That 500-word prompt that turned into a 40-page mess

I tried one of those "write a scene where a character lies about their past" prompts last Tuesday and accidentally built a whole town backstory around it. By Thursday I had 40 pages of notes about a fictional bakery in Portland and zero actual scenes. Learned that my brain goes way bigger than the prompt asks, so now I set a timer for 20 minutes before I let myself outline. Anyone else got a prompt that spiraled into a full worldbuilding project?

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ross.felix10d ago

...and that's exactly what I read about in some writing blog last month. They called it "prompt inflation" where the brain sees a tiny seed and just keeps planting. I did the same thing with a simple "two strangers meet at a bus stop" thing, ended up with a whole transit system, a city budget, and a map of every diner on the route. Timer's a good call though, I started using a sticky note with the original prompt on it and I tape it to my monitor so I can't drift too far.