731 Weirdly Specific Writing Prompts, Batch 2

(184-366)

Aug 13, 2024

∙ Paid

I posted recently about the two years (2020 and 2022) in which I posted a very specific writing prompt every day on Twitter. I’m going to post the second half of my 2020 posts here, and then DON’T WORRY, I’ll post some other stuff for a while before walloping you with the other 365.

If you care to, please feel free to share in the comments anything they inspire…

In this batch is where we get my apparent obsession with Michael Dukakis, plus school science fairs, ukuleles, and janitors. Why? We’ll never know.

Write the first line of something. It must include a thunderstorm, the Miss USA pageant, a senatorial election, the word "partial," and the name Stephanie.

Write a story, poem, or essay addressed to Kermit the Frog. It does not need to be ABOUT Kermit the Frog, and in fact it's better if it isn't. It's just narrated to him.
Humans have never observed eels mating. Ever. Eel mating has never been witnessed. This is a true thing. Write about it.
These eels are apparently not mating, you pervs
Put a jigsaw puzzle in your story, one that's driving your characters nuts, but for Pete's sake don't make it symbolic.
Write about a fictional academic conference for a thing that you're obsessed with and know way too much about anyway.
The story starts with someone peeling bark off a birch tree, includes a Jell-O recipe gone awry, an angry asbestos instructor, and a fire sale, and it ends when June finally tells her husband what's in the coffee can. It's a story about vengeance.
Put a school science fair in your work-in-progress. Not a memory of one, an actual one. Maybe your character has to judge, or maybe it's going on down the hall from something else. Maybe their kid is doing an experiment with peas.
Let your characters have the most ridiculously elaborate dinner possible. Describe it way too much. You can always cut back later.
Write a full paragraph about your own wrists.
Write a story that's set on a yacht. Your point-of-view character is tremendously uncomfortable.
This one will do nicely.
Write a physical description of the worst teacher you had in high school. But be kind.
How do people get your name wrong? How do you feel about it?
Your specific memories of National Geographic Magazine.
Your story needs more marshmallows.
Write the first line of something new. It must contain the word "salamander," a joke about Richard Nixon, a solar panel, and a bagel with cream cheese.
Take a scene you've set in a restaurant, kitchen, or coffeeshop, and instead put it in: 1) a museum of natural history 2) a Michaels 3) the bleachers at a high school graduation.
Put more weather in your story, but not rain. Give a character a sunburn or throw in a tornado watch or an air quality warning. Don't make it symbolic; make it change something.
The story starts when Danny, late to work, opens a liter of root beer from the fridge and it explodes all over the kitchen. There's no time to clean it up, so the roommates are going to come home to this.
Write about getting a milkshake with an historical figure.
Write a story, poem, or essay called "Jack Ruby, Jack Ruby"
A diamond bracelet in the parking lot. There's no one around it could belong to. So it's yours.
Three people are sitting around having a crying contest. They're trying to see who can make themselves cry first.
Make up a saint.
This is Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, Patron Saint Against Earaches, but he is taken (and also real)
Swimmer's ear*
A black bear
A hangover
Eugene Debs
Fiddlehead ferns
Miss Universe
Botox
Salami
A foghorn
The carbon monoxide detector goes off
[*they clearly did not pray hard enough to St. Polycarp]
A notorious celebrity is finally, with a pandemic face mask, able to enjoy going out in public without being recognized.
A shoe is on fire.
That IS a banana in your pocket.
Virginia Woolf has to go to Ikea.
Divorced at 34, Eleanor decides to marry the wealthiest man she can and systematically give away all his money.
Put an ant farm in your story. (If you never had an ant farm, do know that the first 5 days are watching them dig tunnels and eat, and the last 20 days are watching them slowly bury their dead.) Anyway: Ant farm!
Halfway through the story, your character gets a terrible haircut.
Mike just texted his priest by mistake.
Here are some names for you.
Nick Fever
Lynn Grotsky
Cassa Blain
Kiki Strom
Anders Chang
Daphne Drumke
Brooke Casey-Broom
Jameka Brunt
Slobodan Stankovic
Chas Bruno
Egan Cartwright
JP Kristiansen
Arunima Kaur
Minstrel cramps.
Think of a dead writer whose work you would like to inspire your own. Print or tear out a photo of the author. Sleep with it under your pillow, and invite them to haunt your dreams.
Samantha has fallen off her bike and badly bloodied her leg. She's a block from her ex's house (where he now lives with his new wife) but miles from any other help. So...
Put an ice cream truck in your story. Your adult characters hear it and decide they really want an ice cream novelty.
A haunted vending machine.
You're staying at the same hotel as a congressional representative you absolutely loathe.
Taste something in your house that is not edible. Write a sentence about what it tastes like.
Open a novel from your shelf. Copy down the last line, and make it the first line of a new story. (If you ever publish it, credit the source, etc. etc.)
Write a story called "Make It Stop."
Give your character an intense craving for a specific food that is currently unavailable to them. Describe it in excruciating detail.
Sadie is getting a Brazilian wax, and she ends up telling absolutely everything to her waxer because why not.
If you have to have your characters just sitting around eating while they talk, here are some non-boring things they could eat:
- Crab legs
- Fondue
- Outrageously spicy saag paneer
- Undercooked lasagna
- Pot pie with a staple in it
- Mochi
