Tag: writing prompts

Adventure — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Adventure

Life in the preserve is peaceful. It’s not very big—you can walk the perimeter in a day—but there are only a few of us and we don’t need much. There is plenty of good food, and for the most part we all get along. If any of us feel the need to explore, there are other preserves the Robbies can take us to.

I was happy where I was. I didn’t plan my adventure; it happened to me. One day I woke up sick, the first of us to know “illness” in 194 years. The Robbies were very kind. They explained how my illness could spread, so I had to be taken away from the preserve. That’s why I became the first person to see the world outside the preserves.

The Robbies have cities filled with gleaming spires of silver and glass. Machines fly among them like beautiful insects. They brought me to a tower and told me it had been built just for me, a “hospital” where they would examine me and try to understand why I was sick.

They haven’t found the answer. My body hurts so much I can barely get out of my bed. I do not blame them. They know much more than I do. If they cannot find the answer, who could? They are always kind, and they seem to be working very hard.

One of the Robbies visited me yesterday to tell me I may be the first human in centuries to go on another kind of adventure. He placed a silver hand on mine and explained that the illness would stop my body from working. Then, I will embark on an adventure called “death.” Just as we left the preserve to come here, I will leave my body and go somewhere else. Even the Robbies don’t know where.

It sounds frightening, and I am very tired, but I have learned that we cannot always choose our adventures. Sometimes they choose us.

The Other Side — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

The Other Side

We converted to green energy. We built the carbon sequestration plants. We started turning things around. We had the best of intentions. We were just too slow.

The result was widespread famine and death, unnatural natural disasters, and the worst refugee crises in human history. The die-off of species eventually slowed, but so many ecosystems had already been thinned out and strained beyond the breaking point.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When the ecosystem is going to collapse anyway, you might as well get creative.

Enclaves of rogue gene-grinders sprouted up in places that were already supposedly uninhabitable, CRISPRing up new versions of old species to fill in the empty niches. It was an imperfect science, and every change caused its own cascade of problems, like propping up a collapsing building so they could live in the basement.

Instead of becoming wastelands, those places became new oases of chaotic life—riots of species that broke down pollutants, converted chemicals, generated energy, and regenerated resources.

The gene-grinders didn’t stop at other species. They had grown beyond taboos. They altered themselves to better fit their new ecosystems, and sometimes just for fun.

The world survived global catastrophe. Humanity survived too. But neither was the same on the other side.

Fifteen Years — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Fifteen Years

He’s one of the most successful CEOs in history, turning a small business into a corporate behemoth in a little over a decade. Every industry he touches is revolutionized. Every decision proves prescient. He keeps the prices low. He takes care of his workers and their communities. He puts people over profits, but the profits still roll in. The business analysts don’t understand how he does it. Nobody does.

It’s easy though. Easy when you can travel backward in time exactly fifteen years. Easy when you can try every strategy, make every mistake, and then start again. How many times has he started over?

What’s hard is the long cycle. Fifteen years to recharge, and then back again. No way to go further. No way to escape that event horizon of the past.

So many days are too far back now for him to visit. They exist only as memories. The day he met the woman he loves. They day they married. The day she got her diagnosis.

She’s still back there, in the past. He can still visit her hospital bed. He can smell the antiseptic, see the sunken hollows of her cheeks and eyes. Hear the wheezing rhythm of the machine that helps her breathe. Two weeks before she passes on. Two weeks by her side, every fifteen years.

He knows he should let her go. That’s what she would want. He has tried. But he’s so afraid to lose those last two weeks. Then she’ll really be gone beyond his reach. And what will be the point of this empire he has built? What will be the point of anything?

The date is blocked off in his calendar, among the meetings and events. It’s nearly time again.

Fifteen years.

Musical Writing Prompts

Fine. I admit it. I hate most writing prompts.

Why? Well, that’s a good question. I enjoy thinking up ideas for stories. But I rarely find that “traditional” writing prompts help me do that. I suspect that the skills for creating a good writing prompt are further from the skills for writing a good story than we might expect.

