 Fantasy: August 14, 2013 Issue [#5834] |
  Fantasy
This week: Creating sci-fi and fantasy prompts Edited by: Prosperous Snow celebrating  
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Carry a notebook with you
To create your own writing prompts.
Observe your environment,
Write a description,
Write down all questions,
No matter how weird or odd
Your logical mind considers
The questions to be.
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It is summer. The long warm days encourage outdoor activities and sometimes discourage or, at least, interfere with writing. We go out and enjoy ourselves in the pool or at the beach, while stories and poetry wait on our computers for us to finish them. If we have the technology and a connection to the internet, we can sometimes write from the beach or beside the pool. However, not all of us can afford the technology or spare the time to access the internet while we are out having fun.
This is why I like to carry a small loose-leaf notebook and pen with me. I can write down any ideas that I run across while I am interacting with other people in real time. For instance, today I got an idea for a fantasy story by simply watching the wind blow through an oak tree. The branches swayed in the wind, which caused the leaves to look like they were dancing. As I watched, the limbs move I felt the wind on my face. I wrote the description and then I wrote down the questions that came to mind.
Is it possible for the tree limbs move and the leaves flutter without the wind blowing? What would cause such a phenomenon? Can a tree move its limbs and leaves itself? Could magic cause the tree’s limbs and leaves to move without the assistance of wind? At this point, I realized that I really did need a prompt generator to create writing prompts because I can do it myself by just observing the world around me and writing the questions down.
I can use this same technique to find science fiction prompts as well. Take a weird incident that happened with my cell phone and the television remote. I checked my cell phone and noticed that the battery was completely charged. Then I placed my cell phone on the couch beside me before I turned on the television. After turning on the TV, I put the remote on the couch on top of my cell phone. When I picked up my cell phone after the program was over, the battery needed recharging.
I know there are numerous logical explanations for the cell phone battery running down. In fact, there are too many explanations to go into in this newsletter and none of them makes a good science fiction prompt. Did the remote control steal the charge in my cell phone battery? How did the remote steal or eat the power in the phone’s battery? Once I answer those questions, I have a science fiction story.
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#1943736 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Not much could be seen through the layer of condensation that had formed on the pod's viewer. Not that there was much to see anyway, it was a field of white-hot debris, hulks and chunks of devastated ships and the bodies of unlucky crewmen, like thousands that were the result of four years of war. More importantly than that, however, was the fact that the pod's sole occupant was unconscious from the slowly increasing lack of oxygen. Slumped over the control console with beads of condensation dripping onto his uniform, he didn't notice the searchlight that silhouetted his pod against the darkness of space and filled the interior with light. He didn't notice the intensifying vibration as the shadow the searchlight was attached to moved into a position over the pod. He didn't hear the massive CLANK as the pod was picked up and clamped into place by the shadow.
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#1943702 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: It was an interesting thing, having H.P. Lovecraft’s brain in my head.
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#1783534 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Half an hour late. I swear if Nichols wasn’t the best informant around, I’d stop paying her. Jesse Forster grumbled to himself, checking his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. Raising his glass, he downed the last of the whiskey he had been nursing since he arrived an hour before, and scanned the bar’s patrons again, for lack of anything better to do.
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#1943034 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I sat back in my chair and watched the ending credits for the last time. This series had been pretty good as far as the harem genre went. It was slightly above average but it was in no way original or a masterpiece. It simply knew what it was and didn’t try to be something it wasn’t. Not that there weren’t masterpieces out there, it was simply that those were few and far between. Most anime could only hope to be above average and stand out above the multitude of other shows just like it.
Excerpt: I remember checking in at the hotel that night vividly - it's etched into my mind forever - and how instantly run down and dilapidated the place struck me as being. The woman behind reception was lazily flicking through a magazine, and her dull eyes drifted up vacantly towards me as I wandered in. Her face was gaunt and frail, her sallow skin wrapped tightly around a long skull from which disjointed, yellow teeth protruded at awkward angles. The check-in process was brief and awkward. The only moment of relief during the near-silent exchange of forms and card details arrived in the form of a hopelessly inebriated, wiry old man who managed to stagger, drool encrusted face-first, directly into me. It was a futile attempt to cross the reception area over to the elevator at the far end that culminated in his upending a near-full pint glass of some creamy, foul-smelling ale in spectacular fashion over my suit.
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#1654660 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: In a fantasy or science fiction story, the plot sometimes includes a prophecy. Since prophecies are about the future, you have to decide what kind of future your story has:
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#1944004 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Grey ash filled the heavens, swallowing up the sun’s rays as if feeding on them gave the ash strength. Black plumes billowed up past the feathery falling ash as the walled city in the distance, engulfed by hungry flames, was devoured. The sky had the taste of death on it, the stench of fear and desperation in its wind while the sounds of pain and horror from the raging battle below rose in a melodic symphony of man’s destruction. Incredible balls of fire erupted all around the field, tossing everything near them outward as if they were no more than children’s toys.
|  | Apple on Eden (13+)
My attempt at allegorical imagery - playing with perception - any feedback is appreciated
#1944198 by S.A. Merk  |
Excerpt: Adam settled into his seat as the silent speed of Europa’s newest anti-grav monorail, Eden, sliced its way through the countryside. He looked forward to the frictionless ride after a long day of druidic gardening for the Outer Rim’s current Raja. With an all but lost science that some might call magic, Adam had refined his knowledge of ancient wisdom, manipulating the good and evil, the Yin and Yang of organic equilibrium, into an art form.
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Annette  wrote: That's an interesting concept - time travel. I've read stories that deal with it and watched movies or TV shows with it. I haven't experimented with it as a writer yet.
Quick-Quill  wrote: One of the most successful Time Travel movies was Back to the Future. Then the TV show Quantum Leap. This can be done but it's difficult.
I enjoyed QL as they sometimes used actual Historical incedents or culture as 40's & 60's prejudices.
🌖 HuntersMoon  wrote: I love paradoxes (dices?) I wrote what I thought was the ultimate short story on the subject (In The Beginning) only to find I ended up back where I started. Who knew? Great subject and fun read. Thanks. Ken
BIG BAD WOLF is Merry  wrote: Trick would be making things correct.
Do any of you have any other ways to create your own writing prompts? Do you have any other questions or ideas for this newsletter? Prosperous Snow celebrating |
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