DAE get stuck on a prompt for 3 weeks because the character's job didn't fit the story

Andrew Robinson · 2026-09-11T11:30:04.842827+00:00

So I had this prompt about a night janitor who finds a note in a locker, and I could not get past page two for almost a month. The problem was I kept giving him a backstory as a failed musician, and it just would not click with the quiet, empty building vibe I wanted. I finally sat down at a diner in Akron on a Tuesday and just wrote down his actual tasks for one shift: mopping 14 rooms, checking 6 doors, taking out 3 bags of trash. Once the story was built around those plain actions instead of his old dreams, the whole thing came out in about 90 minutes. It felt dumb that the fix was that simple. Has anyone else had a prompt stall out because one job detail was wrong the whole time?

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DAE get stuck on a prompt for 3 weeks because the character's job didn't fit the story | Creative Writing Prompts - Guest Forum