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A specific community for original shortform and longform writing, stories, worldbuilding, and other stuff of that nature.

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#1 Weekly Bad Writing Prompts (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Welcome to the first (unofficial) Bad Writing Prompt day of the Beehaw Writing instance!

I've been reading a bit on the instance, and I agree with the consensus that we're going to need something weekly to bring and keep a community together. So I'm doing my part!

Wait, what do you mean by bad writing prompts? Partially inspired by this post here.

“Don’t try to prove you’re a good writer, you’ll never write anything. Try to prove you’re a bad writer and you’ll write everything.”

So, here's my general idea. For now, I'll be posting 3 different things.

Bad Character Ideas
Bad Setting Ideas
Bad Plot Ideas

For you to mix, match and use as you please! Again, I'm writing this off the cuff and with 20 minutes before work, so apologies for the short post, but without any more delay, here's what I got for you all!

Bad Character Ideas

The disgruntled younger sibling of the "Chosen One"
A food critic who actually suffers from no sense of taste, getting by on charisma and faking it alone
A magical anime girl who has a strange hobby and obsession with taxidermy (Thanks to my coworker for giving me this one haha)

Bad Setting Ideas

Cowboys and digimon. How that works I have no clue. Just. Cowboys and digimon combined. If you do this you have my eternal gratitude.
Told entirely through the lens of the endless blurb you skip before a recipe.
An office building set within purgatory itself.

Bad Plot Ideas

The main character has traveled back in time to kill Hitler. Little do they know is Hitler is now a skilled killer of time travelers.
A love story where two people are fated to be with one other, lest the world end. They hate each other.
A heist on the Vatican vault.

Alright, I'm running out of time, and need to skip off to work. Hope to see some posts, and remember to make it awful. I want some real schlock and cringe. Feel free to use all of the prompts, or none of them! Your reward will be nothing. Ciao ciao!

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[–] ComplexLotus 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

here i go with these 3:

as you notice I shoehorned your points / requirements in later to make it even worse
Bad Character Ideas
- He was called the great terraformer. Since he never had gone outside and touched grass, he became frightful of any kind of insect or living thing that he was NOT isolated from through a wall of concrete. That is why he formed the world according to his will: the forests where converted to deserts -- no more insects to interrupt him. The towns where covered with walls of all shapes and sizes. Brick or Concrete where the material used. In premium cases Granite. Human activity had to spread to the farthest reaches of nature, to wall of and isolate nature from human activity.
  - he did originally quite poorly by being the previously mentioned bad food critic.
  - he earned very little money, but won a lottery, which enabled him to become powerful.
  - By using his charisma, combined with his lucky wealth, he became the worlds first global emperor.
Bad Setting Ideas (connected to the above)
- The terraformer has done his work and covered the world with a setting of his antinatural ideology. The hero of the story loves walls, but also loves nature (he is a moss biologist, so moss is his favorite living thing). So he starts growing moss on all the walls in sufficiently shadowy and wet regions of the world that still remain. He breeds a new kind of moss, that spreads beautiful flowers, hidden, but present to the homeless people, who live in these places.
  - the special moss starts to grow in a moldy place: The "Origin" house. The house -- an officebuilding in the epicenter of hell, as the homeless call it, where the great terraformer lived before becoming the global emperor.
Bad Plot Ideas
- Another (homeless) hero called Hobo is inspired by the flowers and starts to use his bare hands tear the walls down (he is a mutant). Flowers spread everywhere, sickening THE great terraformer, who sends his shadow legion to stop him. But it is in vain. Some things (like the decline of an evil empire) can not be stopped, as he will soon have to accept.
  - as the world of the great terraformer ends (in his personal view of course) he falls in love with Hobo.