Remember when a writing prompt could just be a single weird sentence?

I spent a whole month trying to build a story from 'The last library book was a cookbook for ghosts'... I just couldn't get past the first page. Does anyone have a trick for unsticking a prompt that feels too clever?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantw3217d ago

You said you couldn't get past the first page, but maybe that's the trick. The prompt IS the first page. The ghost cookbook IS the whole story. Trying to build a whole world from it is what gets you stuck. Just write that one perfect, strange scene and call it done.

matthew16617d agoMost Upvoted

My friend tried that, got stuck on the second page.

seanjackson17d ago

Nah, that feels like giving up. The cool part is figuring out the rules of that world, why a ghost would even need a cookbook. Just one scene leaves all the good questions unanswered.