Keeping things simple is hard for me. I always want to overcomplicate things, especially with prompts like these:
Character: Sailor
Object: Thumbtack
Genre/Tone: Fantasy/Mystery
But keeping things simple is the key to actually completing a story in this exercise. And I think I did okay, especially given the “mystery” aspect, though I’m not sure I managed to make clear enough how the magic worked. Obviously, it could stand some editing; but I think it’s not bad for a first draft.
Let me know if you think this works as a story, or if you see holes in it. And if you want to try your hand at these prompts, please put the results in the comments, or link to wherever you post it!
This week’s prompts got me so interested in how a fantasy character would fit into a sci-fi world that I nearly forgot to include the object, and I struggled to get anywhere near a plot. I forced something through, kinda, and I think I could make something of this with a little more time and space; but by the time I figured out where I was going, the opportunity to fill it out was basically gone.
This week’s prompts:
Character: Demigod
Object: Deodorant
Genre/Tone: Sci-fi
Of course, I almost forgot to include the Object prompt at all.
If you want to try this exercise yourself, drop your story (or a link to wherever you post it) in the comments below!
I wasn’t sure what to do when the genre randomizer gave us “drama” as a prompt for this week’s exercise. Isn’t “drama” the foundation of all stories and genres? Valued stakes at risk, conflict in pursuing goals?
But the “drama” section on my streaming platforms usually recommends character-driven stories without other significant elements: contemporary settings, no magic, maybe a little action or romance or mystery but not as the primary plot. Mostly stories about characters overcoming some inner struggle.
So that’s what I tried for with these prompts:
Character: Pianist
Object: Feathers
Genre/Tone: Drama
I don’t know how well I managed to create a compelling character drama, but at least I managed my lowest word-count yet: just four hundred words. (The original exercise aims for two hundred fifty words!)
Let me know what you think! And if you feel inspired to try the exercise yourself, post it in the comments!
The recording studio felt like a large practice room: the same muffling on the walls carried the same musty smell and the same dulling of all sounds to bare thumps. Amanda much preferred the live bright spaces of a stage or even an open-air amphitheater. But she was not here by choice.
Her band leader Lisa, the bassist in their jazz trio, had accepted a challenge to create the most original piece of music, and had bet all their gear on winning the challenge. Now she was stuffed with a baby grand in the most uncreative space she could imagine.
She sat at the keyboard and put the headphones over her ears. They were they only way she could hear Lisa and Gretchen, their drummer. They were each sealed off in separate rooms so that their individual instruments could be recorded without interference from each other. But it was the interference that made the harmonies, that made the dissonance, that made the music. And the first take was an utter failure: a simple ii-V-III-vi loop with the least inspired melody Amanda had ever played. She hated it.
When the engineer called for a break, Amanda turned to open the door. She needed to talk to the others, but the studio was a labyrinth and somehow she opened a door to the alley in back, where the stench of the dumpsters slapped her in the face. A pair of pigeons hopped down from the eaves and into the isolation room with her piano. “No, get out!” She chased the birds around the instrument, but as soon as she got close to one, the other would escape into the sound box or across the keyboard. And she stopped, and listened. Notes she’d never put together before. She turned and shut the door, locking the birds in with her. Amid the flying feathers, she sat back at the keyboard and said to the engineer, “Okay, I’m ready.”
At the end of the day, she ushered the pigeons out of the recording booth, and met her bandmates in the greenroom. Posters and headshots covered the walls, and the scent of cinnamon potpourri covered the sweaty musk, but neither Lisa nor Gretchen were looking anywhere else except at Amanda. “Where did you get those chords? Those melodies? Those… noises?”
“Oh, it’s just something a little bird told me.” She smiled, confident they’d keep their gear.
Crime is a tough genre to do in this kind of exercise: it’s hard (for me, at least) to come up with a plausible means, motive, and (m)opportunity on the fly. However, I do think I managed to get a bit of hard-boiled tone in there, and I’m rather pleased with how I used the sense of smell consistently throughout.
This week was a fun exercise, partly because I had just watched the episode of Lego Masters (the U.S. version) in which they had to build movie scenes. A couple of the teams received the advice to keep their stories simple and clear, not to get too complex or ambitious. I decided to take this advice to heart for myself.
It helped that the prompts were simple:
Character: Historian
Object: Ant hill
Genre/Tone: Thriller
That meant simple motivations, straightforward action, and direct opposition.
I need to start this week with a content warning: the genre prompt was horror/romance, neither of which I’m all that comfortable with, and I was surprised at the places my mind went under the pressure of the exercise. So, the following story contains obsession and stalker behavior, as well as themes of captivity and objectification of people.
As I said, I’m not sure what all this says about the way my mind works; but I suppose I’d like to emphasize that these are things that creep me out, that horrify me, not things that I find romantic.
Practice is supposed to make perfect, right? Well, at least it points out the areas where I need improvement. This week’s prompts were:
Character: Spy
Object: Electrical Outlet
Genre/Tone: Comedy
I don’t think I nailed either the spy or the comedy aspect of the story, and (though I was clearly heading that direction from the beginning) I never quite made it to the object, the electrical outlet. Still, the fact that it’s readable shows how robust this exercise is at structuring a complete story.
As always, we’d love it if you also tried the exercise with these prompts! If you do, please post your story in the comments. We’re moderating comments, because most of what we currently get is spam. But once your first comment is approved, you’ll be approved on an ongoing basis.
I found it impossible to avoid the trope of the flying carpet. It made me wonder about images that are so deeply ingrained in our cultural imagination that they are utterly inescapable. So now I’m motivated to figure out how to make a magical carpet that doesn’t fly. What other magical properties might a carpet have?
On the other hand, I also found it impossible to name a librarian anything other than Marion, even if I genderbent him. I’m not exploring that at all.
Doing this every week is revealing, to say the least. The first thing it’s teaching me is how shallow my understanding of various genres really is. My writing is more of a parody of a stereotype of romance—to take this week’s exercise as an example—than it is actually evoking the genre.
On the other hand, it’s proving that I actually can bring a story to completion under time pressure, if I’m given enough structure. I have not once had an idea of how any of these stories would end. But I’m able to find an ending in the roughly twenty minutes of actual writing. They’re kinda clichéd and lame (today, I had two endings, and I decided on this one; I’ll put the alternate ending in the comments), but they’re endings that wrap up the story. That’s honestly more than I thought I could do on a regular basis.
As always, we’d love to see your take on these prompts in the comments. Or just poke fun at our attempts!
We’re writing new original stories every week, and we’ll be posting them on Fridays. Here’s Robert’s response to this week’s prompts. Feel free to use the prompts to write your own story, and to share it in the comments if you like.
