Generators
Generators are short prompts for finding new seeds, images, voices — bits and pieces that might fold into your writing. Most generators here are for inventing from scratch; some are marked “for ongoing process” and are specifically framed to help expand the radius of writing that you’ve already embarked on.
here's A Generator dialed up at random:

Light on Two Sides
A generative exercise that finds action inside of environment. Audio version of the generator included.
Write a scene grounded in the description of an imagined room—its architecture, its furnishings, and the activity within it. Focus on whatever blend of these elements most draws your interest; let your imagination inhabit the room sensorily.
As you conjure this room and this building, begin by considering its place in the world, its decade in time. Include doors but omit the room’s windows at first—let this room be artificially or magically lit. Conjure the details of the room’s surfaces and objects. Its entrances and exits. Its shelves, furniture, places of wear and places of neglect.
Now give your room a natural light source on one side only, and in your mind’s eye, populate the room, as if sending in actors to take their places. See it as a still image in heavy contrast, saturated by glare.
Now watch the image as you open up another source of light from a different wall, so that the room, in your imagination, is now pervaded by natural light from two sides. Feel the influx of light and its effect on the bodies in the room. Note the expansion of the space as it includes what is outside the windows as well as the interior of the room.
Write a short description of the room as a container or holding place for the living beings within it. Focus on the room and the feeling of the room, whether directly or via its inhabitants’ perceptions.
Find the ending of your description by articulating what that environment makes possible for human action or thought. Let that final possibility become the generative seed of something new.
here's the full generator archive:

hearing a new voice
Write a description of the room you are in as you write. Root yourself in a clear first-person voice (though feel free to role-play here;

scene from details
Choose a scene or moment from your last 24 hours for a quick, highly compressed study. Start by making a sketchy, diagrammatic map of the

filter approach
Make a list of images or scenes or language ideas that you’ve imagined being part of what you’re making right now, but that haven’t yet

nesting set
Do the “human observation” tuning exercise. Then take something articulated in your tuning and invent a new character to contradict everything you just wrote. Let

flaming beetle
If you did the list of 100 unrelated words last week, find it now. (If you didn’t, do the exercise: write 100 words, each of

two new figures
Do the tuning exercise, “caption meditations,” then take one of the scenes and populate it with two new figures. Follow their conversation. Try to tune

monster soliloquy
Start with the tuning exercise, tuning your monster. Then let the monster soliloquize, if you conjured one. If you instead found a monstrous inclination to

a story guide
Visualize the world of the thing you are writing: its geographic center, its horizons. Then imagine a figure who could know about that world, perhaps

article plunder toward mysterious exchange
Find an article about something you don’t know much about. Circle or highlight twenty words. Write a conversation between two beings that incorporates at least

the new-room-of-the-house dream
Take up the classic dream of finding a new room or wing of the house you live in (or one that you used to live

bookshelf as image pantry
Go to your bookshelves and open one of the books you’ve been meaning to read but haven’t, one that’s been waiting for you for a

following character generator
*The script of the exercise is below. If you lead yourself through this exercise, read each step, do it, and then read the next, and

ballad
(for expanding something already in process) Visualize the world of the thing you are writing: its geographic center, its horizons. Then imagine a figure who

color & temperature
Choose a color and a temperature. Scan your memory for a moment in your life that matched that temperature and whose light or environment held

memory recall list from Lynda Barry
This is a memory recall exercise from Lynda Barry, variations of which are found in many of her books (Syllabus is a great place to

map of the area
(for building out something that is already in progress) Draw a compressed geographic map of the region of something you’ve already started writing or imagining.

echo, exchange, erasure
Find an article about something you don’t know much about. Circle or highlight twenty words. Write a conversation between two beings that incorporates at least

swerving self-interview
Do a self-interview (wherein you pose yourself questions and then fully answer them) on what you’re interested in writing about. Let each question follow up

empty avenue
Take yourself, in your mind’s eye, to an empty avenue. It could be a dirt road, a suburban causeway, a city street. Follow your interest