Found a prompt book from 1987 at a thrift shop last weekend

I was digging through a box of old books at a Goodwill in Portland and found this beat up copy of 'The Writer's Portable Mentor' from 1987. It's got weird prompts like 'write a scene where a character discovers a secret room in their house' but the examples are all typed on actual typewriters lol. The best one so far is about a guy who finds a cassette tape in a library book. Has anyone else found super old writing resources that gave you weird ideas?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby_sanchez4528d ago

Oh man, that is such a great find! I picked up a 1985 copy of 'The Writer's Handbook' at a garage sale a couple years ago and it had a whole section on writing for radio dramas. I actually wrote a weird little story about a late night DJ who starts getting calls from someone who died in the 70s after reading one of the sample scripts. The typewriter thing is so cool too, it makes those old prompts feel extra genuine like someone actually sat down and hammered them out. My book had handwritten notes in the margins from the original owner and some of their ideas were way stranger than anything in the actual prompts. There's something about finding those old writing guides that just hits different, like you're getting a peek into how people thought about creativity before the internet took over.

paul_webb4528d ago

Did you ever try writing something based on one of those handwritten margin notes? I bet those were way weirder than anything you'd find in a book today.