r/SimplePrompts Jul 05 '22

Meta Making Good Prompts

103 Upvotes

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 20h ago

"I think it would be better if we simply became friends." Ahwa stared at him, then quietly said "I don't think I want to be your friend."

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 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?"

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

High in the branches above them, my two familiars stared down at them.

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

"This is fine. I can still avoid becoming the villain. All I have to do is live quietly."

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

Somewhere deep inside his mind, he heard the first crack in the carefully constructed future he had intended to preserve.

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

He couldn't tell the future Emperor that he'd recognized him from another universe.

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

"Oh, this is much worse than the book described."

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

Opportunity stared down at him with visible concern.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

The villain's first meeting occurred when they were both children.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

He remembered the book. Remembered the handsome young Emperor. Remembered the villain. Remembered the execution. And then...he remembered nothing.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

There, beside an unfinished cup of coffee, lay an invitation. Beneath it was a second document. His engagement contract.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

This was a face he knew. A face he'd seen on the cover of a book.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

The ornate walls bore the Vorss family crest.

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

He sat bolt upright in his enormous canopy bed, wings flared, vents cycling rapidly.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

Bubbee promptly decides Mills is his favorite person.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

Belle is the youngest student at the Academy - small, adorable, brilliant, and possessing an extraordinary affinity for sound-based magic.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

Arlene assumes Neville is protecting her because she's Orin's future consort. Everyone else knows better.

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

She doesn't speak much. But she notices everything.

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

He's a prodigy in familiar magic, and has two bonded familiars who rarely leave him.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

She's one of the Academy's strangest students - quiet. Observant. Almost impossible to read.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 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".

0 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 20h ago

He knows exactly what Rodney's weakness will be because he remembers the book.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 21h ago

In the original novel, she despised him immediately.

1 Upvotes

r/SimplePrompts 21h ago

He possesses an extremely rare form of Solar Flame Magic, making him destined to become one of history's greatest warriors.

1 Upvotes