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Spent $40 on a prompt generator book and it flopped hard

I bought this book of 500 fantasy writing prompts last month thinking it would kickstart my stalled novel. Cost me about $40 at a local bookstore here in Portland. The prompts were all super basic like "a dragon guards a treasure" which is just not helpful. I ended up getting more ideas from a free Reddit thread about weird animal facts. Has anyone else wasted money on a writing tool that sounded good but was totally useless?
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3 Comments
paul330
paul3308d ago
Waste $40 on a book like that and yeah, you got burned but honestly is it really that big a deal? Ive bought plenty of dumb stuff online that turned out to be crap. A dragon guards a treasure? Thats like a prompt for a 5 year old. You could find better ideas on a cereal box. Sounds like the publisher just slapped some generic stuff together to cash in. Live and learn I guess, just dont dwell on it.
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the_karen
the_karen7d ago
A dragon guards a treasure" is just... that's a kindergarten level writing prompt, right? I actually read a review of that book on some blog where the guy said the prompts were so vague they felt like placeholders before the real writing started. He had one like "a wizard turns water into wine" and another that was literally just "autumn leaves." Not even a full sentence, just autumn leaves. For forty bucks you could get a real writing textbook from a used book store that actually teaches you structure and character development instead of hoping a seven word idea will carry a whole novel...
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oliver242
oliver2427d ago
Used to think any paid tool had to be good but paul330 is right, live and learn.
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