Tried a writing prompt generator vs random word combos for a week straight

I was stuck on ideas for like two days so I gave that AI prompt generator a shot. It gave me stuff like "write about a door that leads to yesterday" which is fine but felt kinda hollow. Then I switched to just picking three random words from a dictionary app (last Tuesday I got "spool, raft, and whistle") and made a story about a kid who fixes a broken raft with fishing line from a spool while his grandpa whistles for help. The random words gave me way more weird specific details to work with and the story actually felt alive. Has anyone else found the same thing with the more structured prompts feeling too generic?

3 comments

3 Comments

martin.riley1mo ago

Random words have a built-in friction that makes you work for it, which is exactly why the results feel more alive. A generated prompt like "door to yesterday" already hands you a complete concept, so your brain just fills in the blanks instead of building something from scratch. The struggle of connecting "spool" and "whistle" forces you to invent details that feel specific and earned, not borrowed from some algorithm's idea of what a story should be.

king.val1mo ago

Oh man, that's a good point. I've noticed the same thing. Those generators always spit out stuff that sounds pretty but doesn't have any real meat to it, like it was written by a robot. Random words force you to actually figure out how to tie things together, which is way more fun.

leehall1mo ago

Started pulling words from a stack of old grocery receipts last week and got "yogurt, shovel, and parking ticket" which turned into a weird story about a guy digging up his backyard after a cop gave him a ticket for parking on his own lawn. It made me think of what @king.val said about random words forcing you to connect dots you wouldnt normally touch. The best part was realizing the yogurt was actually a clue about a buried time capsule his grandpa left him, and that detail came out of nowhere because I had to make the receipt words work.