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Gave my writing group the same prompt in January and again in July, and the jump was not talent
I run a small fiction group out of the library in Dayton, six regulars, and back in January I handed out one prompt: a character finds a locked box. Most of them turned in moody paragraphs where nothing moves. In July I used the exact same prompt with one change, I made everyone list three things the character wants before they wrote a single line, and every story suddenly had a spine. Sara, who had never finished anything longer than two pages, brought in five pages that actually built somewhere. What do you all do when a prompt gets flat, do you front load it with specifics or let people find their own way in?
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grantmartinez23d ago
This reminds me of a thing that happened with my kid's soccer team last fall. Coach made them all write down one goal before every practice, just one, and the difference in how they played was wild. Same kids, same drills, but having that one target in their head changed everything. Nobody was just kicking the ball around waiting for practice to end. So when you say listing three wants gave the stories a spine, I get that. It's not about talent at all, it's about giving the brain something to push against. I bet those January stories felt flat because the writers were just sitting in the scene instead of chasing anything. Front loading a few specifics seems to work way better than hoping people stumble into it.
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