Write the first line/s of something new. It must contain a bottle of lotion, a Christmas cake, Jennifer's ex showing up on the news, someone from South Africa, and a feeling of tremendous joy.
Frédéric Chopin and Kate Chopin enjoy a bowl of oatmeal together.
The story starts with someone shopping for goody bag supplies for an eight-year-old's presidential themed birthday party.
Write an entire short story set in line for a ride at Disney World.
You've inherited a parrot that used to belong to your aunt, and the parrot starts spilling family secrets.
Kiki LaFontaine, the queen of the Shell station parking lot.
The funeral of your ex's aunt. You always liked her. She always liked you.
The Serbian tennis star has signed an endorsement deal for Janet's yoghurt company, but he's being a major pain in the ass about it.
[Why did I choose to spell “yoghurt” this way? We’ll never know, but you have to spell it that way in the story.]
Make your characters pull an all-nighter. See what happens when they're deliriously tired.
A college sophomore named Alpine.
A famously disgraced senator is now a poli sci professor at the university near you. You see him every day at the coffee shop.
A five-year old named Phoenix. She hasn't taken off her Santa pajama top in a week even though it's September. She wants you to help her with her Legos.
Dave has a new can crusher. Everyone at this party wants to figure out what it can crush besides cans.
It's 1988, and the office of this video store needs new ant traps. That bottle of Mountain Dew has been in the window for a month now. Jason and Sarah have been flirting all summer, but they both go back to college soon.
You're having tea with Geraldine Ferraro at a coffee shop in heaven. She wants to know everything that's happened since she died in 2011. But you have no reason to tell her the truth.
Try not to break her heart.
Give your character a middle school science fair project to help out with, in the middle of everything else. Slicing worms or growing bean plants in the dark or painting a solar system.
Halfway through the exam, your gynecologist reminds you that the two of you went to high school together.
Whatever you're writing, put a very depressing salad in the next paragraph or stanza.
20 years into the future, all the old leftover cruise ships are being used as floating liberal arts colleges.
They unfreeze Walt Disney.
Sean and Isla break up on the fourth day of their vacation. They have three days left at Sandals Montego Bay.
The story starts with a broken pair of headphones, includes a hedgehog and a stoned grandmother, and ends when Margot joins the PTA. Thematically, it's about both vengeance and dread. The epigraph is from MacBeth.
Everyone finds out via an intra-office email that the office will be used for a porn shoot. Two months later, Sean lets everyone know he's found the video online.
Set something at a plastic surgery recovery spa.
Write something titled "Okay, Breathe."
The story starts when Donna, who lives alone, walks out into her kitchen and finds a silver dollar circle of blood on the floor. She's not bleeding, and there's no one else there.
It's 1933 and Jo March is 90 years old. She's on a final tour of Europe, and finds herself in Germany, where Hitler has just been appointed Chancellor.
Tony asks his teenage niece to be in the local television commercial for his Honda dealership. Her parents make her say yes.
The Girl Scout sleepover in the annex room of the library. Jasmine and Emily are chaperoning, but they hate each other. It's pouring rain.
The Delia's catalogue, circa 1996.
A list of all the worst things a teacher ever said to you.
Jane Austen is cheating at whist
She WOULD, too
After a freak electric storm, all the fish and sea creatures at the aquarium downtown break out of their tanks and start swimming in the air through the city. They're everywhere.
A horse camp for girls that teaches abstinence.
In 1577, Martin Frobisher gave up on finding the Northwest Passage because he'd found gold. (!) He brought Queen Elizabeth 200 tons of gold ore. (!) It was actually iron pyrite. England used it for road metaling. Frobisher's financing collapsed.
Here he is, the poor idiot
The teenage employees of this ice cream shop are allowed to try to invent new flavors.
Give one of your characters a signature color she insists on wearing even when it isn't totally appropriate.
You've been seated at this wedding reception between exes. They're getting very drunk and both talking to you like the other one isn't there. You have a UTI, and so you aren't drinking, but the salmon dip is amazing.
This one dude brings his ukulele EVERYWHERE.
Put someone deeply sketchy into your story. Not a villain, just a really sketchy person. A guy who sleeps on people's couches and steals their peanut butter.
A college boy is dying of cancer. 3 different girls sleep with him, out of pity, and he tells them he doesn’t need a condom because he’s infertile. They all get pregnant, and all have babies due right around the same time, after his death.
Take one character from your work-in-progress and reveal that as a child, they starred in a Frosted Flakes commercial.
Write a very sad short story from the point of view of your favorite childhood cartoon character.
The absolute worst kid on your 6th grade soccer team has grown up to become a presidential advisor.
Your child ends up at college with the child of a politician you loathe. They're in the same history class.
The local high school film club has asked to shoot in your backyard by that weird old tree.
On March 12th, Michelle's daughter brought home the 2nd grade hamster to care for over spring break. School has been remote ever since, and Dusty the Third is still in the house.
The story starts with Denise opening the wrong car door. It includes a Richard Nixon impersonation, a rotten lemon, and a woman who plays the piano with her eyes closed. It ends when Ralph revisits his old high school and confronts the janitor.
