Olio of Prompts IV

How's the weather where you are? Write a scene where two characters
are meeting each other, perhaps for the first time: an awkward
situation at best, they may know little about ach other, so have
them talk about the weather.

For that matter, you could even have it evolve into a dispute about
the weather, which might be funny. (I had this image of the woman
going home to mother because of the argument, LOL). Yes, this does
not have to be written man-woman: unless your character is of a,
shall we say, alternate preference and a well meaning but clueless
friend sets them up on a blind date with the opposite sex.

I'll have to write that one myself, LOL--I have just the characters
in mind.)


You know how you wake up when it's almost completely
dark. Maybe your eyes are unfocused when you first
wake up, but you begin to at least make out some
familiar shapes and forms. All colors turn to shades
of black and gray. Maybe you hear the ominous
crickets or *gasp* cicadas, or even croaking frogs.
If you live closer to the highway or in a more urban
area, you might even hear the elevated or the 3:20
run past you.

Anyway, write something about waking up in the dark,
poetry or prose, story or limerick. The style and
content are up to you. Have some fun with it. ;-)

(Do you think 'blind as a bat' means anything to a bat, since they
use sonar rather than vision to 'see' things?)



Have you been writing? If not, why? Write yourself a note excusing
your absence from writing (I'm doing the same thing now), telling
yourself why you haven't been writing.

We're writers. We have no one to answer to but ourselves: that means
we need to write down the reason(s) why we haven't been writing, so
we can forgive ourselves for it. *grin* Writing down the reasons we
haven't been writing not only gets us writing, but it can also give
us some idea on how to fix the problem(s). It's like journaling, you
write down the problem to clarify it to your mind so that you can
better think of ways to fix it.
What kinds of hobbies do you enjoy? Do you collect stamps? What if
you didn't know that you had a rare stamp but someone else found out
about it? If they didn't want you to know how valuable it was, what
lengths do you think s/he would go to, to get it from you? If the
stamp is important to you, perhaps for sentimental reasons...?

What kinds of hobbies do you have, and what do you think could lead
to the sorts of conflict that you enjoy reading about? I know, the
way I'm saying it is kind of lame, but you can write an interesting
story around it if you consider the possibilities.

Write about your interest(s) and what could get in the way, or what
could happen. What are the possibilities that you see for both worst-
and best-case scenarios?




Despite what you might think of the prompt above, there are many
interpretations of alien societies. This is an exercise in seeing
your own world through different eyes, as if you were seeing it for
the first time.

Look at your everyday routine. You do many things as a matter of
course, going through your day. There are many things that you take
for granted because you have always done them, or always been able
to do them.

List the things that you do every day. Now, how would those habits
change if, say, you had forepaws instead of hands? That might change
the way you comb your hair and how you push the buttons on the
remote. (The design of the remote if everyone had claws, for
instance, would likely have inverted switches rather than
extroverted buttons, since claws can reach into such nice little
niches).

You can choose any alterations you prefer; the idea is describing
how you would manage an ordinary day when some new element has been
added to the mix.



Do you have a character who will stoop to anything to get what they
want? Or perhaps lie in order to keep a loved one out of jail, or
worse? Whether ignoble or for a perceived 'just' cause, write
something about someone who lies, or tells a lie. Not just any lie,
say, but perhaps a lie which gets another person in serious trouble,
perhaps even themselves.

I'm not exactly addicted to soap operas, but I do watch 'Passions'.
The show has a witch, that's why. (They've also ripped on such shows
as The Osbournes, The Adams Family, and Bewitched, and even had Dr
Bombay [sp?], the witch's name is Tabitha, and her daughter's name,
the demon-baby, is Endora). ;-) Port Charles had a vampire and it's
in reruns on SoapNet, so I've been catching up on the vampire-
hunting and angels and the storyline. (If I remember right, The
Avatar is the next storyline). Days of Our Lives had the serial
killer storyline and they're going into a rip on The Prisoner right
now--fun! I'll stop watching them when they get too tediously
romantic and sappy, of course. ;-) There's only so much of that
dreck I can stomach.

Soap operas are one source, but you have examples of false witness
and these kinds of things, like the kids who turn in their parents
in 1984, or even in that one episode of South Park which parodied
Logan's Run. In the movie Logan's Run itself (and in the book you
went to Carousel at 21, not 30), the first big lie was saying that
Logan was actually older than he was so that he could do a little
detective work, and then he uncovered the bigger lie about the
outside world and all that, and that there was a world far beyond
the one in which he'd been raised.

