I spent three hours trying to write a story about a character who finds a key, but I couldn't figure out what it unlocked without the idea feeling stupid or cliche.

Has anyone else ever gotten completely stuck on a simple prompt element like that, and what did you do to get past it?

3 comments

3 Comments

Oh man, that's the worst... I got stuck for a whole weekend once because I couldn't decide what was inside a locked box my character found. It was just a dumb empty box in the end, but the point was her disappointment, you know?

lopez.karen1mo ago

Totally get that, it's so easy to overthink the small stuff. I like what @victorb17 said about the empty box, because sometimes the point is the feeling, not the object. Maybe the key doesn't unlock anything physical at all, like it's for a diary or a memory. I've scrapped whole ideas because I thought they were too simple, but simple is usually better, lol. Just pick something and run with it, you can always change it later.

piper_burns1mo ago

Ugh, I once rewrote a scene ten times because I couldn't pick what kind of tree my character was sitting under. It was a pine tree. I'm the queen of overthinking!