For our Prompted Stories pop-up we provide writers with a group of prompts which should inform the setting/ situation in which their story takes place; a character who should feature; and an object/ occurrence which also must be involved/incorporated. There are 35 of each in the generator so lots of possible combinations.

Using some examples (none of which are inside the story-prompt generator for fairness), let’s see how we can use what we’re given to create a story idea. Perhaps in a genre you love to write or something new you want to try. This sub call is about creation and imagination and, like Trash Cat Lit themselves, finding stories in weird places.

1. Setting/ Situation

In this category, you may end up with a location, an event or even a time period. Our examples for this are:

• An Abandoned Church
• A Party
• A European City Break

When you get your setting prompt, it might be helpful to word splurge the things that come to mind. If you have a preferred genre, look at the setting with that in mind. Alternatively, see if a genre emerges as you add in more prompts or jot down quick ideas. Also, ask questions of the prompt, see if that helps you find the story just from that setting. All of this might just percolate in your mind as you shower, drive, go for a walk or (as is Trash Cat’s case) when you climb into bed to sleep!

Abandoned Church
Why is it abandoned? Is it an old church lost to time or a newer church closed due to scandal? Why is your character there? Did they stumble across it on an off-track walk? Are they looking to buy and restore it? Does it hold memories – or nightmares? Is it truly abandoned?
Think about the season, the look of the building, use all the senses.

Quick Ideas:

Kids hang out in an old church that is giving up to nature. They freak out the locals by painting pentagrams and leaving black candles – that way the church stays theirs. A place where they all feel safe, removed from their different troubled lives.

A couple buy a church with a view to restoration. The locals have all sorts of tales to tell about the place, but the couple want a unique home with the woodland as their garden. Unfortunately for them, someone already lives in the church and they’re not about to give it up to city folks with magazine-shiny ideas of country living.


A Party
What is the nature of this event? Birthdays, gender reveals, work do’s, a child’s tea party for bears? Who are the guests? Are they all welcome? Who is your MC at this party? Is it fancy dress, a casual BBQ in the garden or a big, glitzy celebration on a boat.
Think about the where and when, secrets and lies, gossip and what hides under all the sequins.

Quick Ideas:

A birthday party includes a strange form of entertainment – a medium who only channels demons, a creepy clown whose balloon animals come to life, dancers whose blurring feet and swirling skirts hypnotise and lure.

An older couple are forced to celebrate a gemstone wedding anniversary by their barely-care children, despite both of them having affairs and contemplating divorce.

A workplace Christmas party, already charged with tension and secrets aching to be told, is rudely interrupted by a catastrophic event: mass food poisoning, a natural disaster, vicious mutant elves on a rampage.

A European City Break
Which city? What is the reason for the break? Will the city provide a backdrop or be an influencing factor? Is this an old city with hidden, dark places or a bustling metropolis you invented and named? Will the weather impact the story? Is your MC alone in their travels or is this a romantic getaway?
Think about when you set your story – the past, present or future – and how the city might be a character itself.

Quick Ideas:

A family struggling to reconnect after a tragedy head to London for a touristy break. Hoping that making memories surrounded by another country’s history will overwrite their own. The weather has other ideas, drives them indoors for long days where they’re forced to confront their individual feelings.

In a dystopian Europe, a straggly family made of survivors make a dangerous trip across a polluted sea. One of their own travelled earlier in the year, looking for a new home in warmer climes: they never came back.

A man plans a cheesy, cliched romantic break in Paris for his partner. Champagne, rose petals on cotton sheets, a ring hidden among rolled socks in a suitcase. Something is stirring under Paris’ ancient streets. Smashing through the catacombs, scattering skulls. It’s anything but cliché.

That’s it for Settings/ Situations. We hope these word spurges and quick ideas inspire you with your own prompts and show that you can take something that has a seemingly obvious story to it, and make it unexpected. Whatever genre you fancy, you can work the prompts to your needs. Obviously these initial ideas will be challenged by the further two prompts and that is what will make your story unique.
Next time we’ll discuss the second prompt – CHARACTER

2. Character

In this category, your character may be defined by a job title, a personality trait/quirk or may well be non-human. The character does not have to be your MC or narrator but should ideally have more than a brief appearance in the story. Our examples for this are:

• A Taxi Driver
• A Nosy Neighbour
• A Dog

As we did with Setting, we can start with a word splurge of all the things that come to mind when we think of this character. Remember, if you have a preferred genre, keep that in mind.
We’re going to build on the Setting prompts from earlier, just as will be required when we launch subs. With character we may want to start with determining their age, gender, appearance (if that is relevant, it may well not be).

