The Prompt
Context: this prompt is based on a prompt that I gave in my last taboos class (during which the class listed things that workshops or teachers have warned them against). We analyzed why it is a taboo, and then they wrote a scene leveraging the taboo.
Taboo: Bathrooms
Taboo Reasoning: the ICK factor and discomfort that people feel about bathrooms and/or bodily functions such as vomiting; vomiting as stereotypical catharsis; bathrooms as private places that don’t generally involve other people and have prescribed functions.
Opportunities: bathrooms as a place to explore the spontaneous (a sudden breakup, for example); vomiting as something that does not equate to easy catharsis; the claustrophobia of a small space creating unexpected tensions or character revelations; bathroom being used for something completely unexpected/outside its usual function; strangers meet in a public bathroom; embrace the ICK factor!
Instructions: the prompt is wide open, but the goal should be to write a scene that avoids the taboo traps that bathrooms are known for and to instead embrace the opportunities. This can be used to start a new story or as a way to think about adding a scene to a work-in-progress.
Lori Ostlund
Lori Ostlund is the author of Are You Happy? (Astra House, May 2025). Her novel After the Parade (Scribner, 2015) was a B&N Discover pick, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a NYTimes Editors’ Choice. Her first book, The Bigness of the World (UGA, 2009; Scribner, 2016), received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, ZYZZYVA, and New England Review, among other places. Lori has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has served as the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award since 2022 and is on the board of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, the writer Anne Raeff. www.loriostlund.com
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Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
My story turned into a possible prequel to a few short stories I wrote a few years ago for NaNoWriMo, from the perspective of one of their supporting characters. I had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around the prompt at first, but eventually, a case of mistaken location turned into an unintended meeting and an unexpected opportunity!
This was interesting. This exercise was my first ending with a “not so happy” ending.
Thank you for the stretch!
BTW, May was crazy, so I am doing this challenge in June this year 🙂
I made a fragment of a chapter of one of the stories I have written down.
Interesting prompt. A few months ago I wrote a bathroom scene. Without looking at what I wrote then, I wrote the scene again. One day I’ll compare the two scenes.
I made a list of bathroom “thoughts”. My day is not allowing me to write a story, but I may come back to this one later.
Girls aways got to the bathroom in groups
Boys go by themselves
In school, bathrooms are the offices of the “cool” kids and no one else is allowed to use them.
You should not smoke in the bathrooms
Don’t eat in the bathroom’
Wash your hands befor you leave.
Don’t use the other genders bathroom. (how has this changed)
How has bathroom designations and assignments changed
Being escorted to the boys bathroom because the girls is too long.
Putting makeup on in the bathroom
Changing into clothes your parents disapprove of in the bathroom.
Smoking in the boys room.
I wrote todays draft on my phone’s Notes app (a first for me.)
It’s flash…or potentially a scene for something longer. It checks the box for me and walk away with few bathroom scene sparks.
Thanks for this prompt! I immediately thought about all the scenes in movies and tv shows that are set in public washrooms, which seems to be a less-than-taboo venue and often used for scenes between women. (“Let’s go powder our noses.”) I discarded this path because it seems like the bank of sinks and mirrors is a bathroom-adjacent public space vs the private taboo space this prompt is inviting us to think about.
All I’ll say for now is that I wrote a body horror drabble that starts: “Hemorrhoids.”
Yikes!!!
Wasn’t quite sure what to do with this one, but when I sat down, it was once again Nik and Leigh who came to the page. A bathroom is a great place for an argument, right? Got a 225 word dialogue-only story, that may or may not end up in their main story
I’m still awake after a very long day and I’m so ready to write this one. Great prompt!