12 Days of Prompt Tools for Fiction Writers
Day 9: The Amazing Story Generator
There are writing prompt tools that I adore, but I feel like I need to recommend along with a caveat or a quick interrogation along the lines of , “Are you the type of writer who likes….?” Then there are classic writing prompt tools that I feel can fit in any fiction writer’s prompt collection. Today’s recommendation fits in that latter category.
*Many links in this series will be affiliate links (any that direct you to bookshop.org), so if you use these links to make a purchase, please know that the shop itself will pay me a commission as a result of your purchase.
Day 9: The Amazing Story Generator
The Amazing Story Generator by Jason Sacher is a strikingly designed hardcovered, orange book published by Chronicle Books. It is filled, cover to cover, with one sentence prompts. It is that simple, with a slight twist.
Purchase on Amazon.
When you open the front cover of the book, you find a spiral bound book with a unique design, enabling a huge number of permutations of writing prompts. The pages have been sliced, horizontally, so that each page is actually three flaps. As you flip through the book you further see that flipping the top flap will reveal the beginning of a sentence, the middle flap will give you a continuation to the sentence and, when you flip the third flap, you will be able to read one complete sentence from the top of the page to the bottom.
How It Works
As I described above, this is simply a book of one sentence prompts. You get your prompt, and you start writing. The technique you use to get that prompt will be up to you.
How I Use It
The pages are not numbered in The Amazing Story Generator, so I pretty much stick to random flipping of flaps, however, the group was beginning to wonder if my hand was really all that random, or if I was grabbing the pages at a truly random rate, so I have asked for group input like, “Okay, Jackie, for the first flap give me a random number and I will count to that page!” followed by “Ian, for the second flap, should I flip near to the front, near to the back, or somewhere in the middle of the book?” and so on. This is ridiculous, I know, but the title of this section is “How I Use It,” so here we are.
Here’s a video of me in action with my own random self:
(OMG! One of my videos was shared on a teacher blog and I didn’t know that until just now, check it out: creativiteach)
What I’ve Written With It
I have made a (personally) horrifying discovery at the time of this writing.
While prepping to write this post, I went over to my Story Hoarder Substack page to search for the stories I wrote using The Amazing Story Generator. The search was fruitless. There were no stories accredited to this inspiration.
I knew that was wrong.
I was so flustered by this fact, I decided to dig directly into the story hoard itself. I pulled out my two most recent Writing Prompt Party notebooks to find the stories that were written thanks to this awesome, used-so-frequently-it-was-basically-abused, writing prompt tool. As I flipped through the pages of story after story, I made a devastating discovery:
I have not been writing down the prompts that I have used as often as I thought.
In yesterday’s post I said I was going to do a better job of sharing more stories on Story Hoarder. In today’s post I will now commit to doing a better job of noting the inspiration, not because I think that is important to the writing of the story, but for moments like these.
Why I Love It
I love The Amazing Story Generator because of its simplicity, it’s randomness, and its reusability. Early on in the Stop Writing Alone community, we called it “the crazy orange book,” because we knew we were all going to be surprised by the prompt we ended up with and be challenged to write something wackier than any of us could imagine on our own. This book never disappoints in inspiring story and, in a practical sense, for those of you working with in-person groups, or doing your writing on the go, this book is easier to carry than many of the other prompt tools that employ cards, sticks or cubes!
Where To Buy It
I was surprised to have a little bit of a struggle finding a live link to purchase a new copy of this book outside of Amazon. However, if you are cool with a used edition, you’ve got plenty of options:
The List
Just in case you do not have the time or patience to wait out all 12 days to see the tools I will be sharing this season, here’s a bit of a master list. You can come back when it suits you to check out the reasons I love these tools and how I use them. As the posts go up, I will update this list with the links to those posts.
Games that are great prompt tools (You’ll have to check the post out for these links!) - Day 8 post
Now Write! Books
Stop Writing Alone Paid Subscription (you really can’t blame me for this! With this option, you have access to all of these AND MORE all the time!)