A Taxi Driver
What does this individual drive: a cab, a shuttle bus, a water taxi, a tuk-tuk? Do they work days or nights? How does this affect their personality? What skills might their job have given them that they utilise in other settings? – taxi drivers know their patch, can navigate with ease and speed if needed.

Sticking with the Setting prompt examples, consider why this character is present there. Are they in this story doing their job or something else entirely? Our Quick Ideas will demonstrate how you might comingle the Setting and Character prompts.

Quick Ideas:

A city cabbie overhears a conversation between his fare and someone on the phone. The fare – a dark suited man with a scarred face – then asks the driver to take him to a new destination: a recently abandoned church believed to have been used by a secretive cult. The cabbie is ordinarily a keep-to-himself guy, but in this situation, he’ll have to get involved to stop something catastrophic from happening.

In South Florida, a small corporate party aboard a water taxi comes to a screaming close when one of the guests is found murdered below deck. Expecting the skipper to head immediately to shore, the guests are further horrified when the boat continues out to sea. This skipper has a complicated past and isn’t prepared for law enforcement to be digging it up. He’d do almost anything to prevent that – does that include murder?

On a city break to celebrate graduating university, two friends find themselves in a taxi driven by a woman with unusual eyes and startling neck tattoos. It’s night, the city is sparkling and full of possibilities. The friends ask the woman to take them somewhere off-track, not usually used by tourists. Be careful what you wish for…will the woman be as dark and strange as their destination, or the one who helps them survive?

A Nosy Neighbour
We all know one, we may be one, so how can we embed them into our story. What will their nosy nature add? Will it be a benefit to the story/ other characters, or an annoyance? Nosy neighbours often witness stuff the rest of us miss as we are engrossed in our TVs or phones. They may keep notes. They may have intrusive cameras or just twitch the odd net curtain.

Ok, let’s try them in the settings and see where it goes.

Quick Ideas:

Living across the street from the old church has never bothered Gladys. She considers herself the building’s protector: calling the police on miscreants and bothersome youths, calling the council when litter builds up or the weeds need dealing with. She observes all from her living room chair. When she sees lights coming from the church windows late one night, she reaches for her phone, only to find the line dead.

The new couple next door are having a party in their garden; a grotesque sea of grey slabs and bleached decking that makes Morty want to add more flowers to his own by way of balance. The couple are gregarious and have a lot of friends. Morty lives alone. Avoids people. It’s best that way. The noise though, the screeching, drunken noise intruding on his home, it’s getting to him. That’s never good.

Even though they’re hundreds of miles from their Scottish cottage, supposedly focussing on their dwindling relationship in a bright city, Angus is left reading a book while his wife obsesses over the people across the courtyard. She’s a master curtain-twitcher at home, all the village residents complain about it, but as the day wears on, Angus realises Leslie may be onto something with the strange behaviour of the people staying in No. 12.

A Dog
Now we’re talking! Who doesn’t love a dog in a story? What breed is this pupper? Are they someone’s beloved pet or a scruffy stray. What will they bring to other characters you have: fear, allergy, emotional support, survival? Consider an animal POV, that can be fun.

Now let’s drop this dog into the settings and see what he brings to the story.

Quick Ideas:

The boy feels like he doesn’t belong. Not in his head, not in his home. His parents are sick of him, leave him to his own devices. He finds a strange comfort in the mouldy walls of a really old church. Reads his books there among the detritus. One day he’s joined by another that doesn’t belong anywhere. A fight-scarred dog that’s hidden behind aggression because softness always led to pain. In the leaf-littered hollows of the abandoned building, two rejected souls find strength and hope in each other.

Bill takes his new dog – apparently a failed police K9 – to a garden tea party at his ex-wife’s new home. Nobody is impressed by the arrival of the big mutt and its interest in all the fancy food. Bill’s ex, Jen is considering asking him to leave, despite how much she wants him to be envious of her new life. Then the dog races to the bottom of the garden, dragging Bill like a rag-toy. Everyone laughs, phones are out snapping photos. Things change pretty quickly when the dog (turns out it trained as a cadaver dog) finds something decomposing in the trees.

