I had a writing prompt that wrote itself - my worst week ever

Last Tuesday I sat down to write a prompt about a bad day, and I realized I had way too much material from my own life. The week before, my car broke down on Monday, I got a call that my freelance gig was ending on Wednesday, and then my dog ate a bag of chocolate chips on Friday. It cost me $400 for the tow truck and vet visit combined. I turned that whole mess into a prompt about a character who loses everything in 72 hours. The trick was to use real feelings but change the details. That prompt got more responses than anything I'd posted in months. Has anyone else turned a horrible week into something creative? What happened to you?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret3041mo ago

Build on what lucaslee said about the survival story thing because that's exactly how my brain worked too. I wrote the whole prompt as a dark comedy where the main character just keeps tallying up their losses like a game score. Adding some structure made it feel less like I was drowning and more like I was watching someone else's trainwreck. @the_john you nailed it about the brain liking order, because once I framed the vet bill as a boss battle and the tow truck as a plot point, I stopped panicking about my actual bank account. The weird part is that prompt got shared around a lot, and people kept saying it felt "relatable but not real" which I guess is the whole point. Taking the worst stuff out of your own head and putting it on paper just makes it smaller somehow.

lucaslee2mo ago

Man, that whole thing about turning bad stuff into stories really hit home for me! I had a similar thing happen a few years ago when my basement flooded during a massive storm and ruined all my Christmas decorations. I was so mad at first, but then I started thinking about it like a survival story and it actually made me laugh. @the_john you're spot on about the brain liking structure because when I finally wrote it all down as this silly adventure tale about saving a plastic Santa from rising water, I felt way less stressed about the whole mess. The weird thing is, I still tell that story at parties and people think I'm exaggerating, but every single detail actually happened. Sometimes the worst stuff really does make the best material once you step back from it.

the_john2mo ago

Started reading this and it reminded me of an interview I caught on NPR a while back about how some writers process trauma by turning it into fiction. The guest talked about this exact thing, taking real pain and changing just enough details to make it manageable. I mean, your story about the dog eating chocolate chips is awful but also kind of funny in a dark way. I read somewhere that our brains actually process bad experiences better when we shape them into stories with a beginning, middle, and end. Its like turning chaos into something with a structure. So yeah, taking that horrible week and making it into a prompt probably helped you deal with it while also making great content. Pretty smart honestly.