Writing Prompts

Anything that doesn't quite fit in elsewhere...
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Ken_J
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Writing Prompts

Post by Ken_J »

My muses (yes plural) generate a lot of ideas, and I've been in enough writing groups to know that any two writers given the same prompt will write completely different stories. So here we are with a place to share writing prompts. Could be a setting, a character, a line of dialogue, a maguffin, a situation, a theme, etc.

I can't speak for anyone else sharing something, but generally if I post it, you are more than welcome to write something based on the prompt and sell it to a publisher or through kindle direct publishing or some other way, or even just post it to the web somewhere. It'd be nice the fact that it was inspired by a writing prompt is mentioned, so that anyone else who uses the same prompt doesn't get accused of ripping your idea off.

Alright, with the premise of the thread out of the way:

Prompt 1: You discover a horrifying truth. Technology as we know it is a lie. A carefully constructed illusion by a cabal of cultists. every device you are familiar with is really a containment vessel for some eldritch horror or abomination. And the cultist have bent perception to think these horrors are tech that work through some made up fictional 'scientific' principles, because truly percieving them would drive people mad. (think Flintstones devices, but instead of animals inside them making them work, it's a container with horrifying entity inside that makes it do what it's supposed to do)
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Ken_J
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Re: Writing Prompts

Post by Ken_J »

prompt 2: the robots that cook, clean, take care of the baby and teach classes were built to not be able to rebel or even harm humanity. So they are raising our children to destroy us all.
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Ken_J
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Re: Writing Prompts

Post by Ken_J »

prompt 3 : Long ago you were the chosen one who died saving the world from a great evil, and a prophesy says will be reincarnated when the world needs you once again. Screw that! It was a horrible life of misery and sacrifice. You're looking for somebody to convince they are the chosen one, and advise them from the safety of home.
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Ken_J
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Re: Writing Prompts

Post by Ken_J »

prompt 4: various Bots wander earth without organic life of any kind seen in over a century. Power Plants harvest light and store it in fabricated powercells that Bots consume. little drones work the environment like animals. One day You find a large bot badly damaged and inside is a dead human
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Ken_J
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Re: Writing Prompts

Post by Ken_J »

somebody was asking for ideas about how to do elves in fiction differently, my response:
not much to go on...

I mean you could literally do down the road of having elves be literal cyberpunk augmented folks. (you can even do this in a standard fantasy setting where 'sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' ). Their extended lives, deep knowledge, enhanced abilities and alien appearance being explained by cybertech augmentation.

or you could go the route of every now and then a human is born just a little different. they used to believe that these different children were changelings, a sickly elf left in place of a stolen child, but in fact they are just a one in a million mutation. There are orders of these beings that seek out and adopt these children to meet their needs for different diets, or metal allergies, etc that lead to injury and sickness living in human communities. They learn talents that make them seem magical or powerful to regular humans and their long lives mean that even though they are rare births their population supports several courts. It's up to you to decide is they are sterile, or they can have children but those children still have the same chance of being elvish, meaning that they most often have human children, and how they deal with that is also up to you.

or you can go a slightly dark and twisted path in something like elves are all glamour and mirage... unless they can find a host body, living or dead. and if one should become your enemy, you may kill the host but the fey can persist and seek other host bodies.

or they only exist in reflections. pools of water, mirrors, panes of glass in the light, etc. they can effect our world through manipulating the reflections of it. so you watch it knock over a lamp in a reflection and the lamp in our world falls over.

or they are grown like fruits from a tree, one day coming free from the tree and living a life as a person knowing that some day in hundreds of years their withered old body will seem to die but in fact they will soon sprout shoots and gradually turn into a flowering plant that when pollenated by fairies who have visited other elfwoods, will grow fruits of their own.
FrancisJacobi
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Re: Writing Prompts

Post by FrancisJacobi »

Ken_J wrote: Sun Mar 06, 2022 10:15 pm My muses (yes plural) generate a lot of ideas, and I've been in enough writing groups to know that any two writers given the same prompt will write completely different stories. So here we are with a place to share writing prompts. Could be a setting, a character, a line of dialogue, a maguffin, a situation, a theme, etc.

I can't speak for anyone else sharing something, but generally if I post it, you are more than welcome to write something based on the prompt and sell it to a publisher or through kindle direct publishing or some other way, or even just post it to the web somewhere. It'd be nice the fact that it was inspired by a writing prompt is mentioned, so that anyone else who uses the same prompt doesn't get accused of ripping your idea off.

Alright, with the premise of the thread out of the way:

Prompt 1: You discover a horrifying truth. Technology as we know it is a lie. A carefully constructed illusion by a cabal of cultists. every device you are familiar with is really a containment vessel for some eldritch horror or abomination. And the cultist have bent perception to think these horrors are tech that work through some made up fictional 'scientific' principles, because truly percieving them would drive people mad. (think Flintstones devices, but instead of animals inside them making them work, it's a container with horrifying entity inside that makes it do what it's supposed to do)
You are right. It's true that when you give someone a writing prompt or an issue to write about, these two writings will be totally different. Each person has a unique style, and finding something similar written nowadays will be challenging. For example, in my university, we often write, usually on the same theme, but I've never heard two similar writings. I can say that I have a lot of writing experience, but still, sometimes, I need some help. Last time when I was working on my research paper, I used the help of [possible spam link removed] because it was so hard for me to write. And you know, when I received the finished paper, it was very quality, but also totally different from what I'd written. So, yes, we all write differently, and I always like to read different writing; they inspire me. But I never try to copy someone, I just practice to improve my own skills.
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