Story Jammin': Never-Ending Story Prompt in Under 60 Seconds

"If You're Bored, Then You're Boring"

I paused in the production of my upcoming (and super-affordable 😏) workbook -- which, you can rest assured, I'll tell you all about soon -- to try to think of how I'm going to help you make this week's writing easier and more fun, and I came up with a wacky idea: What if you never needed to waste time staring at a black page, wondering what to write about again?

I've told you about my Vague Idea To Actionable Concept before…

To quickly recap, it's four targeted questions I answer (in no particular order) to help me turn whatever wild-ass notion has sparked my desire to create into a loose structure with some specific goal posts that ensure the rest of my creative efforts, moving forward, are most likely to yield a story I'm not embarrassed to show someone else.

• Who is my protagonist?

• What is the audience expecting?

• What’s my big Climax?

• What’s the “Secret Takeaway”?

However, I created the "Vague Idea" tool to help me guide whatever idea I already had. "I want to write an adventure story that takes place in the afterlife." "I want to write a supernatural adventure story about an underground city." "I want to write about a video editor with a crush."

But what if I could use the tool as a J.A.R.V.I.S prompt?!

If you've begun playing with AI yourself, or even reading about it, you're bound to be coming to the realization that the quality of the AI prompt determines the efficacy of the information J.A.R.V.I.S provides you.

Ask JARVIS to "explode the Iron Man suit Mark VII," and the suit goes boom and wrecks part of your lab. Ask J.A.R.V.I.S to "explode the holographic schematic of the Iron Man suit Mark VII" and all the holographic parts separate from each other, allowing you to analyze each individual piece of the suit and how they are connected to each other.

Precision counts.

So I consulted with J.A.R.V.I.S (in my case, I prefer Grok (grok.com)) and below is the prompt tailored to provide you with a workable story in under a minute...

“Generate a concise story concept based on a vague idea. Include:

• A vivid, unique protagonist described in 2-3 adjectives and a role (e.g., ‘gritty space chef’).

• The genre and tone the story should evoke (e.g., ‘tense sci-fi horror’).

• A climactic moment described as a single, evocative image or phrase (e.g., ‘facing the mutant queen in a glowing cave’).

• A ‘secret takeaway’ that gives the story emotional or thematic depth (e.g., ‘the creatures are humanity’s forgotten children’).

Keep the output short, playful, and open-ended, avoiding overly specific plot details. Format as: Protagonist / Genre & Tone / Climax / Secret Takeaway.”

Copy and paste this prompt (without the beginning and ending quotation marks — though it may not matter if you included them, really) into the question field of any free AI and see what you get! 😃🥳

Two that pleasantly surprised me were:

• Rebellious teenage hacker / Neon-soaked cyberpunk thriller / Cracking a glowing data vault under flickering city lights / Freedom comes with a digital price.

• Haunted interstellar smuggler / Gritty space noir / Slipping a glowing artifact past a patrol ship's scan / Trust is a rarer currency than stardust.

I could write these!

I could enjoy writing these!

But what if J.A.R.V.I.S doesn't feed you something you can use? Or, maybe, something that kind of sparks your imagination, but just doesn't really feel like you?

Tweak it! What part don't you like? There are 4 significant variables to this equation:

• Protagonist

• Genre & Tone

• Climax

• Secret Takeaway

Keep the one that inspires you and fix the rest! This is your story laboratory; you are the engineering genius in here!

Me? I'm not so much a Noir guy, so my haunted interstellar smuggler is going to be piloting a thrilling Action story! 😎🚀

But Wait, There's MORE...

As I was doing the research for what I just wrote, I started getting some playful ideas. 🤔🤪

What if I brought the Flunky dice into it?

You remember my Flunky dice, right?

Each 6-sided die has either a "+", "-", or is blank. Rolling four of them gives you a possible outcome of a +4 to -4 result, including a "0" result if all four dice land with the blank sides up.

So let's say I generated the following story prompt:

Quirky time-weaving bard / Whimsical fantasy adventure / Strumming a lute that unravels reality itself / Our flaws are the threads that bind the universe’s tapestry.

Okay, that whole thing's a mess.

But I can't figure out which knot to untangle first, so I whip out my trusty Flunky dice and roll:

• +4/-4 = Protagonist

• +3/-3 = Genre & Tone

• +2/-2 = Climax

• +1/-1 = Secret Takeaway

• 0 = Re-roll, or Start writing as-is

I roll "+", "+", "-", and "0". That's a result of "+1". "Secret Takeaway".

So I ask J.A.R.V.I.S to provide me with a new "Secret Takeaway":

Even broken melodies can heal a fractured world.

Ooh! 😮 I'm intrigued!

So, if I'm just writing for the fun of it, I might be able to create a Whimsical Fantasy Adventure wherin a quirky, time-weaving bard (Rigionald Guffinberry, but he invites people to call him "Guffins") exists in a plane of physical reality that is beyond the light ranges we can see, the sound ranges we can hear, and his atoms vibrate at a frequency that doesn't (normally) interract with our own physicality.

Guffins finds a part of his world missing, just gone, replaced by a pulsing lightning bolt that appears to be frozen in place. After a few days of investigation, he deduces that he can step through the "frozen lightning bolt," and he finds himself in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The landscape is similar to the landscape he knows, but there are structures and buildings that look otherworldly to him, and a vast population that appears very different to the people he's used to seeing every day.

His adventure will eventually lead him to find Kitharion — a lute that unravels reality itself — and play it.

And I suspect that his contact in our plane of existence will be a broken person whom Guffins comes to empathize with, and who will demonstrate to the usually cheerful bard that "even broken melodies can heal a fractured world".

I am not writing that story, though. 🤣😂🤣

But the point is, look how much of a story I just now generated from a completely random story prompt! 🥳

Honestly, if I was looking for something to write and I received that prompt, I would either try again, or I would go element-by-element and figure out what I don't like about the suggestion, and then alter it to a Protagonist, Genre & Tone, Climax, and "Secret Takeaway" that I do feel like writing about.

And I might ask J.A.R.V.I.S some questions, as they pop into my head, to help me replace each element.

The key, though, is that I would not be staring at a blank page, wondering what to write about. 😉

Please play with the prompt and share the oddest, or coolest, concept you come up with!

And also, please share this around. Let’s invite as many people as we can to the party! Writing is a lonely gig, but it doesn’t have to be.

Most importantly, though, may you have a fun and inspiring week!!!