Writing Prompt Round-Up #1

Bonus prompt! What is happening in this picture? An Afternoon Haunting

Fiction & Drama

“We’re just going to have to wait.” He said, standing against the endless blue sky, running his hands through his wavy hair.

A disfigured man, a fashionista, and a DJ on the run.

You lost your job, and then your home, you have no where else to go, and little to no money, how do you keep your family safe and fed?

A young man learns he is dying of a disease, a disease he has potentially given to many people he has loved, what does he do?

A man gets badly injured on the job, as they struggle to survive, his wife becomes addicted to his medication.

 

Fantasy

You are a lowly tavern wench but the Prince keeps coming to your bed, for lovemaking and advice on matters of state.

You see a dragon while hunting in the mountains, you try to tell your village but they do not believe you.

The Blue Sisters of Amongood, protectors of the ancient maps.

The four treasures of the Tuatha De Dannan: a sword that always kills, a spear that always hits it mark, a stone that proclaims the king and a cauldron that heals any wounds.

Snow white and prince charming lose their castle to a bad mortgage deal and have to move in with the dwarfs. Grumpy is not happy about it at all…

A demon and an angel walk into a bar…

 

Horror

You are standing in your back yard happy as a clam, when you realize the crickets and frogs have suddenly gone silent.

Everyday a man puts wildflowers on the same three graves.

Whenever you drive by the place your loved one died, your car malfunctions.

Every night, just before you go to sleep, you hear someone calling your name…

A high schooler mentions to her friends about a scary dream she had, when it comes true, she has no more friends.

You are driving home. The fog becomes so thick you are forced to pull over. When you get out to look for the road again, you lose your car too…

A nerdy software developer mistakenly ends up at a vampire bar.

 

Thriller

A trail of blood through the snow.

You go outside on a snowy winter’s evening and notice footprints in your yard. Following them, they lead all the way back around the house and stop at your front door.

You pull up to a traffic light during rush hour on a bridge, you hear faint screaming that seems to be coming from the gully below.

A man comes home to find a sheet of plastic over his living room floor with a chair in the middle of it. A length of rope and a roll of duct tape sit next to it.

A young woman running away from an abusive family, a bank robber & a bounty hunter.

A Beach for Dying

 

Steampunk

Your zeppelin crash lands in Algonquin territory.

The Pirate Queen of Air Fleet Five

A Victorian woman invents an engine that runs off air, but no one will listen to her since she is female. She decides to dress up like a man…

The Flying Bathtub: Two young children and an old retired pilot create a hot air balloon and strap it a bathtub in order to escape the Germans in a steampunk WWII.

 

Comedy

You and a partner are professional diversionists. People hire you to make distractions, diversions etc.

You are at a swanky party, soiree, thingy, you’ve just had an explosive, uh, visit to the toilet, but there happens to be NO TOILET PAPER. What do you do?

Write about the most awkward moment of your life. Rewrite it until the prose itself is so awkward, it makes you shiver just reading it.

 

Sci Fi

Grey Aliens are just humans who have been born in space.

A large solar flare shuts all electronics off for exactly 8 minutes. What are the consequences?

Take a cultural myth, urban legend or fairy tale and give it a scientific explanation.

A bomb goes off in a populated city. When you analyze it you find it is made from non-terrestrial minerals.

A linguistics student finds an ancient clay tablet that clearly describes a colony on mars.

You meet someone who claims to be eight thousand years old.

Your characters are on a lengthy mission into space. When they return they crash land near the city of Armana, toward the end of  the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten, the year 1333 BC.

An amateur scientist discovers the secret to immortality. When he publishes it, someone makes an attempt on his life.

You volunteer for the first one-way ticket to Mars.

Space gypsies, vagabonds who travel in their spaceships from space colony to space colony, planet to planet, grifters, or a homeless family in space.

 

 

 

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Horror ( Screen) Writing Excercises & Prompts

So, I’m finally getting into horror. And for my horror buff friends: yes, you were right, I was a liar all along.

