A Prompted Story by /u/prompted-writing


You browse the r/WritingPrompts subreddit with dissatisfaction. Superheroes, here, science fiction there, and awkwardly specific fantasy everywhere. A sigh, you resolve yourself, “I’ll show them a good prompt like they’ve never seen!”

(reddit link)


I had already cleaned the kitchen, done my daily workout and music practice, I'd even actually gone through the tedium of paying my insurance premiums. There was no more avoiding it, I had spent all my procrastination excuses. It was time to write.

The cursor blinked as I stared at draft four of chapter seven. Vile emotions leaked out of the screen. Guilt, hurt, shame, self-doubt and self-loathing. Intrusive thoughts followed them. Maybe I'll just play a few minutes of video games. But I knew that was a lie, it was never just a few minutes, it was endless hours of glorious oblivion, followed by deep, deep, unshakable guilt. And still chapter seven would be waiting. Maybe I'll see if anyone has messaged me on... But no. That was just another doorway to the cycle of stagnation and shame. It was the writing hour and I had to write, that was the only way out of this.

But maybe I didn't have to write chapter seven. I browsed to r/WritingPrompts, just a quick writing exercise as a warm up. I didn't have to care about it, it didn't have to be good, I'd just blast out something mediocre to get the old word-neurons firing. I looked for something inspiring, but it was all the same cliched tropes. Single gimmick Superhero, sci-fi and fantasy ideas, where the whole story is already spelled out in the prompt and all that's left for the writer is to make it more pointlessly verbose. Bah! Okay, forget writing a story, I'll at least write an actually half-decent prompt.

I began pacing. The ideas would come. I switched to pacing in circles. Something without fantastic elements but that's not boring. I paced with longer strides. Something genuinely inspiring, but not too leading. I tapped my leg as I paced. I had almost admitted that this was genuinely hard when the door bell rang.

I raced downstairs and opened the door. A dishevelled girl threw herself inside, nearly bowling me over. She spun and slammed the door shut, then locked on to me with her wild eyes.

"You have the help me!"

"Ah... Excuse me. What are you doing in my house?"

"There's no time! They'll be here any minute!" As she spoke I had a chance to actually see her. She was beautiful in a way that other men would overlook. She looked smart and spunky, but not threateningly so, and in urgent need of help and protection. The thing that really grabbed my attention, however, were the strange numbers above her head that seemed to be slowly counting down. 14,732... 14,731...

"I've travelled across dimensions to find you. In my world everyone has super powers but somehow I was born without them."

"Wait, wait," I said. I didn't want her to feel bad. "I'm sure you have something special about you too, you just need to find it."

"I did find it! I'm really good at helping others feel special. I help them embrace life and find their own special power deep inside. I'm also really good at finding exactly right person to solve a crisis." Her hair was in a pixie cut, but she flicked her head as though she was used to it being long. She flashed me a cute half-grin. "Now I've found you."

"Okay," I said, "this is really weird. Do you want me to call you an ambulance or something?"

"No. Listen, the whole multiverse is in danger and we have to save it. While we were exploring we came across a federation of alien civilisations that rule the galaxy. They'd never encountered anything like humans before and decided they needed to eradicated us because of a trait that makes us unique and special."

"Wait, what? Aliens? What are you talking about? This has got to be some kind of joke. I don't think I want anything to do with this. I'm going to call the cops."

"There's no time! Why aren't you inspired? Why isn't my power working on you? It's always worked on everyone else!"

Staring into the eyes of this crazy girl in my entryway, I felt something inside me shift. I had always been plagued by doubt. I never truly believed that I could really accomplish something meaningful with my life. Big things were done by imaginary people on TV and in stories. Real people, the people I actually knew, just got shitty jobs, enjoyed some days, hated others, maybe had a family, probably complained about politics and most days just spent money on new versions of the same old consumer goods. Looking at this mad, spunky, ranting girl, I suddenly knew that didn't have to be me. All I had to do was take one step, and then another and another.

"It's not going to be just us." Her voice was full of renewed enthusiasm, her eyes twinkling. I think she had seen the awakening in me. Perhaps there was a twinkle in my eyes too. "There's an evil wizard, except he's not evil just misunderstood, and a demon who was tricked into becoming human but can still see into hell and an assassin who..."

As she spoke I opened the front door. Outside the sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky. I had spent so much time inside I had almost forgotten how beautiful it was. She took the first step beyond the threshold, looking coyly over her shoulder as she described the assassin's heart of gold, beckoning me with her smile.

I closed and locked the door behind her. I raced upstairs, the inspiration almost bursting from within me. Over the next hour and a half I wrote almost 2500 perfect words of chapter seven. My life would never be the same again.