A stranger at the laundromat gave me a writing prompt that turned into my best short story

She pointed at my notebook and said "write about the person who left that red sock in the dryer" and I ended up with a 12-page story about a woman running from her past, has anyone else gotten a killer prompt from a random stranger?

3 comments

3 Comments

clairec788d ago

Oh actually I have to gently push back on one thing here, and I mean this in the nicest way possible. You said the prompt came from a "random stranger" but if she pointed at your notebook and gave you a specific line, that's not quite random in my book. A random stranger would be someone who just happens to be standing near you, not someone who actually reads over your shoulder or sees what you're writing. In my experience, that person was already curious about you or your work before she said anything. I had a similar thing happen at a park once where this older guy saw me doodling and said "draw the bird that keeps stealing bread from the pigeons" and I ended up sketching something I actually hung on my wall. That wasn't random either, he saw what I was doing and decided to engage. So I'd call that more of a deliberate stranger interaction, not a totally random one. Your mileage may vary of course.

juliagonzalez8d ago

So you think there's a difference between random and deliberate with strangers? Where's the line exactly, when someone sees your work and says something, isn't that still random just with a bit of targeting? I feel like the outcome is the same either way, you still get a prompt you didn't expect from someone you don't know.

blairstone5d ago

Right there with you Juliagonzalez. A guy once watched me sketch and said "draw your shoe on fire." Not random.