Come answer a question, share a laugh, encourage one another, and bring me a TimTam! |
Well, as someone who has both written to prompts and has generated an average of about one a week for the past 20 years... I'm fine with prompts. They're a constraint, but usually in a good way, like how a suspension bridge is constrained at both ends and somewhat flexible in the middle (yeah, my training is in civil engineering, not writing). I don't know about anyone else, but for me, prompts help narrow down the possibilities, focusing my thoughts on a particular mode. Otherwise, I'm all over the place. There are, of course, bad prompts. But what's bad for some works well for others. Lately, my use of others' prompts has been limited to nonfiction. I like to pretend that I can take any subject, any quote, and run with it. Usually, I can. And for me, prompts reinforce this idea. If someone gives a prompt related to something I know little about (fashion, e.g.), I can find something to say about it, if only a long essay on the origins of the word "denim" (from what I can tell, it comes from "de Nimes," referring to a town on the Mediterranean coast of France, thus reinforcing (pun intended) the French domination of world fashion). Case in point: This question was a prompt, and I ran with it. |