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My 7-year-old's spelling error turned into my best campfire story yet
Last month I took my writing group on a camping retreat up near Lake Placid. I thought it would be cute to have them do a prompt exercise around the fire, each person writes a short horror scene. My youngest daughter, who is 7, wanted to join in. She wrote a story about a 'scary closit' and I jokingly read it out loud as if it was intentional. The whole group lost it. Now we have a running joke about the Closit Monster, and three people in that group have written their own versions to post here. Have any of you ever had a kid's mistake accidentally become a better prompt than anything you planned?
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haydenhayes3d ago
Honestly? I kinda disagree that the typo made it a better prompt. The Closit Monster is funny because your kid messed up a word and you all ran with it as a bit, and that is a great memory. But strip away the joke and what do you actually have? A closet. That is every haunted house story ever, and it does not give your writers much to grab onto besides the spelling gag. A real prompt has to give people something to push against, like a rule or a limit or a weird detail, not just a cute inside joke. What happens in three months when the group has heard the Closit Monster line twenty times and nobody laughs anymore? That is when you find out if it was ever a good prompt or just a good night.
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