Stuck on a writing prompt for 2 hours at a diner in Flagstaff

I was sitting at this greasy spoon off I-40 last month, trying to force a prompt about a haunted vending machine. Nothing was clicking. Then I watched the waitress refill ketchup bottles from a giant plastic jug, and it hit me - the horror is in the mundane stuff we all see every day. I started writing about the bottles being filled with something that wasn't ketchup, and the story took off from there. Has anyone else had a random observation like that totally save a dead prompt?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ben11d ago

Honestly, that bit about the ketchup bottles really got me thinking. I was at a laundromat once and watched a guy refill the soap dispenser from a milk jug, and now I can't use public soap without wondering what's actually in there. Never thought about the mundane stuff being creepy until you spelled it out like that.

kevin_murray8811d ago

Gonna push back a little here, @the_ben. That ketchup bottle thing worked for you, but I've tried that trick before and it just feels cheap. Like, oh look, the soap is actually floor wax, spooky. Not everything mundane needs to be sinister. Sometimes a ketchup bottle is just a ketchup bottle. How do you know when an ordinary detail is actually worth turning into horror, or when it's just a boring observation?