Writers essentially tell lies, too--fabrications which make up
interesting stories. They're real enough to us, sometimes we've
lived with these characters for decades before writing them down on
paper.

(Don't forget the Salem Witch Trials--lying about your neighbors for
this reason or that, even with the Spanish Inquisition...)

Whether a simple little thing between a parent and child or a major
thing which could cost lives and reputations, or anywhere in
between, write a story about a lie that may seem harmless enough but
which turns into a major thing or row. A Quest for the Truth can be
an interesting one.


How do you feel when you get a stomachache? What about of someone
you know, who you're face-to-face with, has a stomachache? How would
you describe your own stomachache? What do you notice about someone
else with one?

Some stomachaches make you clutch at your abdomen. Some can actually
make you be sick (like on the carpet or in the porcelain basin).
Some give you the runs (Why do they cal it the runs when you're not
on your feet at all, but instead rather stationary?) and some
actually make you belch at either end. (How many ways can you
describe a fart attack, anyway? LOL--gas can cause quite the
stomachache.) Some are so bad that the layperson can even mistake it
for appendicitis or even labor.

There are many different kinds of stomachaches and many reactions of
different people to those folks who have stomachaches. Have a bit of
fun (or angst) writing something about someone with a stomachache.



I used to have (it may still lurk somewhere hereabouts) a button I
picked up at NorEasCon II which asks the eternal question--more of a
statement, actually--'an elevator that's afraid of heights?'

In the book series for Harry Potter, a major thing which has even
been a plot point, at least in the second book, was Ron Weasley's
fear of spiders.

Indiana Jones had an almost pathological fear of snakes. ;-)

There are things that we fear. I know that two of my greatest
phobias, which I worked hard to overcome and, if not vanquish, at
least reached an understanding with, were a fear of crowds and a
fear of heights. Of course, I'm also a bit claustrophobic and a bit
agoraphobic. I think almost everyone has a fear, for example, of
being buried alive. At one point in my life I also avoided such
things as cracks on a sidewalk (even those parts that were separated
while the concrete was drying which to my mind were more ordered
cracks), black cats crossing my path, spilt salt and walking under
ladders; now, if a black cat crosses my path, I'll try to scritch it
behind the ears and maybe meow at it, I usually don't worry about
cracks on the sidewalks (of course, Mom died a few years back, but
refusal of the curse thing came a decade or two before that event)
and sometimes I'll even go out of my way to walk under a ladder,
unless it looks too unstable and as if it might fall on someone's
head. There's more danger walking on the streets of New York, where
the facades of some buildings are decaying to the point where
concrete topples to the sidewalk from several stories aboveground.

Of course, I'm not talking about the big things that we're all
afraid of, just the little things that are very much like quirks of
personality.

What kind of phobia can you imagine a character of yours having? A
little one, like Ron's fear of spiders, can go a long way and even
provide fodder for a plot point. A vampire who faints at the sight
of blood, a dragon who's afraid of fire (so long as it's a fire-
breathing one), an angel or bird who's afraid of heights (taking
into account the common representation of an angel, translated as
messenger, being this winged, flying creature). If you even want to
be a bit inane, how about a unicorn who fears virgins or a
multibillionaire who suffers from Imposter Syndrome?


We all know the one joke about the person who opened the fortune
cookie whose message reads 'Help! I'm trapped in a fortune cookie
factory!'. We also know that lots of folks put messages in bottles
or attach them to balloons and send them off to see where they will
end their journey.

There are a few possibilities in this to start any genre of story,
not just the mundane. Could you imagine someone concealing a message
in a pot roast or a cherry pie?

Messages themselves can take many forms. I've heard or read, I don't
remember where, that someone put something in a stew or a bowl of
soup (not necessarily paper) where, although they might now be
written down, they send a clear message to the recipient of said
message.

Write yourself down a list of the possibilities that you see in
this, and then have some fun writing a story or scene (even a flash)
about one of the listed possibilities that you've thought up.



For today (even if I'm posting this late) think about a character
that you would like to try to write. Tomorrow, decide where the
story will take place, and make sure that it suits the character's
story (whether it's a place familiar or not to your character is
your decision alone.

Sunday -- well when you decided on your character--who s/he is, et
cetera--and then the setting, you might have had an idea in mind
for what happens; if not, then write down several ideas on a piece
of paper as they occur to you, even if some of them seem either
stupid and/or evil rather than what you would as a rule write.
Free writing that list will, with luck, give you an idea of what you
want to write about.

