This link to the indefatigable Chris Fielden’s site is great for workshops for kids and adults or for your own jumping off point for those stories buried deep in our minds.
Although, amusingly, this is what happened when I followed his first prompt.
I took the fourth book from my bookshelf (left to right fourth), found page 4 of the actual story, found the fourth sentence and the first four words, from which you are then to write your story.
My four words: It is said to…
Leaves a lot of room for creativity, certainly.
(The book, by the way, is A Difficult Young Man, Australian author Martin Boyd’s second in his Langton semi-autobiographical series, first published in 1957. I have a 1972 edition and studied it at university in … good God, is that the time? Must fly!
The other end of the bookshelf yielded little better. From Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen, I got: My father said it …
Well, the principle remains valid!