On a hastily planned break to Barcelona to escape her failing relationship, Anna finds her Airbnb in a grubby part of the city. She’s pickpocketed the first evening she heads out for dinner. Miserable, Anna is drawn to a cheeky street dog, begging for food with the cutest smile and tricks. Fancying herself as a pet rescuer, already seeing the Insta posts she can create, Anna brings the dog back to her Airbnb. She baths him, feeds him and encourages him onto her bed where he snuggles in. Anna records every moment. In the morning, she wakes to find a man in her bed; he greets her with a familiar, cute smile. Seems she hasn’t rescued a dog at all…

And that’s us done with Character. Again, we hope this inspires you with your own prompts, which may be very different.
Things are going to be challenged further by the addition of the final prompt. Can you fit it into your story idea with ease, or is it going to change everything?
The last prompt we’ll look at is – OBJECT/ OCCURRENCE

3. Object/ Occurrence

For this part of the prompt selection, you could receive a basic object, an organic item or even a thing that can happen to people. This object/occurrence needs to be incorporated into your story and, as with the character, we’d like to see it imaginatively used rather than simply mentioned and dismissed.
Our examples to work with are:

• A Map
• A Rash
• A Bouquet of Flowers

As before, we can start word splurging ideas that come to mind regarding this object/ occurrence. If you have established a genre by now, focus on that. We need to remember the Setting and Character prompts we’ve been using, continue building the story. This final prompt may bring everything together or be a challenge to incorporate. You could also use this as a metaphor, which opens up all sorts of story directions. This is where you can really stretch your creativity and imagination, steer away from what is obvious, make something that only you could make.

A Map
What does the map depict: a town, a country, a world? A cemetery? The stars? Is it paper or digital, ancient or new, handwritten, full of riddles, revealed by a chemical treatment? Does it lead to treasure or a dark secret, or both? How did your character come by the map? Why do they need it? Where is it going to take them?
Some different maps: map of the human body or brain, a map covered in pushpins marking something, a digital map showing the progress of something (war, disease, climate disaster)

Now we’ll cram this map into story ideas using previous Setting and Character.

Quick Ideas:

Space Cab driver, Roz, down on her luck and with her shuttle needing more and more repairs, agrees to transport a mysterious trio to a desolate planet called Church. Nobody else will take this trip, the planet was abandoned after it was devastated by disease and is now host only to mutated things that have no name. When Roz comes across a map in one of the trio’s belongings, she understands why they would risk travelling to Church. Treasure. The kind she could really use.

To summon the creatures of the Afterworld, you need a map, a key and a heralding of the end of days. Shylo had the map tattooed on his skull when he was an infant, has long hidden it beneath hair. When he sees the first omen – a catastrophic flood that breaks his city in two, trapping his apartment block and four residents in a raging, cold sea – Shylo knows he must make the call. Across the hall, Nyna watches Shylo shave his head. She’s always watched. She secreted cameras through the boy’s apartment when she stole the key. She survived the last summoning for a reason.

In the small, weird town of Lupine, Emily is looking for things to do after her car breaks down and she finds herself stuck for three days. In a tea shop she sees a map on the wall, it’s a walking tour of all the cutest dogs in the city that ends in a party. Perfectly weird. Tempting photos of goofy retrievers and chunky curly dogs adorn the map. Emily buys a ticket from the waitress who has the most dazzling teeth. That night, on streets barely illuminated, Emily and five others join their tour guide – Wulfric, an eccentric man in a fur coat – who promises them a night to remember.

A Rash
Where has this come from: plants, insects, a stranger’s perfume, a mysterious man you fell against when a subway train banked hard? Is the rash obvious, gross, suppurating, itchy? Where is it located? Is it on one character or spreading? Is it a mere nuisance or the start of something deadly?
Some different rashes: a rash of strange occurrences in a small town, a rash on plant life that threatens a global starvation

OK, let’s see what this rash will bring to a story using Setting and Character prompts.

Quick Ideas:

Brian’s dog, June has a thing for creepy places. She drags him off the well-used paths all the time. One late afternoon, June vanishes into woodland shadow, Brian racing after her. When he finds her, it’s inside the almost-ruins of a tiny old church. She’s sitting next to a man that looks like dropped rags. Homeless, Brian thinks, but then notes he’s wearing a filthy lab coat. As Brian reaches for his phone, the man grabs his wrist, says something like tell them to burn me before he dies noisily. The police come quick. Brian’s wrist itches and reddens. By morning, a rash will have spread up his arm.

