As Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates: it can get dark and it might get nuts, but it’s usually pretty sweet.”

Okay, fine. What he actually said was: “you never know what you’re going to get” meaning there’s a lot of randomness to life.

In writing, there is less randomness than in real life since unlike real life, fiction should make sense. However, sometimes it’s fun as a writing exercise to start from a random point. That is why random story prompt generators can be fun.

As I’ve mentioned in the past here, one thing I do sometimes to get story ideas is to use a random image generator. This is good since it makes you go outside your normal thought pathways. Another thing I do is use a random word generator (like this one) to come up with concepts that I can put into the story. That’s what I want you to try this week.

Story Prompt: February 3, 2025

Write a story from three random words

For example, I just asked for three words from the random word generator and got men, cook, cent. Think of how these words could intersect. Maybe men working in a restaurant who slip coins into their food or maybe they get a penny back as tip and it has a cry for help scratched into it. The possibilities are endless.

I want to give a special shout out to Violet Lentz and her story Cruel Culture and Nancy the Sicilian Storyteller with her story Of All the Days! which were responses to last week’s Muse on Monday prompt. Come back on Friday to read my story for that prompt.

If you want to join the fun, send me a link to your story on your own site, either in the comments or at info@greenwalledtreehouse.com. You can also submit your story here for a chance to have it published on the site next week.

I hope this week goes well. You got this!