Many writing prompts start with a core idea that’s too specific. Most of my Story Idea Vault entries fall into this camp, sad to say. It can be hard for someone else to come up with their own spin on the monster beneath the monastery that kills the monks and whispers the future, or the student biologist who has to learn how to recognize thousands of deadly forms of alien life on sight. How do you find the twist on that to get you excited and feel like it’s now yours?

I think a good writing prompt needs to contain not quite enough information. For me, a good story idea starts with an unexpected leap of logic or connection between unexpected things. It starts in the gaps.

I like the Story Engine because it provides very small bits of ideas and shuffles them up randomly. Often, when I use it to generate story ideas, I find that the new ideas are inspired by the cards, but often don’t quite fit all the parameters. From a full sentence with characters and actions and setting, something like the phrase “architecture bomb” will lodge in my brain and grow into something else entirely.

An even simpler exercise that I like for ideation is to generate two long lists of words or phrases. Then align the lists randomly and start reading the combinations. What is a skeleton jar? A Rickroll engine? Sky games?

Again, it’s not anything like a full, coherent idea; more like a high-speed collider for linguistic nuclei. It’s that unexpected connection between unrelated ideas that tickles the muse.

Recently, I discovered another exercise in the same vein—something almost, but not entirely unlike a writing prompt.

Go into the music app on your phone (or your record collection, or a Spotify playlist depending on how old you are) and put on some music. For each song, try to come up with the “story of the song” before it’s over.

I don’t mean summarizing the lyrics (if there are any, and they actually tell a story). Those words might contribute. Is there a person on a bike? A mother? Jilted lovers? An old truck? A fast car and a gun?

You might find yourself picturing little scenes or images. They could relate to the lyrics, or they may be soundscapes. Check the band name, the song name, the album name. Look at the cover art.

Surprisingly few songs tell a straightforward story. They’re often full of loosely related tidbits with little gaps and dark voids in between.

If you look carefully, there are stories in those gaps.

Computational Literature — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Computational Literature

Early on, computer programming was valued for its practical uses. It overturned industry and transformed society. It was deemed a science, even if computer science wasn’t as rigorous as physics or chemistry.

There were always those who saw the artistry in programming, the code golfers, makers of esoteric languages, and high-minded software architects. But what does artistry matter in the face of trillion-dollar industries and socioeconomic upheaval?

That was before Gustav Nacht, classical painter turned web designer. In retrospect, it’s clear that his genius was on par with greats like Mozart, Nabokov, or Van Gogh. At the time, nobody took his School for Computational Literature seriously.

Nacht pioneered programming languages that were as expressive for humans as they were for computers. Ernest was a language as terse and evocative as the writing of Hemingway, while Faulkner was a language as verbose, complex, and non-linear as the stories of its namesake.

It took decades, but by the time of Nacht’s death, non-programmers reading computational literature had become commonplace, and the ability to program finally seemed destined to become ubiquitous, as more and more people discovered these accessible gateways into the practice.

Nacht’s best students carried on his work, and while some fans might suggest that nobody would ever attain the same artistic heights as Nacht himself, most readers found subsequent generations even more enjoyable.

The Thing and the Voice — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

The Thing and the Voice

I never see either of them. Thank God.

The Voice wants to help. It knows how to survive. It whispers, always in my right ear. The Voice gives me warnings. It protects me from the Thing.

The Thing is terrible. It is sound and stench. It can come at any time. When it comes, I crouch down in a corner, as low as I can, and I stay very still so I can’t be seen.

The Voice tells me what to do. Stare at the corner, the place where three edges come together. The triune shape. Holy. Safe.

Today, the Thing comes when I’m in the shower. It sounds like construction machinery tearing through the roof of the apartment. A crunch in the hallway, the sound of wood and plaster shattering, clear even against the wash of water and the muffling steam. The crunch of bathroom tile. The tub has no corners. I have to make do with the grouted tile wall.

The creak of metal and glass, the explosion of the shower doors. The safety glass cascades harmlessly over me as clear pebbles. The water is scorching hot. The Thing is pressing on me. Its presence like a doubling of gravity. Tripling, quadrupling. I’m on Venus or Jupiter. The atmosphere is hot poison, unbreathable. Heavy, indistinct pressure.

