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Serious question, has anyone else had a writing prompt completely derail a project? My 'good day' turned into a lost week.
The prompt was simple. 'Write about a character who finds a key that doesn't fit any lock.' Sounded fun. I started a short story. Then the character, a locksmith named Mara, found the key was warm. Then it hummed. By day three, I had 15 pages about a trans-dimensional artifact and a secret society of metalworkers. Totally lost the original, simple mystery. Spent the next four days trying to wrangle it back. Couldn't. Had to scrap 8,000 words. Felt like building a deck and accidentally framing a whole house. Anyone have a trick for when a prompt spirals like that? Do you lean into it or force a hard reset?
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derek65618d ago
My entire novel started as a simple coffee shop meet-cute prompt, right?
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troy83218d ago
Ugh, that's the worst feeling. I totally get it, like @derek656 said, sometimes a prompt just builds its own train tracks and leaves the station without you. My trick is to copy the whole mess into a new doc and call it "scraps." That way it's saved if the crazy idea is actually good, but the original file is clean. Then I try to rewrite the first page from memory, forcing myself to stick to the simple core. It almost never works, but it makes me feel better.
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