that glitters is gold." I didn't follow that exactly, but I did use the phrase "not all that glitters is gold" as the inspiration for my short story All That Glitters, which I sent out to my newsletter subscribers a while back.

I love three-parter prompts, because it is fun to try to weave together the different elements into a story and make it make sense. For the three part prompt, I typically ask for a person, a prop or item of some kind, and a bit of dialogue. I have several stories I wrote based on that type of prompt.

For my short story The Bottle, one of my writer friends gave me the following prompt: 1) an innkeeper called Archibald Wittering the Fourth, 2) a dusty corked bottle, and 3) the dialogue, "I'm never drinking again!" I originally hit all those points, but in the end edited out the dialogue, because it just didn't fit. That's okay! The prompt got my creative juices flowing and I wrote a story that I'm proud of.

Another friend gave me this as the prompt for PBJ: 1) troll child, 2) jellied toast, and 3) the dialogue, "Urgh gork blen sherdil wanger." I managed to incorporate that entire prompt into the story, which was about a troll child in a primarily dwarf school feeling outcast and lonely. It's one of my shorter stories. I didn't write this one for children, but it definitely is suitable for them. When I read it to my adult kiddo, their response was, "Awww. That's so sweet!" 

My writing friends give me the best prompts, because they know me and my writing style the best. Bunkom and the Enchanted Spectacles was the result from one of their prompts: 1) a dwarf named Bunkom, 2) enchanted spectacles, and 3) dialogue that said, "I didn't see that coming!". I managed to hit all three of those parts. What was especially fun about this particular prompt is that the short story inspired me to extend it into something longer--a standalone novel that I plan to tackle this fall after I'm finished with my Dell Chronicles book one edits. Typically I use prompts for writing short stories.

If you've got some good prompts, contact me! I'll add them to my list. Even if it doesn't rattle something in my brain now, it might later. I like to keep a list of them and revisit them for story ideas. Each time, something that didn't grab me before changes the next time I see it.





 

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