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I used to think writing prompts had to be deep, then a kid at my library's teen writers group proved me wrong
I run a small writing group at the library in Boise on Tuesday nights and last week one of the teens, this 14 year old named Marcus, picked the prompt "write about a character who is bad at their job" and cranked out two pages about a knight who keeps losing his horse. The room laughed so hard a librarian shushed us twice. I've been writing for almost 20 years and I always skipped the silly prompts because I thought real writing had to come from pain or drama or some big meaning. Marcus didn't care about any of that. He just wanted to see what would happen if a guy in armor was terrible at the one thing he trained for. Later I tried the same prompt myself and wrote something I actually like for the first time in months. It got me thinking that the goofy one line prompts I always scrolled past might be doing more work than the fancy ones. So what's the dumbest prompt you've ever taken seriously, and did it turn into anything good?
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