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December Days 2018 #15: What Makes A Good Prompt?
[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]
Part of the reason why I really like exchanges is because it offers a twofold purpose - getting ideas that I'm not writing right now out of my head and into a space where someone else might write them, and giving me some insight into someone else's head to see how they view the world and its characters. We may not have compatible ideas about the characters, setting, and plot, but if someone can describe the space they want me to work in, I can usually get it to go. There are times where I've had struggles with getting ideas or simmering to come to life immediately. Sometimes it's that I don't have an idea that works yet, and sometimes it's the prompt (or the prompt and letter) that is getting a little in the way. So, I thought I might talk about what makes a good prompt for me.
Receiving a letter and prompt is fine for me, as is a prompt by itself. What I like in a prompt is a sketch of the space you would like the work to inhabit. I'll take the do-not-wants into account, and having a list of tropes and ideas you like is helpful for detail setting (and sometimes, perhaps, helping flesh out the arc a story is going to take), but what I my want are thematic, big picture things. This doesn't have to be elaborate. "I want a work with Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty about the spiral of revenge" is a good prompt. It might turn unexpectedly, if your work turns out to be Holmes trying to pull Moriarty out of that spiral, instead of both of them getting locked into it with each other, but it's a good thing to start with. (You can specify if you want it to be about those two doing revenge to each other.) Details can help shape the way you would like it to go, but there has to be room for creative flexibility and for the creator to put their own stamp on it, or you're dictating something that you have enough detail to write yourself. (There are communities for that, too - plot bunnies that you just by get to and need to be let free for someone else to use.)
I tend not to like (or give) overly detailed prompt materials because I tend to think in themes and tropes as the way to convey information to a creator that gets that sketch quality across. I know which characters I'd like, I'm suggesting specific relationships to write, and I usually want to tie it all together under a few ideas that I think will animate the scene. This is usually where some of my Three Point Characterization will come through, as well. For a gift work I received this year, I suggested Squall Leonhart and Laguna Loire (both playable characters in Final Fantasy VIII) on the theme of reconnecting with the people important to you. Squall is an orphan raised in an organization that turns out elite soldiers designed to neutralize a recurrent threat to the world in the form of The Sorceresses. His entire life that he can remember has been in soldier, and then officer, training for the purpose of killing a Sorceress when she appears. In military matters, he is peerless, but as the game progresses, he keeps getting into situations where killing something isn't going to help anything. Squall just doesn't know how to people.
Laguna is a somewhat untethered soldier in the army of one of the various nations in the planet, and while he does care about people and things, he's not looking to get attached to anyone or anything. He ends up falling in love with someone, having a child with her, and then running away from the responsibility of fatherhood, eventually managing to obtain a very high political office in another country. Although the narrative never fully confirms it, it hints very heavily that Laguna's child is Squall. Squall and Laguna eventually meet each other and work together on the sorceress problem, but there's still not a lot of trying to reconnect time, because sorceresses.
Which is to say there's plenty of space for interpretation in what happens after the world-ending threat is taken care of, and on the idea of "Squall has no idea how to people, and has grown up with no father, and now this goofball is trying to reconnect with him. Laguna is regretful for not being there for Squall, but he's got no idea how to parent, and he doesn't even know what that will look like, much less how to get a genuine connection," someone wrote me 10,000+ words.
A prompt doesn't have to be super long or detailed, if there's enough to give someone a push in the right direction. At least, it seems to be working for me.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]Part of the reason why I really like exchanges is because it offers a twofold purpose - getting ideas that I'm not writing right now out of my head and into a space where someone else might write them, and giving me some insight into someone else's head to see how they view the world and its characters. We may not have compatible ideas about the characters, setting, and plot, but if someone can describe the space they want me to work in, I can usually get it to go. There are times where I've had struggles with getting ideas or simmering to come to life immediately. Sometimes it's that I don't have an idea that works yet, and sometimes it's the prompt (or the prompt and letter) that is getting a little in the way. So, I thought I might talk about what makes a good prompt for me.
Receiving a letter and prompt is fine for me, as is a prompt by itself. What I like in a prompt is a sketch of the space you would like the work to inhabit. I'll take the do-not-wants into account, and having a list of tropes and ideas you like is helpful for detail setting (and sometimes, perhaps, helping flesh out the arc a story is going to take), but what I my want are thematic, big picture things. This doesn't have to be elaborate. "I want a work with Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty about the spiral of revenge" is a good prompt. It might turn unexpectedly, if your work turns out to be Holmes trying to pull Moriarty out of that spiral, instead of both of them getting locked into it with each other, but it's a good thing to start with. (You can specify if you want it to be about those two doing revenge to each other.) Details can help shape the way you would like it to go, but there has to be room for creative flexibility and for the creator to put their own stamp on it, or you're dictating something that you have enough detail to write yourself. (There are communities for that, too - plot bunnies that you just by get to and need to be let free for someone else to use.)
I tend not to like (or give) overly detailed prompt materials because I tend to think in themes and tropes as the way to convey information to a creator that gets that sketch quality across. I know which characters I'd like, I'm suggesting specific relationships to write, and I usually want to tie it all together under a few ideas that I think will animate the scene. This is usually where some of my Three Point Characterization will come through, as well. For a gift work I received this year, I suggested Squall Leonhart and Laguna Loire (both playable characters in Final Fantasy VIII) on the theme of reconnecting with the people important to you. Squall is an orphan raised in an organization that turns out elite soldiers designed to neutralize a recurrent threat to the world in the form of The Sorceresses. His entire life that he can remember has been in soldier, and then officer, training for the purpose of killing a Sorceress when she appears. In military matters, he is peerless, but as the game progresses, he keeps getting into situations where killing something isn't going to help anything. Squall just doesn't know how to people.
Laguna is a somewhat untethered soldier in the army of one of the various nations in the planet, and while he does care about people and things, he's not looking to get attached to anyone or anything. He ends up falling in love with someone, having a child with her, and then running away from the responsibility of fatherhood, eventually managing to obtain a very high political office in another country. Although the narrative never fully confirms it, it hints very heavily that Laguna's child is Squall. Squall and Laguna eventually meet each other and work together on the sorceress problem, but there's still not a lot of trying to reconnect time, because sorceresses.
Which is to say there's plenty of space for interpretation in what happens after the world-ending threat is taken care of, and on the idea of "Squall has no idea how to people, and has grown up with no father, and now this goofball is trying to reconnect with him. Laguna is regretful for not being there for Squall, but he's got no idea how to parent, and he doesn't even know what that will look like, much less how to get a genuine connection," someone wrote me 10,000+ words.
A prompt doesn't have to be super long or detailed, if there's enough to give someone a push in the right direction. At least, it seems to be working for me.