Overheard a librarian say most writing prompts aren't specific enough

I was at the library downtown last Tuesday and heard one of the reference librarians talking to a patron about writing prompts. She said most prompts she sees online are too vague, like 'write about a door' or 'describe a storm.' She told the patron that the best prompts include a specific conflict or time limit, like 'you find a locked door in your house that wasn't there yesterday' instead of just 'write about a door.' It made me rethink how I give prompts to my own writing group. Has anyone else noticed that adding a concrete constraint makes people actually finish their stories?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_moore1mo ago

Totally agree with the librarian on this one. My writing group used to give each other super open-ended prompts like "write about loss" and nobody would ever finish anything, it was just vague. Then I started giving them stuff like "your character finds a grocery list from someone who died ten years ago" and suddenly people were actually finishing their stories in time for our meetings. The concrete detail gives you something to grab onto, a problem to solve, instead of just staring at a blank page. It's like the difference between being told to cook something versus being given a specific recipe with ingredients you already have.

fiona_reed1mo ago

Hold up, I actually disagree with this. Those super vague prompts like "write about loss" are HARD and that's the whole point. When you give someone a hyper-specific scenario like the grocery list thing, you're basically doing half the creative work for them. The struggle IS the work. Specific prompts just feel like training wheels that never come off.