This might be the fastest concept-to-finish generator I've ever done, but the Elevator Pitch / Blurb Generator is done and live!

I was reading a book announcement on tor.com that described a book as being in the vein of two books that were as utterly unlike each other as...as...two unlike things. Naturally, I had to make a generator.

So! If you are a writer who needs inspiration, a publicist who is writing a press release, or an author who's been asked to blurb a book and you're lost for words...here you go! It tends to float between things that sound legitimate and things that take a left turn through WTF.

Do feel free to link away!

This debut work of fiction is best described as a combination of Aliens and Psycho, as written by Beatrix Potter.

A queer, ambitious page-turner, this series is what you'd get if Pamela Dean wrote Ice Planet Barbarians.


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I check the logs on magatsu.net every day, just to see where I'm getting my traffic (quite a lot on a daily basis from seventhsanctum.com, thank you dragonscholar!). It also has the search terms that people use to find the site on Google and other search engines. Today it's got the usual mix of "story generator" "art prompts" and so on, and something I'm quite proud of, "best story generator on the internet". It also included "essay conclusion generator."

I so hope that someone used one of my prompts to finish their essay off with. "And in conclusion, this narrative is about rebirth. It starts in an asylum with a nice guy who doesn't finish last. The antagonist is a scholar and the plot involves elements like the texture of silk and aerodynamic martial arts fighting."

Feeling vaguely arty, so I'm going through the art prompts generator to see if I can get inspiration. I'm not doing this prompt, but it would certainly be quite a challenge. How would you handle it?

Create a portrait of a girl disguised as a boy without using any characteristic normally associated with that sort of person.

P.S. Dinner was Tuna Helper. I realized that I was at the point that if I didn't eat fairly quickly, I was going to get the migraine back, and it was the fastest option. :) I wanted the artichoke, but it would have been 45 minutes minimum until I ate, and I couldn't take that risk. It'll be there tomorrow.

Show a priestess, and a corset. The piece should not contain any sort of a mechanical host body.

Yes! It's ...... the Random Art Prompt Generator!

Featuring a choice of simple (one word or phrase) prompts or elaborate (two or more elements)!

And if you do anything inspired by this, please show me! (if anyone actually does anything with it, I might create an online gallery for it. :D)

The one section I'm really having a lot of trouble with is the Challenge section. I wouldn't use it very much in the promtps, but it'd be nice to have a lot of variety in it, still. :/

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OK, so I'm thinking on a suggestion by vom_marlowe for an art prompt generator. I think I'm going to have to offer the choice between simple (i.e. one word or short phrase) and elaborate (more description and elements) prompts, because there's lots of people out there who seem to get better inspiration from shorter prompts than I do. (e.g., something like "Years" or "Blue" as opposed to "What we do not regret. Blue, melancholy" or "The forest at noon. Happy")

The simple prompts are easy enough to do: giant list of single words and short phrases, pick one at random. It's the elaborate ones that are more difficult (especially because you need to take things like grammar and capitalization into account). I'm thinking they should be something like: The picture is mostly green and features two characters in elaborate clothing. Elements include a mask and wind. "The time when we cannot meet." Yeah, it sounds a lot like my fic generators. Deal.

What I need from you are various prompts like that - I made the fic generators by creating sample prompts, then generating structures and rules from them. Don't worry about grammar and capitalization: I'll worry about that. They don't even have to be original - just pop down short descriptions of pictures you like if you can't come up with anything. They're all going to end up with different words plugged into them anyway. :)

(er, just to make it clear - I don't need examples of the sentences below with new words plugged in. I need different descriptions. :D)

More examples: "The portrait has a sense of melancholy. The person is looking off into the distance and has blue eyes."

"The landscape in the picture is mountainous and bathed in morning sunlight. The characters in it are in conflict. It is a pre-modern setting."

"There is an air of menace in this black-and-white picture. The theme is 'the promised land.'"


(Gah. Why do I get the feeling that this will be combination fic and character generator?)