The 8th grade class trip to the state capital. The kids are going to read their essays to the Lieutenant Governor.
Write about all the Halloween costumes you remember wearing as a kid, and what they said about you/your family/your obsessions/the weather.
Give a character a really big fuzzy sweater to wear. One they can hide inside when they're uncomfortable.
Put a pandemic sourdough starter in your story.
Set a story entirely on Zoom. You know you want to.
All five of Jeremy's parents show up to the parent-teacher conference.
When a starfish's arm is cut off, it can grow a new arm. But also, the arm can grow a new starfish.
Ellen has locked her keys in her car, which is parked right in the drop-off circle of the ER.
Think hard about the jobs your characters have, especially any vague jobs where people just vaguely go to an office. Give a character a more interesting job.
Like:
dog trainer
curator of a house museum
aquarium installer
stain tester
middle school band teacher
donor liaison for a zoo
theater costume shop assistant
librarian in a sheet music library
salad maker at a deli salad counter
HR rep for an Italian restaurant chain
owner of three gas stations
beer tour guide
location scout
somelier
violin repair person
insurance rep in a plastic surgeon's office
or, not an insurance rep, but like the person who does the insurance paperwork. that person.
makeup artist
secretary to the CEO of a major chain of coffee shops
one of the last remaining travel agents
publicity director for a beauty pageant
calendar designer
fraternity house mother
order fulfiller for a costume company
pediatric dental hygienist
podiatrist
director of the Iowa tourism board
electronics instruction translator
country club party planner
vending machine maintenance
French tutor
Roberta has a bumper crop of giant zucchini in her garden, and no one wants them, so she’s going to make zucchini bread for literally everyone in town. She’ll have to deliver it all door to door.
What smells do you associate with your high school?
What foods do you associate with your grandparents?
[I absolutely disavow this one. This one is extremely predictable and boring, straight out of some sad “things to write about” book that’s on sale for $2.99. Write instead about that book, and its author, who is a failed Olympic handball player.]
Joanie moves back to her hometown and gets a job as a prison guard. A girl she went to school with is incarcerated there.
Bea and Calvin are in the airport bar, arguing over whether the guy standing in the corridor on his phone is or is not Michael Dukakis.
Spoiler alert: It is.
Whatever you're writing, put the 1919 Black Sox scandal in the next paragraph or stanza.
The smell of TV Guide.
Jerry went on Wheel of Fortune in 1986 and he still has that Dalmatian statue by the fireplace. He never mentions it till the end of dinner party when everyone's pretty drunk. His wife is so sick of it.
Partway through your story, make a pen explode all over someone's hands.
The house at the end of the block is handing out Kit Kats to the kids but heavily spiked hot cider to the adults. Lindsey is ladling it out dressed as a sexy flight attendant.
A brother and sister show up at your house claiming they grew up there in the '60s. You agree to let them look around. Big mistake.
Locate 3 agents of potential chaos in your story. One should be a person (e.g., unreliable friend, liar, witch), one an atmospheric element (lightning storm, wind), and one situational (election, a sickness, roach infestation). Let them at it.
You wake up dead, and here is all the food you've ever eaten, laid out in chronological order in an endless banquet hall.
The Diary Exchange Program.
It's the night of the 1988 presidential election (Bush v. Dukakis), and Tara is watching the returns come in at the nursing home where she works, along with the elderly residents. They are almost unanimously Bush supporters. She's for Dukakis.
Plot twist, it’s OLYMPIA Dukakis.
Close your internet tabs and open a Word doc. Close your eyes and take ten deep breaths. Write whatever the hell you feel like. If you think you can do it, write with your eyes closed. Keep writing for five minutes, no matter what.
A Russian student arrives at Harvard in the fall of 1932. He can't speak much English but he becomes popular by introducing everyone to Russian coffee.
Write about your memories of the 2000 election and recount.* Not necessarily the election itself, but the sensorial and environmental details.
*If you were a baby, then write about what it feels like not to have a bad back yet.
Meg and the other potential contestants on this reality show have been put up in a cheap hotel. There's another round of interviews and psych evals left. The producers have taken their phones away. They aren't supposed to interact.
You thought that was a dead bird on the sidewalk, but it was a milkweed pod.
Pick a color to infuse into your work-in-progress. Never name the color; just put at least five things into the piece that we'll assume are that color.
Write the first sentence of a story about revenge. It must include the name Vlad, a purple Sharpie, a description of a great-aunt's face, and a question mark.
Hang upside down off a bed, or do a headstand if you can. When you have a sentence to write, sit normally and write it. Then invert again until you have another sentence. It might be crap, but you can always say you wrote it upside down.
Write a story that starts when Blair and Rodney walk into Target, and ends when they walk out of Target.
This is from the Wikipedia page for the French actor François Berléand. The footnote only takes you to the ISBN for his memoir. No other explanation. What could this possibly be about?
Give your character a very specific collection, one they're super knowledgeable about. Moths or pint glasses or antique lightbulbs or whatever. Use their quest for a rare addition as the impetus for going across town to an unfamiliar neighborhood.
This picture:

