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Break the Rules: Why Weird Writing Prompts Unlock Your Best Stories
by Writing Workshops Staff
A week ago
At home, I have a book full of writing prompts that just don’t seem to do it for me.
The prompts all read something along the lines of: “Write about a time when you were frightened,” “Write about an item you’ve stolen and never told anyone about.”
Although there’s nothing specifically wrong with these prompts, because the prompt grounds me in a familiar reality, I find my writing following accepted rules and familiar forms. And I start to get bored.
Which is why, in my own writing and teaching, I prefer story prompts that lean into the weird and bizarre.
For example, one of my favorite writing prompts to give students is this image by the artist Alicia Savage:
My only direction to students is to write about this woman and where she is headed. And without fail, my students come up with strange and surreal stories that embody a type of creativity I suspect would be missing if I’d presented them with a more realistic image.
I know I’m not the only writer to have found fresh excitement in ideas that break away from reality.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, when he first went to university in Bogotá, described his first encounter with magical realism as being life-changing:
“One night a friend of mine lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. … When I read the first line, I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago.”
We all have unconscious rules in our head about what makes a good story. But embracing a truly strange writing prompt allows us to break away from those confines and create a narrative that feels fresh and electrifying.
To explore a new range of possibilities in your imaginative world, I recommend seeking out more outlandish writing prompts, like this one:
Write—or borrow—a first sentence to a story that contains a disruptor: something strange or surprising that raises many questions for the reader about what will come next. Then, continue writing the story, allowing it to go in odd and unanticipated directions.
If you’d like to borrow your first line, here are a few that are guaranteed to trigger some unexpected narratives:
“I was lying on the floor watching TV and exercising what was left of my legs when the newscaster’s jaw collapsed.”
from F. Paul Wilson’s “Soft”
“My lover is experiencing reverse evolution.”
from Aimee Bender’s “The Rememberer”
“’Don’t look now,’ John said to his wife, ‘but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotise me.’”
from Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now”
Interested in learning more about magical realism and how it can transform your creative process? Join me for my upcoming four-week workshop, Crafting Magical Realism, which starts on Wednesday, August 6.
Jaime deBlanc holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. Her short fiction has been published in Catapult, Juked, and Post Road, and she has been the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Lighthouse Works Fellowship. Her debut novel, After Image, was published by Thomas & Mercer in 2024, and her second novel, The Silver Cord, is forthcoming in 2026.
