That writing prompt about a dragon running a laundromat actually got me thinking about how I structure my escape scenes now

Back when I first started writing, I would just have the hero find a convenient tunnel or window, but after trying out that absurd prompt where the dragon argues with customers about lint filter maintenance, I realized that the best escapes come from the character having to solve their own stupid problems in a funny way, has anyone else had a random prompt fundamentally change how you approach a specific part of your writing?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jenny14d ago

the character having to solve their own stupid problems in a funny way" - that really hit me. So my friend Sarah, she's not a writer but she does these little sketches for fun, and she tried that laundromat prompt. She told me she had this scene where a knight tries to escape a castle by hiding in the laundry cart, but he gets tangled in a bunch of damp sheets. Then instead of just running out the door, he has to figure out how to untangle himself while also not waking the guards who are taking a nap on the floor. She said it took her three tries to write it because the first two attempts were too easy, like he just slipped out. The third version where he keeps stepping on a squeaky floorboard and has to pause every time was the one that worked, and now she says she can't write any escape scene without making the character trip over their own dumb decisions first. It's stuck with me because I used to write my tax reports the same way, just looking for the easy way out, but now I lean into the messy middle part instead.

burns.ruby14d ago

Wait, did your friend say she rewrote that escape scene three times until the knight couldn't just slip out? That's exactly how I feel when I try to fix a leaky faucet - my first attempt is always the quickest fix that fails, then I end up spending two hours under the sink with water dripping on my head. I guess that's the thing about messy middles, they're kind of like my cooking disasters where I try to take a shortcut and end up with a weird sauce situation that takes three tries to get right. Your tax report example makes total sense to me too, because last year I tried to file my taxes the easy way and ended up having to redo everything when I realized I forgot to add in my side gig income. So yeah, maybe we all need to embrace the tangled sheets and squeaky floorboards of our own lives instead of looking for the easy exit.