Remember to plan for conflict! If we make it a conflict with the
environment, for example, one of your silly ideas might be something
like (given an office setting):

* overworked copier
--goes on strike demanding better wages, toner and working hours
--goes postal and starts shooting people (what ammunition? Toner and
paper, probably, maybe little gears)
--Gets delusional and thinks it's Britney Spears and starts trying
to sing (can you imagine it? *shudder*)

That's given an office environment, of course. A cash register might
have a similar list, and there are more possibilities, but you get
the idea. When you've finally reached momentum writing this, just
write the ideas down for five minutes straight, no looking back
till you're done. You can always keep a tape recorder handy to keep
a verbal record of additional ideas while you're looking over what
you've just written. Sometimes, five minutes isn't quite enough
time. ;-)

Then, write a flash piece, or a short story, about the Battle of the
Copier (or the Register's Rebellion, or whatever). You might have
more than a few good ideas and you can always write more, should you
be so inclined--the idea's just to get to writing.




Describe an apple. What does the shape look like? Does it remind you
of anything? Try to describe the taste of the apple--tart, sweet,
the texture. The color, maybe the variety of apple (I remember
eating a crabapple when I was an adolescent, green, tart, with
texture both crunchy and at the same time chewy, what I guess you
would call crisp, it was almost round but more of an oblong shape,
indented at the top where that wick like thing would come out, I
guess that's the vine or whatever you call it part that it hung from
the tree on, and that dimple thing at the bottom, following both
sides of the seedy core at the center. You could eat the top and the
bottom and sometimes even some of the fleshy parts around the seeds,
even if they had this hard, seedcase-y thing around them...)

What's the best way to eat an apple? Peeled, segmented, or just
biting into it?

BTW, why do you think most folks associate apples with the forbidden
fruit in the garden of Eden> Why didn't anyone think it could be,
say, a tomato (which until at some point in the late 19th century,
most folks thought it was poison). A tomato, at least until
recently, was classified as a fruit. If it's a vegetable now but it
was considered a fruit at one point, it could have been a forbidden
fruit, since it didn't taste as sweet as most fruits. It has seeds,
too, but spread throughout rather than at its core, like the ones in
an apple.

Why do folks think of it as an apple and not, say, a tomato, banana,
orange, grapefruit, plum, peach, cherry, pear (which is close in
some respects to the apple, though closer to a potbellied than
spherical shape)? It's just something to ponder.



I'm sorry, but this one is inspired by all the insipid popups that
interfere when you're trying to type in web addresses or something.
Me, I'm a hunt-and-peck typist, not a keyboardist. When that
happens, I'm usually looking at the keyboard and not the monitor if
I have something I feel is important enough to say, and I want to
say it before it slips my mind (lots of stuff does seem to,
nowadays). Anyway, when I realize what's happened, I've already
forgotten what I was trying to say, or else I've forgotten half of it,
or my train of thought has derailed, or Terror (mainly this one)
wants the computer. Grr, it may be her computer, but I pay for the
online, and my own computer refuses to work (you know how
temperamental these computers get, they're geezers when they're two
years old and outdated after a month).

Anyway, what are the ways you handle these popups, this 'visual
spam'? How many ways from Sunday would you like to strangle the
folks responsible for it? *grin* I mean, spam e-mail’s bad enough
without popups.

We need some way to let off the steam. ;-) Who knows, you might even
get a story out of it, like 'The Haunted Popup' or 'The Popup That
Wouldn't Die' or something. Even, if you wrote fanfic of any type or
just want the speculation,, how different sorts of popups would work-
-like, say, in the Max Headroom universe or in Harry Potter's world.
Even in the Star Wars Universe, how do you think a popup would
work? Remember, you have holograms, so even Princess Leia's request
to Obi=Was Kenobi could have turned into an advert.



They say that 'turnabout is fair play'. Do you write poetry as a
rule? Try to write something that you feel would be the opposite of
poetry. Do you like romance? Perhaps the opposite would be fighting
(even though some forms of the romance genre do equate the two, as
in the 'kiss and make up' variety). If you write war stories, then
write an anti-war story.

Hmm... Come to think of it, the anti-poem, the anti-romance, the
anti-humor, the anti-drama... It might be better and more coherent
to add that prefix and then write something about it. For example,
if you like SF, then write an anti-SF piece. That's open to
interpretation, so go with your impression of the antithesis of SF.
What would an anti-poem look like?