“Lower, lower,” the Voice whispers. The pressure on my back increases. I stare at the corner of the shower. I do everything right. I listen to the Voice. The Voice protects me. The Thing always goes away. Everything returns to the way it was before. Always.

But not this time…

Exposure Therapy — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Exposure Therapy

The Virtual Experience Technology was designed by neuroscientists and psychologists, manipulating magnetic fields at the brain surface without all of that messy wiring directly into the neural tissue. It could not only generate incredibly detailed sensory inputs, but could also modify the subject’s sensation of time passing. Coming from the sphere of brain science, it’s only natural that it would find its first use as a therapeutic tool.

No, of course it couldn’t modify memory. Not directly. But it could simulate real experiences, so real that they were nearly indistinguishable from life. Even better, these waking dreams could distill hours or days into seconds and minutes. Patients suffering from traumas and phobias could be walked through dozens of carefully designed scenarios in a single treatment session, physically safe at a clinic.

Corporations and militaries noted how effective the V.E.T. was for training. A few used it for interviews, condensing weeks of on-the-job observation into a few hours. And why not apply the same standards to those who were already hired? Why not condense more work into less physical time?

Advocates for justice reform suggested that prison sentences could be effectively commuted by living them out under V.E.T., completing them in a tiny fraction of the real-world time. Advocates for harsher sentencing suggested using similar techniques to stretch sentences into hundreds or thousands of experiential years. If a depraved serial killer was sentenced to a dozen life sentences, why shouldn’t they experience all of them?

Intelligence services quietly adopted the technology to trick subjects into revealing key information. And when the tricks didn’t work, there were whole suites of horrific torture designed to make people talk. No more messy real-world war crimes. These were invisible and undetectable, leaving only mental scars.

It was only reasonable and right that international tribunals put a stop to those horrible practices. Thank goodness they did. The CIA and FSB, MI6 and Mossad, and the Chinese MSS all pledged to shut down those divisions. Notoriously transparent organizations. Happy to let the inspectors double-check their work. They always followed the rules.

The 1799 Roanoke Valley Slave Revolt — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

The 1799 Roanoke Valley Slave Revolt

I first heard tell of Abraham when I was helping Miss Elisabeth with the cleaning in the big house. Two of the drivers had come in to get a break from the August heat. They had their lemonade, and then they hung around in the back hall to sneak a few sips of whiskey. If the missus of the house saw that, they’d be the ones getting a whipping.

I heard one of the drivers say that name, Abraham Arnaud. I didn’t know any French back then, but I could tell that name didn’t sound right the way he chewed it up. The other one only spat in response, and then he saw me and I ran on up the stairs with my load of linens before he could find a reason to do something I’d regret. The only Abraham I knew was the one from the Genesis.

Now, having heard that strange name, my ears were all perked up for it. The second time they caught it was when Old Jack was telling stories to the boys. He said Abraham Arnaud was being talked about in whispers all over Virginia and the Carolinas. He heard it from the new boy, Tom.

Word was that the bosses had paid top dollar for Tom, and they were mighty mad when he ran off the first chance he got. Must have hid like a jungle cat, because they never caught him. Usually nobody got away from our straw bosses; they had real sharp eyes and they knew every way to put a hurt on you without making it so you couldn’t work.

Old Jack said that Abraham Arnaud came from Haiti to New Orleans, and he had become a vodou priest. But he wasn’t no regular oungan, lighting black candles and sticking pins in dolls. He had the real power of possession, and he could bring strong lua into his own body or anyone else. To hear Old Jack tell it, Tom was convinced that Abraham Arnaud would tear down every planation house and free every slave. Tom said he had met one of Abraham’s followers, who had taught him a little magic.

That was about when my momma made Old Jack hush up and “stop talking nonsense, putting dangerous ideas in these child heads.” It didn’t matter though, because everyone started whispering about Abraham Arnaud after that.

Four months that went on. Tom never turned up, and when three new slaves came to the plantation, they brought their own stories: runaways all over. Vodou priests walking the roads at night. The Master up at the big house must have heard things too, because more men were set to guard the farm, and the big plantation owners all got their men together to patrol at night, with torches.

