Best writing prompt EVER!

Anyone who has taken a course on creative writing has probably been presented with numerous "writing prompts". You know, those insipid instruction sets like "Think back to a time in your life when you faced hardship and write a short story as a fictionalized character recounting that experience" or "Create a scenario where two best friends are forced to fight." I always disliked those exercises, and with it being National Novel Writing Month and all, I thought I would recount the funniest set of prompts I ever read.

McSweeney's writer Dan Wiencek came up with a grouping of Thirteen Writing Prompts that killed me (thus the Zombie Matt is writing this now... Brains, tasty brains!), but one in particular stuck with me:

Write a story that ends with the following sentence: Debra brushed the sand from her blouse, took a last, wistful look at the now putrefying horse, and stepped into the hot-air balloon.

I would read any story that closed like that, and I hope that one or two people out there, when they submit their finished novels at the end of the month have taken that little bit of pithy writing to heart and used that line as their closer.

Tags: nanowrimo, mcsweeney's, national novel writing month, writing prompts, writing exercises, writing, novels, prose, humor, dan wiencek