Prompt Example from "I Shall Wear Midnight" by Terry Pratchett

Let's look at an example of the sorts of prompts you might generate from a book! I have chosen "I Shall Wear Midnight"  by (GNU) Terry Pratchett, the fourth Discworld book about the young witch, Tiffany Aching, and the Nac Mac Feegles. 

Journal Jump Number and Setup

The version of the book I have, has 339 pages, which gives it a Journal Jump Number of 7. I.e. every time I jump
forward a number of pages between journal prompts, it will be 7 pages. (For a shorter experience, I could use a JJN of 9, or even 13!)

With a JJN of 7 and a book length of 339, I could have at most 48 journal entries. In reality, due to having to avoid Hazards by skipping pages, it is more likely to be in the 35 range.

At this point, I would write out The Message in my journal - choosing a genre (like urban fantasy) and setting (maybe the Discworld for some fan fiction?) and a character.

The Introduction

Now we generate our first prompts! We shall be generating: a Place to start, a Person as the Enemy, a Secret to uncover, and an Object that is pivotal.

Generating the Place

We turn to page 7 (our Journal Jump Number) but... what's this? The book hasn't really started and this is just the title page. That's ok - we will turn pages until we find a useful page - page 9, the first page of prose.

To generate a Place, we close our eyes and pick a random word with a finger. If it is 4 or fewer letters, we pick again, but we get the word "Sound" which has 5 letters. We then skip ahead that many letters (5) and write down the next word. We repeat this until we have 6 words.

My list is: sound, of, around, by, and, it.

For the Person prompt, I can rearrange these words however I please. Maybe you'd arrange them differently, but I like "Sound of it, around and by."

Place Prompt: "Sound of it, around and by."

What could this mean? It sounds (ha) like a place where there is sound all around - it could be a theatre where an orchestra plays, it could be a clearing in a forest where three waterfalls cascade around us, or it could be a well where shouting into it causes echoes to reverberate all around the area. I like the idea of a well, especially if it's a magical one that will do unnerving, unnatural, unexpected things to the echoes.

We skip ahead 7 pages (the JJN) from page 9, where we started, and get to page 16.

Generating the Person

To generate a Person, we look for words of speech on the page, and take the first three. However, there are no words of dialogue or speech on this page, but again, this is not an issue. We keep turning pages until we find some - and we do on page 18. "Excuse me miss".

We need two more sets of three (skipping 2 pages between them) and we get, in total: "Excuse me miss" "Well miss I" and "Oh no Horace".

Place Prompt: "Excuse me miss well miss I oh no Horace."

It would be pretty straightforward to say our person (the Enemy) name is Horace, and maybe it is! Alternatively, maybe these words (garbled though they are) are spoken by our Enemy and Horace has dismayed them. A frustrated ghost trying to get your attention? Or maybe we've got it all wrong, and there's a terrifying cadre of schoolteachers and nannies who go by the fake name "Miss Well" and Horace is their next victim?

Let's skip ahead 7 more pages (to page 23) for our Secret.

Generating a Secret

To generate a Secret prompt, we find the last three words of the first full sentence on page 23, and the last three words of the LAST full sentence on page 23.

We get: into her bag to be done

Secret prompts can also be rearranged. Maybe we go with "Done into her. Bag-to-be." or maybe "Bag to her: done. Be into" What Secret could this mean? Maybe there's someone skinning women and turning them into bags! Maybe a group of ladies are running a complex smuggling ring using bags (and they went into tunnel B(e)?)

Secret Prompt: "Bag to her: done. Into B."

I'm going with the smuggling option - the skinning people for accessories isn't in line with my tone!

Let's skip ahead 7 more pages and see what Object we get on page 30.

Generating an Object

This is one of my favorites - to generate an Object, we take the first and last common noun on the page. In this case, that's "lanes" and "head" respectively. Then we use the template "The X of the Y" so we have:

Object Prompt: "The Lanes of the Head"

Ooooh. What manner of Object would be described as the Lanes of the Head? A form of 'Mind Palace' that is somehow manifest? Is it something to do with the actual wrinkles of the brain? Or the wrinkles on a face? I'm going to go with that last one - I've decided that Horace (oh no) is a child born looking old and wrinkled - and the wrinkles on his face are actually a map to the magical tunnels that the secret society of Miss Well schoolteachers are using for their smuggling operation.  No-one has fully mapped the tunnels as they are enchanted, so Horace's face is tragically an incredibly important source of information.

I didn't want to go with skinning people, but here we are again. Maybe I can keep it a bit lighter as I go, but there's a magnetism here!

Let's see what Hazard we have already discovered and skip ahead 7 pages to page 37.

Choosing a Hazard

Of the four Hazards, I feel like generating a new Person that will threaten our character. This Person is most likely to crop up in several of our future journal entries, so I'm hoping for a good one! The Hazard type, then is "A Person is Following You"

To generate our Person, we are looking for words of speech - 3 on this page (if possible) then three on the page 2 pages later, and then three from the page 2 pages after THAT. So page 37, 39, and 41.

We get: "What are you", "Er' when you", and "If I was"

Hazard Person Prompt: "What are you er' when you if I was."

Interesting, and a bit of a challenge. I'm going to interpret "Er'" as a shortening of "ever" and read it as "What are you everwhen? You if I was." It almost sounds like someone can't tell who they are any more, or even when they are. They've come completely unstuck. Is this what the evil secret society of Miss Well schoolteachers do? If you threaten their secret smuggling operation, they inflict such memory loss upon you that you don't even know who or when you are any more?

As this is a Hazard Person, I'm going to say that one of the people subject to this curse (maybe more than once) has become dangerous and vengeful, and is lashing out in the places where the schoolteachers are likely to be - but doing so indiscriminately. This poor victim now threatens the very people (my character) trying to stop the schoolteachers!

To finish generating the Hazard, we need a Hazard value which is equal to the number of letters of the last word on this page. The word is "know", so the value is 4. Later, when I turn to a new page, I will check the first word on the page, andif it has 4 letters, this poor mind-wiped victim (or maybe multiple victims!) will be a feature of the journal entry I'll be writing! To 'evade' them, I will skip ahead as many pages as the last word on THAT page, has letters. 

And Now It Begins

And that's the end of the introduction! This gets faster as you get more familiar with the prompt generators, but there's no rush or hurry. You could spend a minute working out a prompt, or you could go for a walk or relax with some music, while you ponder their mysterious meanings! All that's important is that you have fun creating a story all your very own.

Good luck, and may you defeat the Enemy whatever it may be!