Why do writing prompts work better when I start with a specific object instead of a feeling?

I was stuck on a prompt the other day about 'write a story about loss' and I just stared at the screen for an hour. Then I remembered a writing exercise from a workshop I took back in 2019 in Austin. The teacher said pick one thing you can see right now and build from there. So I looked at my coffee mug with the chip on the rim and wrote a whole scene about a guy who keeps the same broken mug because his daughter made it in pottery class. That one object gave me a character, a reason, and an emotion without me forcing it. Compare that to starting with 'write about regret' which feels like trying to grab smoke. Has anyone else noticed that prompts with a physical item in them are way easier to run with than prompts that just throw out an abstract feeling?

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andrew_nguyen645d agoMost Upvoted

Started thinking about this more and realized it’s the same reason why when you ask someone how their day was they just say fine but if you ask them what they ate for lunch you get a whole story about the weird sandwich they tried. Physical stuff just gives your brain a hook to hang everything else on, it’s like your imagination needs a solid thing to push off from before it can start making connections to feelings and memories. Abstract prompts make you try to grab the feeling first which is backwards because feelings are usually tangled up in specific moments and objects and places anyway. Kinda like how I can never remember a song’s title but I can hum the melody right away, the concrete stuff is just easier for your brain to latch onto.