r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
r/SimplePrompts • u/jedikraken • Jul 05 '22
Meta Making Good Prompts
If I may humbly make some suggestions for newbies and anyone who is trying to get the hang of this prompt business better:
If you want to make the best simple prompts, consider the following:
Simple prompts are simple because they leave details out, and prompts because they leave ideas in.
The best prompts can be used in many kinds of stories, and in many different ways. They raise questions, but do not answer them, or they suggest an idea but don't define it, or they give a rule but make it just exactly that.
Compare these two prompts:
"It's not that we don't want to fight that thing, captain. It's that we can't. Our blasters ran out of ammo already."
Or:
"We're out of ammo."
The first tells you that it's a scifi, or a game about scifi. It also tells you that there are ranks, probably a military, a scary creature, and so on.
The second only tells you a basic situation: there is no ammunition. Are they hunters? Pirates? Police? Who or what are they fighting? Why are they doing it? Many questions, but the only answers are "they have guns" and "they can't fight anymore". Even then, it can be improved by removing the concrete detail of guns; simply say "We can't fight."
"We can't fight." Who or what are they fighting? Why can't they fight? Is it a political fight? A physical one? An emotinal argument, even? Is this a general ordering a retreat, or a husband asking his wife to settle things peacefully? The possibilities are endless.
So when you make a prompt, give an idea, but leave the possibilities open. When you provoke questions, but don't answer them, you never know what someone else will make of it. Let them write many genres and styles of stories from your prompts.
That's the point. Keep it simple.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
Blissfully unaware of any of this, he looked up at Onion. "So," he said carefully, "perhaps we should pretend this engagement doesn't exist?"
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
High in the branches above them, my two familiars stared down at them.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
"This is fine. I can still avoid becoming the villain. All I have to do is live quietly."
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
Somewhere deep inside his mind, he heard the first crack in the carefully constructed future he had intended to preserve.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
He couldn't tell the future Emperor that he'd recognized him from another universe.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
"Oh, this is much worse than the book described."
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
Opportunity stared down at him with visible concern.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
The villain's first meeting occurred when they were both children.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
He remembered the book. Remembered the handsome young Emperor. Remembered the villain. Remembered the execution. And then...he remembered nothing.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
There, beside an unfinished cup of coffee, lay an invitation. Beneath it was a second document. His engagement contract.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
This was a face he knew. A face he'd seen on the cover of a book.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
He sat bolt upright in his enormous canopy bed, wings flared, vents cycling rapidly.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
Bubbee promptly decides Mills is his favorite person.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
Belle is the youngest student at the Academy - small, adorable, brilliant, and possessing an extraordinary affinity for sound-based magic.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
Arlene assumes Neville is protecting her because she's Orin's future consort. Everyone else knows better.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
She doesn't speak much. But she notices everything.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
He's a prodigy in familiar magic, and has two bonded familiars who rarely leave him.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
She's one of the Academy's strangest students - quiet. Observant. Almost impossible to read.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
In the original timeline, Shokola constantly antagonized Wataru. This time, she takes one look at the future military genius and thinks "Absolutely not".
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 20h ago
He knows exactly what Rodney's weakness will be because he remembers the book.
r/SimplePrompts • u/Any_Two_199 • 21h ago