Miriam believes she knows everything about everyone in the cul-de-sac. Jim with his young male visitors. Sandra and Colin hiding bankruptcy behind their shiny new car. Beverly, all flapping eyelashes and plunging necklines, whose fiancée has no clue she’s messing around. The gardener, Miriam thinks. Maybe the older man “teaching her piano”. Miriam’s husband, Clive doesn’t want to go to Beverley’s party, he has a terrible “water infection” he says, but won’t stop scratching for some odd reason, but Miriam can’t wait. She’s sure secrets are about to come out.

Since he retired after a beating that almost killed him, Doug won’t drive anymore. He’s become an expert on all the bus stops in the city, how to get home safe after dark. He’s become an expert on crime patterns, the expanding rash of violence on streets he knows better than anyone. He wants to stop it. He wants to be the cure. On the No. 67 bus, late at night, he sees a group of nasty lads head towards two panicked tourists – young women, lost in a strange place. These lads are the pustules, the suppurating sores on the back of the city. Doug reaches for his knuckle-dusters: he’s become an expert on so many things.

A Bouquet of Flowers
Who has sent them and who received them? For what occasion? Are they gratefully received or do they cause anxiety, fear, disgust? What flowers are they? – that can send a message in itself. Is there an accompanying card? Are they cheap, service station forecourt artificially-dyed carnations or expensive, long-stemmed scented roses? A handful of wild-flowers? Silk or plastic?
Some different bouquets: use the ‘life cycle’ of a bouquet as a metaphor for the decline of a person’s mental health or a relationship dying, incorporate embroidered or painted bouquets.

Now let’s pop these florals into ideas utilising earlier Setting and Character.

Quick Ideas:

Roy watches the same car pull up outside the church. The same woman in the same red coat gets out. Every week like clockwork for just over a month. The church is boarded up, door chained shut. Some terrible stuff happened there, people say, before Roy’s time on the street. The woman stoops to lay a bouquet of lilies on the same patch of weedy soil; the other bouquets in various states of rot and ruin. Roy shakes his head, what a waste. Then something happens that isn’t the same. The woman kneels on the ground next to all the funeral flowers, starts clawing at the soil. Roy sees filthy hands emerge from the ground, grab the woman’s arms. Then she starts to pull someone, no something from the soil.

He drives a pink limo. The interior is gold faux-leather and white gloss. Tacky AF he thinks, but it pays well and jobs aren’t that easy to find for his type. Tonight, he’s transporting some wannabe pop-star and her “girls” around the city. Limo Party, who thought that shit up. The noise is insane. Champagne is spilling. He starts to get a headache. One of the guests seems so out of place. Their eyes keep meeting in the rearview mirror. Eventually she climbs over and into the passenger seat. When she shows him her pendant – a spray of thorned roses in antique silver – he smiles. His is hidden under his shirt. If she’s here, this party is about to get even more messy and he honestly can’t wait.

Jed buys Julia flowers every week. A mid-price bouquet he has sent to her home, sometimes her work so her colleagues will be jealous. He shows her how fun he is by choosing sunflowers, how sweet he is by choosing freesias, how sexy he is by choosing dark dahlias. He goes with her when she leaves town, flies to a cold, dank city. Only one flower shop near his hotel; he chooses roses. It’s time. Time to make it official. Whether she likes it or not.

Mike’s sister is scared; she travelled all these miles, all the way back home. She knew the man would follow. She banked on it. Mike has two wolf-dogs who love their Auntie Julia. They fucking hate flowers and they’re pretty hungry.

And that’s Object/Occurrence done too. In fact, that’s all the prompts dealt with in different ways.

If you’re feeling inspired, you could write using any of the Quick Ideas above ,or try some idea percolation and word splurging using a random selection of prompts.
Pluck a setting from a TV show you’ve recently watched, a piece of art, or a book you read.
Add a character – someone you passed on the street, or scroll through a list of job ads, or maybe an animal or non-human entity. Then chuck in an object/occurrence: Google a picture of a charity shop window and pick an item, pluck a disease or ailment from the NHS website, choose something in the room with you.

If you can, come along to a writealong where your prompts will be delivered to you and after 24hr of percolation and splurging, you’ll use them to create a draft in an online meeting with Trash Cat and other writers.

Prompts don’t have to be overwhelming or terrifying or meh.
You can change that with your imagination and creativity.
You can make them work for you.
You can make the story.