Even if you journal, rather than write the other kinds of stuff,
make an anti-journaling entry. Have some fun with it--and sometimes,
trying to write something's opposite (especially when you're stuck
on something you're working on) can give you a better idea of how to
move forward with whatever you're working on.

Please excuse me, I'm going to have a cup of anti-tea now....




LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE MAKING OTHER PLANS

or

THE BEST LAID PLANS....



Speaking of prompts, how's this one?


BEYOND HELP


That's how I feel, sometimes (LOL).

An alternate (and John is familiar with this title) could be

Temple of the Dead Cow

(that's what I call the local Burger King.




You've seen a highway, right? Whether you live by or have driven down them, the critters are inescapable. ;-)

Closing your eyes, ignoring visual cues, how would you describe the highway? What's the traffic like, high or low volume? How does the air taste around it? I've noticed that, depending on the traffic, road and car conditions, you can actually taste as well as smell the exhaust fumes in the air. Do your best to try to write a sensory description of it without using visual cues.



What's your favorite flavor ice cream? Why do you like it? Try to describe it as best you can--flavor, texture, color... Do you get an ice cream headache? I never seen to, but I think I did once. it sort of feels like a band stretched across your head in a way, doesn't it? Brain freeze, gotta gronk it. ;-)




I've taken to making canned soup and adding things to it, treating the canned stuff as sort of a base. I like adding fresh vegetables, but that isn't always possible, so I've used frozen ones. Canned vegetables also work quite well.

If you've ever seen the list for the 37 dramatic situations, that's like a base. You add your own ingredients to the mix to make it into a flavorful soup or stew. I know that copies of the list were available online


The Thirty-six (plus one) Dramatic Situations
http://www.sff.net/people/julia.west/CALLIHOO/ideagen2.htm

I just did a random Google search




I was going to try to write this in a seat-of-my-pants rhyme, but for the purpose of illustration it wouldn't work.

I'm making the assumption that you all listen to songs. I do, too--and like Weird Al or any true filker, I like writing parodies or twists on the songs (for example, Madonna's Like A Virgin and Weird Al's Like a Surgeon, I twisted that around to "Like Ted Sturgeon, though I'm still working on that one. I don't know if you remember the song with the lyrics "rock on to electric avenue" but I twisted that around to "type on to selectric avenue", if you remember Selectric type




Take an aphorism and twist it on its ear. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to use it as a title for a story or poem. For example, you know how folks say that you can't find a needle in a haystack. Then there's the princess and the pea. You can't find a princess in a needle of a pea in a haystack, or a princess in a haystack and a needle in a pea? Well, you know what I mean. Even a princess eating peas who sits in a haystack and finds the needle when she sits on it (ouch). They do say that the buttocks tends to be one of the more sensitive parts of one's body.




An elevator that's afraid of heights? A rabbit afraid of carrots? A sith lord afraid of the dark?

Sometimes, little faults make the characters interesting. A vampire who's afraid of blood, do you think he'd turn veggie? Sap instead of blood? It's still a life stream thing.

Why is the thought of a vampire afraid of, say, bubble gum occurring to me now? Mm, maybe it'll make his teeth stick, or something...




Some folks add a list of words and tell you to use them in a written piece. Maybe I'll break from group tradition and try that. Hmm, let's see, creative use of words and places...

Winnemucca, Nevada
Slots
Rutabagas
Extraterrestrial
Out-of-this-world
submarine
hoagie
lime Ricky
Spiderman
shellfish
gargoyle




Precedent

You have an event. Write about what leads up to the event, with the culmination of the story being the event itself. (I know, copout, LOL).




Write a scene or a poem about a betrayal where a lifelong friend turns
their back on a protagonist.


From the Surrealist Compliment Generator:
:


Fast blinking reveals the true visage of time pieces hidden within your
eyes.

Hm, fast blinking. That could be an eye, a malfunctioning traffic light, the funny blinky light on your VCR when the power dies and then comes back on... Time pieces could be memories, bits of the past, blocks of time, a load of appointments that you're not sure that you will make it all to on time. It can be anything. What does it call to your mind?

Enjoy!





A Grave Endeavor.






Chakra Surgery

Sacred Centers: <Chakra
The word chakra is Sanskrit for wheel or disk and signifies one of seven basic energy centers in the body. Each of these centers correlates to major nerve ganglia branching forth from the spinal column. In addition the chakras also correlate to levels of consciousness, archetypal elements, developmental stages of life, colors, sounds, body functions, and much, much more.




A dark and stormy knight.
(I could not resist that one)