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:

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 and your mood. Let it be a place you’ve been before, though it might not have been empty when you were there. Visualize yourself there in its emptied state. See yourself navigate it. Tune in to your sensory detail: what do you see, hear, smell, taste, touch? What is the weather, the time, the light? What is it emptied of? In what was is it full? Stay with the image in your mind’s eye for about a minute, with eyes closed. Then open your eyes and record something about the experience—a reminder, a keepsake, a note to self, a caution.
Then disappear yourself from the image and allow a new figure from your imagination to enter the scene. Give that figure the thing you recorded, the knowledge or attention. Watch them navigate the place.
Then make a one-page diagram-cartoon of the figure in this place, annotating details about both the environment and the figure’s experience of it. On the reverse side of the page, grow something (a memory, a letter, a voicemail, an inventory, a log) at the intersection of what they notice and what you gave them.
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