*snerk* I was talking with Kiki about that prompt - after she'd written the HL story - and I was theorizing that if you'd said "road trip," that would'be been the perfect prompt related to internal combustion engines, because it gives just enough of a plot to go off of, without being an outline for a story.

I think some day I need to write up my opinion on the perfect prompt and how to spin it out. There are so many potential prompts out there, and ways to prompt, that it's hard to figure out the best ones until you get a set of them.

I've bewailed many a series of prompts received, actually, and I even tend to run prompts past a friend, almost like a betareader. Weird? But it makes me feel better.