Over the past couple streams, whenever we browsed the Writing Prompts Subreddit, lots of people in chat would suggest even better ideas for prompts than the ones we were choosing from.
So for our most recent stream (with special guest Abbey), we decided to go ahead and create our own writing prompt, and then write it.
To help with that, we came up with a formula for creating a good prompt: normal idea plus twist equals prompt. For example, robots take over the world (normal idea) plus ducks (the twist) equal the prompt: “A.I. robots have taken over the world but have formed a pact with one species: ducks.”
This was a good exercise not only to come up with a prompt, but also for any story you want to write. We’ve all read sci-fi adventures, time travel mishaps, and romance drama novels before, so having a good twist to hook the reader can really make your story stand out.
After coming up with a bunch of fun prompts, we narrowed it down to these three: