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The open mic night in Portland rewired my prompt process
I went to this poetry open mic at a tiny cafe on NE 28th last month and watched someone turn a prompt about a vending machine into a 3 minute story about grief. Now I can't just use generic 'write about a door' type stuff anymore, I keep asking people to build prompts around specific objects with weird histories. Has anyone else had a live performance completely mess with how they run their own writing groups?
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the_brian1mo ago
The vending machine thing REALLY got me. I saw a guy at a small theater in Seattle turn a prompt about an old payphone into this whole thing about his dad leaving. It hit me so hard I had to sit down after. Now when I run my writing group, I bring in actual junk I found at garage sales, like a rusted key or a cracked coffee mug with a weird logo. People have to figure out who owned it and what happened to them. It makes everyone dig WAY deeper than when I used to just say 'write about a memory' or something boring like that. The stories get so much more personal and raw, it's honestly changed everything about how I pick prompts now.
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evahenderson1mo ago
Gotta admit, I used to roll my eyes at those prompts, but this junk method totally changed my mind.
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