Prompts to help overcome Writer's Block

As a writer often plagued with writer's block, I find prompts or themes can be helpful in generating story ideas. It can be something simple like a specific word, place, or person to incorporate into a story, or more complex like a quote to include.

Would a "weekly challenge," unlike the contests but based on a certain prompt, be something that interests anyone else here? Not sure how the prompts would be chosen or who would suggest them, but I thought it might be a good way to spark some more stories for submission. Do the admins feel this would interfere with the "official" challenges that you post?

I don't know about that but I do know story ideas are everywhere--in the news, in books, on TV. It's just a matter of looking at an incident you see and asking "what if"? Recently I rented the old Flash Gordon B&W serials from the '30's. I looked at them and laughed, but then I said ok, what if that culture routinely used CP, then what would this old serial look like? The result was a nineteen episode "summer blockbuster".

I think we only need to think of the picture challenges we have seen over the past years, by looking at that picture look at the stories that came out of them I agree with Rollin, stories are in our everyday lives, we just have to look at any situation as we think back on it and ask yourselves, could there be a spanking etc in there somewhere.

I find it hard to write off a particular prompt. I managed an entry in only one of the picture story contests, and that was by writing a story about changing the prompt (Janine may recall that one). I work better off the random prompts that life throws at me, which as cs has said, are all around us. Asking "what if" as suggested by Rollin, is where it often starts.

I tried to do something like this already, though not quite the same. This approach sounds promising.

I like the idea Janine. I am currently going through a phase of writers block (especially since my last story didn't do too well with reads). I found that the Winter Theme Picture 2010 actually inspired me to write 'Not in Her Wildest Dreams' which is the first time I had written anything since my school days haha! and probably one of my better stories... so yeah I thoroughly support your idea since it would help to inspire me for one.. certainly better than a size ten up the backside hehe