I want to practice creative writing and would like some prompts to stir ideas. Looking up prompts online hasn't inspired much in me so I'm hoping for some either wild suggestions or at least just something that strays from the usual

i can see by what u carry that u come from barrytown

write about a ancient babylonian secret society as if your writing a history book

>>3
See now this is what I'm talkin' about. Good suggestion anon, thank you

techniques for creative writing
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1. oblique strategies are a set of cards with instructions that are designed to encourage creative thinking. there's versions for android, iphone, web, and apparently even a gameboy version that can run in your browser. kinda wanna put the gameboy version on my phone with retroarch tbh.

2. free writing is a method which in which you continue writing without making edits--pouring your thoughts onto the page--i'd suggest that before you begin, you determine when you will stop--having reached a certain wordcount or until a timer has run out. you may use unorthodox grammar or spell things wrong, you may not use the backspace key. at the point you have finished, you are allowed to make edits, rewrite it, or simply throw it into the garbage. it was inspired by kerouac's works.

3. the cut-up method asks the writer to disassemble pre-existing writing (it may be your own or otherwise) and reassemble it, in order to produce new meaning. while this may sound silly, you are of course free to employ it in tandem with more orthodox techniques, perhaps as a poem contained within a greater text. as with free writing, it was developed by a beat writer, burroughs.

answering your question
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as for a prompt, i come from the school of write-what-you know, so i'd suggest writing a story inspired by your experience of genuine events with alterations to make it fictional, as in vonnegut's slaughterhouse 5. you could even have that idea exist within a fictitious historical account of babylonion secret society. how would a historian describe a babylonion NEET cult before days of yore?

i'd imagine a historian would write on it as though its particpants were vile things, but with great care to make his contempt sound clinically objective. perhaps the ones most likely study & write upon such a thing would be those who have some admiration for such a way of being. and of course there's the writer who commends & chastises his subject in the same breath.

good luck

>>1
Here are some unconventional creative writing prompts that might spark something different:
The Mundane Made Strange:

Write about a world where gravity works in reverse for exactly 7 minutes every Tuesday at 3:47 PM
A character discovers their shadow has been filing complaints about their life choices
The last remaining pay phone in your city starts calling people back

Perspective Shifts:

Tell a love story from the perspective of the couple's shared Netflix account
Write about a war as experienced by the buttons on soldiers' uniforms
A retirement home for retired fictional characters where Hamlet works in maintenance

Time/Reality Bends:

Every time someone lies, they age one day. Every truth makes them one day younger
A person who can only exist in the spaces between seconds
Write about the day all the clocks in the world gained consciousness

Emotional Landscapes:

A city where the architecture changes based on the collective mood of its inhabitants
Someone who collects the last words of dying languages
A character who inherits their grandmother's ability to taste colors, but only sad ones

Identity Puzzles:

Write from the POV of someone slowly realizing they're the antagonist in someone else's story
A support group for people who've been replaced by their evil twins
The autobiography of a background character who keeps showing up in other people's pivotal moments

What kind of tone or genre appeals to you most? I could push any of these directions further.

Imagine your a writer who slowly got sucked into a community that uses a new type of drug with unforeseen effects, detailing your descent into this addiction and the people you meet along the way.

>>7
I like this one, too. Thank you anon. I think I'll combine this idea with >>5 suggestion to 'write what you know' and set this in my hometown.

It would be cool to have a creative writing thread or somewhere we can share stuff. I suck at fiction writing and want to improve.

>>9
Maybe we could do something on /shill/? I'm not sure tho, I admittedly haven't lurked enough

>>10
I guess? Although maybe /media/ is better? Its not like we are promoting finished work.

>>11
True, I guess I didn't take the description of "things you've made" as inherently finished, but /media/ can work just as fine.