The neighborhood Bunko club is FALLING. APART.
Cameron is at a work dinner when he gets a text from his younger brother, Brian: “Do fish have blood? Like, actual red blood?”
You pull up to the Starbucks window, and the guy who hands you your mocha is crying.

The story starts with a debate over pie crust. It includes paparazzi, a list of enemies, a male French Canadian model, and Albert Schweizer. It ends when the neighbor knocks on the door. Ultimately, it's a story about longing and disaster.
You answer the phone, and it's the director of a major zoo. You have no idea why she's calling.
Put a pinball machine in your story. Make it a noisy one.
The Botanic Garden Gala. No one is dressed for the weather, so they're drinking too much champagne to keep warm. There's drama by the koi ponds.
A washed-up country singer gets asked by a toy company to cut an album of songs from the point of view of a fad doll. The money's too good to say no.
The story starts when Glenna is stopped on her way to work by a local NBC reporter, for a person-in-the-street interview. He's asking about the scandal with the local mall Santa. What she says starts a chain reaction.
Write something about constitutional law and ukuleles.
You're cleaning out your late uncle's house, and you find the VHS cassette of his video dating interview from 1987.
Dorothy was a contestant in the Miss America pageant in 1949. In December of 2020, she's finally ready to tell you about it.
You're staying at the same hotel where there's a doll collector convention. One of them is the mother of a kid you went to school with. The breakfast buffet has a make-your-own Belgian waffle iron.
The vice-prophet doesn’t have nearly as many responsibilities and privileges as the actual prophet, but he’s a lot better looking.
Georgia feels guilty about sleeping with her cousin's boyfriend, and so every time she does, she donates money to the animal shelter her cousin likes.
The pastor of a megachurch frequents the same coffeeshop as you. People come up to him for his autograph and his advice. One day, he asks what you're reading. You are reading American Pastoral, by Phillip Roth.
Mike and Miguel decide to go to a showing of a mansion they can't afford and have no intention of buying.
Tricia picks up the Starbucks cup her husband came home with and sees the label. It's her husband's usual drink, but the name on the order is "Ingrid" and it's time-stamped right when he said he was working out.
The story starts when Monica opens the dishwasher door as soon as the cycle is done, but she's wearing her glasses so they completely fog up. The story includes a visit from the Mormons and a map of Denver. It's about survivor's guilt.
The Amelia Earhart Association is having their sixtieth annual convention. All the food service workers in town are comparing notes.
There's a Hollywood actor no one has wanted to work with for the past fifteen years. He finally gets cast on a daytime soap opera. He's playing a villain. No one trusts him.
You're teaching Comp 101, and your roster is full of minor Greek gods. Hermes keeps asking to go to the bathroom. Your reading list is flexible. The room has no windows.
Anna gets beautiful castoff clothes from the woman whose children she nannies for, but feels odd wearing the clothes in front of her boss. One day she wears a handed-down sweater, and her boss looks at her strangely and asks where she got it.
The story starts with the college president crossing campus at sunrise and seeing some truly offensive graffiti. The paint is still wet, and she realizes she can just wash it off. She decides to do this instead of reporting it. But someone sees her.
Give an adult character in your story a famous parent. Not someone real, just someone wildly famous within the world of your story. Some people know, and some people don't.
Lori marries a rich douche who buys her breast implants. She doesn't quite register that they'll have to be replaced every 10 years. 10 years later, she's divorced and poor and happy and... has to pay thousands for more surgery.
The young men of Sigma Chi realize they haven't seen their house mother, Pearl, in over a week. The knock on her apartment door and hear nothing. They start to worry.
Give one of your characters the most amazing, buttery bowl of pasta to eat. They deserve it.
Give a character one of the following as a prop to play with during a tense scene:
- bubble wrap
- an orange peel
- a tin of Altoids
- a pad of Post-Its
- a dry ink pad
- a plastic spork
- a New Yorker blow-in card
- a takeout menu from a closed restaurant
"Adult Swim" night at the aquarium
There's a pine tree you can sit under and talk to Kurt Vonnegut's ghost, if you're into that kind of thing.
“The Turn Of The Shrew”
“The Taming Of The Screw”
What story would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?
Janice and Ellen are on an educational cruise sponsored by the university both of their late husbands attended. There's a lunchtime stop on a small Greek island, and they both get a little drunk.
There are six people left in the college dorm, and they decide to celebrate Christmas together. For two of them, it's the first time they've done this.
The morning after Christmas, Barret is taking bubble wrap and cardboard boxes to the dumpster in the alley. He meets his neighbor there, and the neighbor asks him a wildly inconvenient favor.
The woman in charge of the parent costume committee for the middle school musical has some major axes to grind.
You receive, in 2020, an invitation to the 1923 wedding of Cornelia Vanderbilt. A fairy godmother helps you get ready.
Twelve years after she graduated high school, Ingrid gets a call from the principal's assistant. It's about an item in the lost and found.
[Is this the same Ingrid who’s sleeping with Starbucks cup guy? Quite possibly. It might also be why that one barista was crying.]
Have your character write in to an advice columnist about their crisis. The columnist gives truly horrendous advice.

