Anyone interested in a January writer's sketchbook?

[resonant]

I've been enjoying the December Daily, and trying to think of something to do for January. I started thinking about the possibility of the equivalent of a sketchbook for writers, and one of the ideas I had was that you could have one column of prompts and one column of styles, and randomly choose one of each.

I couldn't think of any prompts, but I came up with a whole mess o' styles:

P.G. Wodehouse
Jane Austen
a trite YA dystopia
the Official Policies and Procedures
a Lush catalog
a wine-tasting expert
an old-fashioned bodice-ripper
a Novel By a Man
a literary novel
a perfume expert
a high-end menu
a diner menu
an article in Martha Stewart Living
a sci-fi raygun shoot-em-up
a diet book
Charles Dickens
a Leonard Cohen song
the annual report of a failing tech startup
a spam email
your ex-boyfriend when he's tipsy and nostalgic
a department-store makeup specialist
an advice columnist

Would anyone else be interested in trying to do something like this? Does anyone have any ideas about how to make this better?

Comments

[resonant]

Brilliant! Like Column A for content and Column B for style.

How do people do those Your Stripper Name generators? That’s what we’d need to generate the combinations.

[mific]

Okay - so I think I found a way to do this using that pre-programmed team generator thing. It randomizes the entire list in fact. But - even more prompts as a result, so not a bad thing!

I made up a bunch of prompts based on ordinary activities/tropes/kinks - they can of course be edited freely. Fills could be written in a fandom or as original fic.

Here's the link - let me know if it works for you. Anyone with the link should be able to access and download/open it - http://www.mediafire.com/file/ba3ayvchyicsup8/Style-trope_writing_prompt_generator.xlsm/file

How you use it: (has to be on a pc I think. Am unsure if it'd work on a mac)
a) download/open the excel file (it's possible but much more difficult to use it online e.g. as a google spreadsheet - the randomizer arrow-button doesn't work online)
b) check the list and see if any combinations appeal.
b) if not or you want to play, click the randomizer arrow.
c) if there's still nothing that works, just keep clicking it and checking the list.

See what you think!

[mific]

Oh - after downloading when the file opens in excel, you have to dismiss the warning about it being a download, and then click to "enable content". The randomiser won't work otherwise.

[resonant]

Wow, thanks so much! This is terrific!

I have a Mac with Numbers, no Excel -- so I can open it, but I can't use the randomizer button, but I can use the old-fashioned method of closing my eyes and poking the page.

[mific]

Old ways are often simplest. Not all the combos work, but I've already been bunnied by one or two. :)