The night he came was dark as death, cloudy and a new moon. After midnight the drums started, first far away, then closer, like they were talking to each other. A shout went up, and we heard one gun, then all the drums went quiet. I never heard a quiet like that in all my life. Most of us didn’t dare touch the door of the slave house, but Old Jack opened it a crack and peeked out, and just about fell backward like he’d been hit.

That door swung open and we all saw it, the big house bright as day, sheets of orange flame rising up the walls like a waterfall of light. There were shadows of people running, but one stood perfectly still, outlined in that fierce firelight like the devil, long coat billowing and a straw hat cocked sideways on his head.

“That’s him,” I thought. Nobody else it could be. And that’s how we came to be free, and how I started on the road to real, honest-to-God magic.

The Corporate Cold War Gets Hot — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

The Corporate Cold War

When the history books were written, the story started with an exodus of intellectuals and policymakers from the United States and Britain. Their failure to effectively change the festering kleptocracies of their native lands only galvanized them to fight even harder for the more favorable battleground of the EU.

The opening salvo was the unexpected passage of laws that set hard limits on the size of corporations by employee count, profit, and revenue. Any company too large would have to split up. These limits would tighten over time, and any uncompliant company could do no business within the economic block.

The first front of the war was political, with multinational corporations spending billions to influence elections and run ad campaigns. They threatened to abandon Europe, an empty threat, knowing how much it would cost them. They claimed prices would skyrocket. But they underestimated the public vitriol against them.

When political wrangling failed make the problem go away, a legal arms race began. The corps found a hundred ways to split one company into many while maintaining total control and channeling profits to the same shareholders. Regulators updated the rules, and the corporations changed structure again. It took decades of closing loopholes to see the laws really go into effect.

Some of the corps followed through on their warnings, leaving the EU altogether and eating the loss. Others divested themselves of their European branches. But some of the biggest, loudest corporations gave in and broke up in a sudden cascade of shocking announcements. The continent celebrated.

However, the elite shareholder class had been busy consolidating their power in America, Britain, and parts of Asia. As their influence waned in the EU, elsewhere the lines between corporate and political power blurred and fell away.

This, the history books said, was what led to the worldwide split into two socioeconomic blocs: a new cold war. And if there was one thing the gleeful intellectuals of the EU underestimated, it was the amount of bloodshed the rich would embrace to keep their wealth and power. The rhetoric became increasingly violent, demanding that the “continent of socialists” accept “true capitalism” into their borders, no matter the cost.

Armies rallied along the borders. Fingers hovered over the controls that would launch fleets of missiles and drones. And the doomsday clock ticked forward: five seconds to midnight…

Bad Music — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Bad Music

There was a long-running debate among fans of the band Bad Music. Were they the most punk of the “neo-unda” punk bands, or were they marketing geniuses who truly understood how much people wanted something that was impossible to get?

The name of the band was designed to make it difficult for internet searches. Their shows were never announced more than one day in advance. Everyone entering the venue had to go through tech scanners and put their phones and smart glasses into the block of modular mini-lockers that seemed to travel with the band. They wore masks on stage and never revealed their names. And holy hell did they rock.

They had no label, and they claimed that they didn’t release records. Fans competed to post the highest quality bootleg tracks. There were eternal arguments over which songs were legit, and which were made by copycats and fakers.

At the height of their fame, debates raged over whether “unreleased” songs could win a Grammy while Bad Music topped the charts on every streaming platform. Then the band vanished. No more popup shows. No more cryptic announcements on the “cool” niche music sites.

New songs surfaced here and there, but they were widely regarded as fakes. An expose in The Guardian made tenuous connections, claiming to have tracked two of the anonymous band members to a suicide cult, and two more to a plane crash in Brazil.

The songs remained popular in the ensuing decades. The band’s disappearance only fueled their legend. Conspiracy theories abounded, and many fans were convinced that the band was still alive. Lookalike cover groups became popular, with some even insisting that they were the real deal, back from the dead.

Every year or two, someone claimed the band had reappeared for one last secret show in an unexpected place.

And maybe they did…