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Overheard a writer at a coffee shop say she never uses prompt generators and it hit me different
She said they just spit out the same three tropes over and over, like 'a stranger leaves a note' or 'the main character wakes up with no memory.' I checked three popular generators after that and she was right, every single result was basically the same three ideas repackaged. Has anyone else noticed how shallow those tools really are?
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robin62810h ago
That dead mother line is the kind of twist that actually makes you want to write, yeah.
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mia7002d ago
The real issue is that those generators are just recycling the same five plot points from the last decade of bestsellers, you know? It's like they scraped a few popular writing blogs and called it a day. A good prompt should feel like a doorway, not a box. Instead of 'a stranger leaves a note,' why not try 'a stranger leaves a note that references something only the main character's dead mother would know'? That one small twist actually gives a writer something to build on, which is the whole point of a prompt in the first place.
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janah831d ago
WHOA hold up, that dead mother detail is a GAME CHANGER. Seriously, I never thought about how a tiny specific reference can COMPLETELY change the feel of a simple note prompt. That one line makes it feel like a real story hook instead of just a writing exercise.
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