It took me some time to get here, and I had to convince myself I was writing “thriller” or “psycological thriller” for a while before I was able to come out of the boogey man’s closet and just admit: I fucking love scary shit. It just happens to be my “own brand” of scary shit. But at the end of the day, it is horror – a story that is designed to spook.

I personally love the slow, subtle, build up, of utter, absolute, ambiguous, oh my freaking god, what the eff is that, am I going crazy, kind of terror that delves not only into the outer world of monsters and mayhem, but also looks at what lurks within.

In the midst of all this, I decided to migrate my musing into Celtx and write in screenplay format. I think visually, I write my novels visually, and maybe my visuals are more important than my prose. Especially when we’re talking about haunted forests and The Thing with Two Faces.

And I sat down, looked at all the white, empty space, and basically had no where to go. I had a setting, which was seriously freaking me out, since I was staring at it out my back window, but where were the characters?

I googled “Horror screenwriting prompts” and surprise, I didn’t find what I was looking for. So I took a moment and attacked it in an epeological way: if I was a horror screenwriting professor, what kind of assignment would I give my students?

 

Horror (Screen) Writing Exercise #1

1. think of the most frightening setting possible. (Remember, your scary shit needs to scare you first, otherwise it wont stick to the page, or the screen.)

2. write down three things that are not usually associated with horror or spook, it can be objects like a tangerine, or a bottle of beer, or it could ideas, like love, honor, or courage, it could be people, like a newspaper delivery boy, or the milkman. Maybe try a combo of all three?

3. Now write a scene that begins in your setting and incorporate at least two of the three things, but here’s the kicker: make them scary or part of the spook of the scenery.

These aren’t set in stone, obviously, and who gives a rats patootie about what I think anyway, but remember these are prompts to get you going, not to define your novel or script. Although, they could, who knows? Maybe there is a haunted forest in which a haunted tangerine tree grows? Hmm…

 

Horror (Screen) Writing Exercise #2

That didn’t do it for you?

Write the scariest scene you can imagine and work on it until every detail in your mind is clear. What are the smells, the sounds, the colors, the mood. What does it make you think, feel? What part of the scene is scary. Is it just scary? Or are there certain elements that make it scary? Expound.

 

Horror (Screen) Writing Exercise #3

Write a juxtaposed scene where the setting is not scary or spooky at all, ie: a bright, warm summer day; or a little league baseball game; or playing with kittens or something like that. try to create a sense of well being and safety in your scene. Then smash through it with something horrifying.

 

Bonus Prompt!

I created this desktop wallpaper out of my own fears (see, I told you, I was a secret horror junkie). You can download the desktop wallpaper here, and write a scary story or scene based on it. wooooooooo……

The Raven Man

 

Still stuck? Check out Diabolique Strategies for mischievous little provocations for your increased creepiness.

Hope you enjoyed this! If you have any prompts or exercises or advice, please share below. Happy slashing.

 

Paranormal Romance Writing Prompts

Here are 10 paranormal romance writing prompts to flutter the pulse and horripilate the tender, succulent heart.

‘When the dead walk’ available here

The love of your life dies in a car crash but you still see him/her in your dreams. Soon, other people you see in your dreams start to bleed into waking life. You start looking for the love of your life…

You suspect your significant other is cheating on you, you follow them and find out that they are, with a vampire! (Werewolf! Alien!)

A necromancer accidentally brings a very handsome prince back from the dead…

A woman’s boyfriend leaves every month on the full moon. Suspecting he’s a werewolf, she follows him, finds out he’s actually a were____.

A Sasquatch abducts you because he needs you to heal his sick family. Cue beauty and the beast redux.

A man wins a vacation at a resort, but upon arriving he realizes an old flame works there, but she can’t ever leave…

A succubus leaves the love of her life because she doesn’t want to hurt him.

A vampire is “stalking” a woman. She threatens him with a broken table leg. As soon as he leaves, she is attacked by….

A psychic has a hard time with relationships because she always knows what is going to happen, and how much she will dislike the men she dates in the future.

A tarot reader keeps getting the same card over and over and over again. One day she sees a man with the card tattooed on him.

*bonus prompt: write a short story set in the painting above!