Okay, so a confession. I was very bad at keeping count, and also sometimes I forgot the hashtag, and sometimes I misspelled the hashtag, so some of these prompts are lost in the bowels of Twitter forever. (Also: It was the fall of 2020. There WERE A FEW DISTRACTIONS.)

But in May of 2021 I posted a first line every day, so I’m going to supplement now with thirteen of those.

"The new principal at the high school was, according to her social media accounts, a practicing witch."
“The road crew had been digging for a week when Ralph hit something soft.”
“Margaret had borrowed her sister's old engagement ring so she could try on wedding dresses.”
“My 11th grade Spanish teacher called me one morning from prison.”
“Sadie's grandmother, who was not really her grandmother, died in the middle of a candlelight vigil for the missing girl.”
"George and Melissa met on the freeway, and so they got married on the freeway."
“On Esther's third day at the museum, a donor dropped by with a Post-It note.”
"Drop the stapler."
“There were three Sophies in 1st period English, and one of them was the Sophie whose father was running for mayor.”
“Natalie played the lottery every week for six years, three months, and eleven days.”
“The janitor had been living in the school basement for three years.”
“Henrick claimed he could read palms.”
“Jordan had been commissioned to compose the soundtrack for a documentary about an art heist.”
And here was the actual last one from 2020:
If you knew you only had enough time on earth to write one more story, what would you write?

Not that you need MORE of these, but the first lines were some of my favorite prompts, and so as a thank-you to paid subscribers (hey, thank you!!) I’m posting the rest of them below the paywall.

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to SubMakk to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.