Twelve Lenses for Generating Creative Prompts

The easiest mistake in creative prompting is to say “be more creative.” The phrase is broad, but it has no working conditions. The model may produce plausible variation, but it is hard to explain why one variation is better than another.

I prefer choosing a lens first. A lens is a device for seeing the same topic from a different angle. With a lens, a prompt becomes less like a vague request and more like an experiment.

These twelve lenses combine what I saw in the creative writing portion of the prompt catalog with the PCHL frame.

Twelve Lenses

Lens	Question	Works well for
Observer	Who is seeing this?	Viewpoint shifts, scene writing
Time	From when is this seen?	Reflection, prediction, history
Prohibition	What cannot be said?	Tension, censorship, secrecy
Lack	What is missing?	Desire, conflict, product ideas
Misunderstanding	What is believed incorrectly?	Twists, character, education
Materiality	What object reveals it?	Imagery, metaphor, branding
Scale	What changes when zooming in or out?	Systems thinking, worldbuilding
Genre	What grammar frames it?	Writing, content transformation
Opposition	What if the opposite were true?	Critique, alternatives, strategy
Loop	What repeats?	Habits, learning, agents
Cost	What is lost?	Decision-making, ethics
Evidence	What remains?	Research, mystery, analysis

One lens changes the prompt. Two or three lenses together can create a much stronger variation.

Twisting One Topic Twelve Ways

Let the topic be:

Topic: “A day in the life of someone working with AI”

Here is what happens when the twelve lenses are applied.

Lens	Generated prompt
Observer	Write a 500-character scene of a person working with AI from the perspective of their keyboard. The keyboard can sense only fatigue and rhythm.
Time	Write a short museum-style explanation from 2035 describing how people worked with AI in 2026.
Prohibition	Write a diary entry by an employee who is forbidden to use the word “AI” while describing their work style. Use only indirect language.
Lack	Describe a team that has every tool it needs except judgment criteria. Show what stops moving.
Misunderstanding	Satirize someone who believes AI will reduce all work, then accidentally creates more review loops.
Materiality	Explain AI collaboration using only five objects on a desk. Each object must represent one work stage.
Scale	Explain how one prompt expands into team decisions, product direction, and customer experience across three scales.
Genre	Write a day of AI work as a detective case file. All clues must be logs and diffs.
Opposition	Argue paradoxically why a team that refuses to use AI becomes faster in the AI era.
Loop	Describe a day of generation, review, revision, deployment, and feedback as a circular road rather than a schedule.
Cost	Contrast one sense a person loses and one sense they gain in a day accelerated by AI.
Evidence	Infer what decisions a person made from only the file names, commit messages, and meeting notes left at the end of the day.

The topic is the same, but the prompts produce different scenes because the lens changes.

Upgrading with PCHL

Lens prompts are starting points. To make them usable, we can assemble them with PCHL.

Prompt:
  Choose three of the twelve lenses and create variations on
  "a day in the life of someone working with AI."

Context:
  The reader already uses AI tools but has not yet turned their workflow into a theory.
  The output will be used to find material for a blog essay.

Harness:
  Each variation must include a title, core image, conflict, and final sentence.
  Avoid generic language.
  Label which lens is active in each variation.

Loop:
  From the first result, choose the two strangest variations and the one most practical variation.
  Expand those three into article candidates.

Now the prompt is no longer just a request for many ideas. It is a loop for generating, selecting, and expanding ideas.

A Creative Prompt Generator

This is the generator template I want to keep in the catalog.

Topic:
Purpose:
Reader/user:
Lenses to use:
Avoided cliches:
Output format:
Selection criteria:
Regeneration rule:

The goal is not to generate a random pile of prompts. It is to create comparable candidates from genuinely different angles.

Five Prompts Ready to Use

1. Reframe one product idea through the lenses of lack, cost, and evidence. Each version must end with three customer interview questions.

2. Transform one writing seed through observer, time, and genre lenses. Return only a blog title, first sentence, and core image.

3. Read the meeting notes I paste through the lens of misunderstanding. Identify five assumptions the team may be holding incorrectly.

4. Explain a learning topic through materiality. Attach a tangible object metaphor to each abstract concept and note possible misconceptions.

5. Turn a code refactoring plan into a loop. Connect requirements, tests, failure cases, and retry conditions so each stage becomes the next input.

Creativity is not a talent we outsource to the model. It is a search space we can design. Lenses open that space, and PCHL turns it into repeatable work.