Unusual Words for Writing Prompts

Here are several websites about curious, old, and unused words you can use to A) build your vocabulary B) create interesting writing prompts, short story ideas, or plot movements, characters &ETC

For example:

Lucubration /ˌlo͞ok(y)əˈbrāSHən/ noun formal

the act of studying by candlelight ; nocturnal study ; meditation

that which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary composition

a piece of writing, typically a pedantic or overelaborate one.

Now take lucubration and craft a short story, writing prompt, or simply start writing about what it makes you think of. Use it in a sentence. Write two paragraphs about someone who lucubrates.

Here are great sites that give many many words to learn and choose from. Happy epeoltarification.

 

Curios Words & Phrases

A decent list of very unusual words like wimbler, squinch, & ailurophile.

 

Unused Words

Quite a copacetic list, and handily categorized by noun, verb & adjective.

 

Etymologically Speaking

A curios list of rather familiar words, with a bonus of telling you where they are from, settings, histories galore!

 

The Encyclopedia of Arda

A swell list of archaic or unusual words used in Tolkien’s works.

 

The Best Old English Words

Only 13 words, but stupendous nonetheless.

 

Bizarre, Old, Outdated or Weird Words

A little outdated itself, but still a good list.

 

Bonus Video! 40 weird words and their origins

 

 

Horror, Sci Fi, Thriller & Fantasy Writing Prompts

Here are 20 writing prompts for the epeolatrists. Happy writing.

‘The lone rider’ available here

You have a dream about something horrific or terrifying and in your dream you take a picture of it with your cell phone. In the morning, you discover the picture is actually on your phone.

Your significant other/housemate comes home, staggering, foamy blood running down their chin, eyes gone yellow and bulging. Before you can react, they spit all over you.

Your mother insists on hanging a spooky portrait of your grandmother over the fireplace. You swear her eyes follow you. One night, you hear a noise and come downstairs, the portrait above the fireplace is empty.

You just got offered a job at a high tech company to work on super computers. As you are walking home that night you are accosted by yourself, from the future.

One day you realize that everything you write in a particular notebook comes true…

You are having a wonderful afternoon with your sweetheart, in a meadow of wildflowers by a river. Your sweetheart starts running father and farther away, the sky darkens, you look down and notice a needle in your arm. You come to in a hospital bed, strapped down.

An orphan learns her adoptive parents died five years ago…

A woman has never been to the ocean before, and her parents never let her. When she runs away and jumps in the ocean for the first time she grows gills…

A spaceship crash lands in your backyard. A man stumbles out of the wreckage and says the human colony on Mars is collapsing, they need help…

You have a dream that the world ends, the next morning you wake up and the events of your dream start happening.

You find incredibly old writing on a cave wall deep in the mountains, upon searching deeper you find a detailed sarcophagus that looks exactly like you. But there is no mummy in it.

In the future, you live in a completely automated home, but eventually, the AI gets a crush on you and becomes psychotically obsessive. “Where were you last night?”

Digging up your backyard to plant a garden in your new home, you find a witches jar, full of broken glass, nails, thorns, and blades. Disgusted, you throw it out. That night your new home comes under attack.

Every time your house mate’s new boyfriend comes round your cat spits and howls and runs away.

Your boyfriend gives you an antique locket, but when you polish it later that night, an incredibly sexy genii (djinn) comes out.
You go through something traumatic, and move to the other side of the country to escape it, but something follows you…

Your girlfriend starts acting weird and you suspect she is cheating. When you follow her, you see her get abducted by two men in a black SUV.

Your girlfriend starts acting weird and you suspect she is cheating. When you follow her, you see her kick the shit out of two goons.

When you go to your car after work it is gone. When the taxi pulls up to your block, your house is gone, there is an empty lot with a dingy for sale sign. When you try to call your husband/wife, they have no idea who you are. You try to check into a motel, but your credit cards are not recognized.

You are an alien who was given an assignment on earth to infiltrate their society in order to study them in a non invasive way. You find out that you have actually been transmitting a deadly virus that will wipe out the human race. Your blood is the only antidote. You try to approach the humans and help, but they lock you in a cell and torture you. You seriously consider not helping them….

 

*bonus prompt: write a short story set in the painting above.