What’s crackalacking! Yeah, I’m actually sticking to this, since it seems like a lot of people had a lot of fun with it last week, and I’m still having fun forcing my horrible ideas onto the unsuspecting populace of beehaw. And then you lot, entirely forgetting the point of all this take the bad ideas and actually make them entertaining! How could you?! I’ve actually become emotionally attached to Emo-Chan and her battle to defeat Hitler. Of the drama obsessed story teller food critic. Alice and her Woman Emotions. And, of course, the late entry of Timmy’s Taco Tuesday Torment. (How could you miss the alliteration you MONSTER)
Jokes aside, I’m going to do things a bit differently this time. I’ve always found the traditional reddit writing prompt to be a bit too limiting, so I’ll be trying to include some writing prompts that don’t really follow the formula of “here’s a story idea.” To a greater extreme. Also, feel free to post your own prompts in the comments, I’ll try to edit the post to include them, and if I find the time/energy to, I’ll write a few myself. No promises though, I’m a lazy bastard.
Adding onto that, I want to stress that the point of this activity is just to write. Not write a complete or even good story. Just to write. If you don’t like the prompts, ignore em, or make up your own, or write about how bad the prompts are. I don’t care just write!
Now, I’ll stop fudging around and give you the prompts of the week.
Bad Character Ideas
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Like, omigosh, did you see that Janet was going out with Hugnthlenbar? She totes just dumped Jason for him too! Ugh, what a, like, totes bitch, right?
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A young shonen protagonist, ready to take on the world with his best friend! The parasitic alien fungus that occupies the right side of his body. He is still relentlessly positive.
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Elves… As wise as they are old. And of course they all old, right? I mean, it’d be unthinkable for the wandering Elf spouting wisdom of the ancients for the low low price of $699.99 (plus gratuity) to not be old. R-Right?
Bad Setting Ideas
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In honour of facebook market place deciding that my one and only desire in this world is apparently milk kefir grains (no I don’t know what they’re used for either), the story is set and explained through horrible social media posts.
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Check it out! Fashion revolution, new styles and the hottest new designs to wear in the post apocalypse world!
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Everyone knows the get stuck in the videogame plot. And that’s already bad. But what if the videogame also just sucked? Glitchy, unfinished, and nearly entirely empty.
Bad Plot Ideas
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A deep intrigue story filled with deep plots where everyone has their own interests. It’s for a baking competition.
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Since I’m apparently on an anime roll here right now. The plot is that the cast is trying to kill God. God is just a chill dude though.
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An adventure story where the dohicky that everyone is after is lost media from a children’s TV show from the 70s. This is treated with a grand amount of severity.
Unique Idea!
- Hey, you know that piece of media that you love? The one close to your heart? Write a bias an unfair review of it where you rip it to shreds and call it shit.
Alright, once more I’m running out of time before work. Thanks for reading, and double thanks for posting! I’m off and out, see you all next week!
Hahaha ok - thanks for clearing that up
but man its hard to fight the feeling “this is god awful, i shouldnt post” but thats kind of the point right?
Yeah. When you write you end up having to prove to yourself that you’re a good writer. It’s sort of an ego thing, and when you make something bad you sorta worry that it will reflect poorly on you.
I don’t expect anything to ever fully cut through that anxiety. But providing a space to be “bad” in is something valuable.
Genuinely. If you’re not comfortable posting your writing, I’d still be more than delighted to send some activities, fuck it, I’ll post one now that I stole from Zoe Bee. It’s where you take the meaning of a sentence and try to write it’s inverse. So, like, “The dog was sleeping on the ground” becomes “The cat was awake in the roof” or what have you. Ofc it works better with more complex sentences but yeah.
Sorry, got taken away there. Prone to tangents. But yes. You don’t have to post something complete if you can’t manage it. And you sure as hell don’t have to post something good. This is, after all, a silly little forum post.
Tangeant away!
And thank you again, I really like this whole idea. I get that impression (the tone of this forum) is way more supportive and relaxed place… certainly less intimdating than other writing communities I’ve lurked around. Most places I’m so intimidated I don’t even consider posting, I just lurk and read the advice haha
I’m glad!! It’s a quiet place here, so every voice really counts, and posting when you can is really the best thing you can do for a small community like this :)
Since I stopped caring how crappy my writing can possibly be, I’ve had way more fun with it. It’s very freeing to write down a few paragraphs knowing they’re just for a little entertainment and expression for at the very least yourself which no one is criticizing as if it’s supposed to reveal new truths about the universe or some crap.