Imagination Always Disobeys

I just discovered "The Story Starter"!  Joel Heffner's website reads,

"The Story Starter was selected as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers in 2008, 2012 and 2014 by Writer's Digest Magazine."

Guess I'm running behind schedule. Darn watch!

"The Story Starter randomly generates 215,572,250,880 story starters. This idea generator can be used for short stories, novels, plays, scripts, or just for fun."

Click Here for a Random Story Starter Sentence

[                                           ]

Write your story starter sentence on a piece of paper or copy and paste it into your favorite word processor and start writing your story!

Please bookmark and link to this page and come back again to use The Story Starter.

Story Starters for Kids 

The Story Starter was created by Joel Heffner.
Copyright 2003-2014 Joel Heffner
All Rights Reserved. 

I enjoy playing with random word or phrase generators but if I click on the randomizer too much, the building blocks become too "Clue"-like. 

Miss Scarlet / bludgeoned / Mr Body / with / the candlestick / in / the study.

I love fiddling with prompts, looking for a meaning that the software never intended. "Intended"? Don't deny it. You know software is sentient, especially malfunctioning software.

I generated about 15 prompts and chose 10 of them to play with--not as an author in desperate need of a story idea but as a woman looking at writing prompts sideways for amusement.

"Imagination Always Disobeys." 

  -- Calvin

The soft-spoken college president struck out near the small town after the party to clear the record.

"Struck out" lends itself to misinterpretation and from there to novel story prompts. Did our college president physically strike the person who had besmirched the college's record or his own? Did he strike out to catch up with the group of people who left assuming the record really was besmirched? Maybe he struck out in baseball to ...uh... prove that the team pitcher... Hmm... 

The inebriated bowler boiled a potato in the underground cave in April for the dentist.

The image of a cartoon bowler hat reminiscent of a butler appeared before I reached "boiled". Poor Mr Potato Head! As for the rest, every year the dentist hides in the cave to escape the insidious dangers of Easter candy. I hope he brings his children.

The narrow minded author threw a feather within the skyscraper in October for the team.

Throwing a feather inside a building is pretty useless, unless it's symbolic. A white feather used to be an accusation of cowardice. October. Halloween Party. Incensed that reviewers have written disparaging critiques of his horror novels just because certain scenes terrified them, he invites them all to a party... 

The caring fingerprint expert cleaned the keyboard in the ghost town on Tuesday to find the missing horse.

A villain is holding the expert's horse hostage! He sent an edible message warning he would shave hairs from the captive's tail every hour until our fingerprint expert slips past the crime scene tape and wipes every print off the accordian. The fingerprint expert swallowed the story and is even now wiping down the keyboard clean. Only the horse realizes that ghosts have no fingerprints but he's not talking. The grazing is excellent and he scents mares. 

The jolly cat owner carved the profile in the car at dawn to eliminate the competition.
Simple! The cat owner, grand champion in the cat-car parade 3 years running,  keyed his biggest challenger's car in the shape of a dachshund.

The exhausted priest duplicated a map in the airport in July to discover the dark secret.

So Dan Brown!

The happy captain repaired the bomb in Fort Knox at noon to quiet the angry mob.

Yowza! Where to begin?
Take it as read that the angry mob stormed Fort Knox and breached security via their bomb. Now they want to use it again--maybe to get into the vault? Dumies. Good luck repairing a bomb that was blown to smithereens! About that captain... He's fooled the mob into thinking that he can repair the bomb as a delaying tactic. So far, no one is seriously hurt. If his strategem works, maybe he'll make brigadier general after all.Help is minutes away. He suppresses a smile.

The rich general cut the grass near the sunken ship during the heatwave for the team.

The Army-Navy game will be played Ocean City New Jersey this year, site of the "Sindia" wreck. It sank, full of treasure from the orient, a hundred years ago. The entire Navy team diving in search of treasure. In the meantime, the townsfolk are ready to detain anyone who succeeds and tries to keep whatever they found. The general grins to himself as he rides the mower back and forth across the Ocean City "Hurricanes' playing field.

The tired doll maker sold a green mouse in a broken elevator in January to win the contest.

The town's poster said, "Welcome to the Annual Toy Makers' Sales marathon! Be sure to pick up your sale venue for the week at Registration. This year, the Toy Maker's Marathon  begins at midnight!" That was seven days ago. One minute until midnight! Surely he would win this year as long as Melanie Mouse was motionless until the judges completed their count!

The sadistic cashier spoiled the joke near the movie theater when the grandmother arrived to quiet the angry mob.
The grandmother smiled to herself as she slipped out of her cinema and drove home . Win-win. There was no joke. Why bother devising one? Her viscious daughter-in-law didn't know how to deliver a simple joke, to save her job! Humor was beyond her.
The disgruntled patrons--already fired up about her ticket increase--would certainly plunder the snack bar. Popcorn sticking to the lobby floor. Jessica screeching her usual threats at the patrons Police arriving in the midst of the pandemonium. Finally, a believable excuse to fire her!

 ~~~~~

I have more fun playing with writing prompts than I do writing stories based on them. Playing is always more fun than work. But people like Joel Heffner don't spend hours programing and phrase-creating(?) just for the fun of it.

(Maybe Joel does. Joel, in his home office at 3AM, his chuckles setting the dog barking, awakening his wife... )

Try it yourself! Generate some prompts of your own and misinterpret their meaning, or use random fragments of the ones above. I promise--the prompt fragments won't cry. They may giggle and get your cat or your husband barking.

~~~~~

Prompts have given me ideas for two stories, "The Pumpkin Smasher" and "No Substitutions".   Both will be in my Tree House Tales anthology, out later this year.