Writing Prompt

Writing Prompt

Some time ago you have adopted a habit to don a disguise and spy on your subjects incognito. One things have led to another, and tonight you, as a head of the Revolution, is supposed to lead an attack on the palace and depose the ruthless tyrant, i.e. also you.

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Non-Boring Environments that need Fantasy Representation

Tropical Rainforests

Scrubland/Dry Forests. For extra effect make them the sort that burn very often; some native plants never germinate until after a fire, and some animals not only rely on fire to smoke out prey, but may even start them themselves.

Savannas/Tropical Grasslands

Temperate Rainforests. I almost didn’t include this bc New Zealand is covered in them, and that’s where they filmed Lord of the Rings. But tbh, no one really knows about them, so it belongs here

Taiga Forests

Barren Tundra, perfect for some extreme seasonal dichotomy

Polar Ice Sheets

Desert-Grasslands (arguably the same as Scrubland but Australia’s good at adding its own twists)

Barren Desert

If you like Cacti, look at American Deserts like the Sonoran

Salt Flats

Soda Lakes and Alkaline Lakes

Madagascar’s Karst Limestone Formations

Madagascar’s Spiny Forests

Madagascar’s Baobab Forests

Madagascar’s Subhumid Forests (Madagascar is cool as hell ok)

Danxia Landforms

Badlands/Mountainous Deserts

Steppes and Highland Prairies

Flood Basalts

Newly-Formed Islands, still rife with Volcanic activity

Now for Underwater Environments, sure Coral Reefs are cool.

But there are SO MANY other kinds of environments for aquatic settings, it’s unbelievable:

Seaside Cliffs

Archipelagos. Not just Tropical Island chains like Polynesia (Moana anyone?) but also Coldwater Archipelagos like the Aleutians.

Tidal Flats

Bayous/Cypress Swamps

Tropical River Basins, AKA Seasonally Flooded Rainforests

Mangrove Swamps/Deltas/Beaches

Kelp Forests

The Open Ocean

Coastal Seabeds

Rocky Beaches with Tidepools

And there are a LOT more I could name but this post is already obscenely long as is, if you’d like to toss in your own go right ahead, but my point is if you limit yourself to European Deciduous Forests you’re a wimp.

Sorry for this, reiterating, story or dialogue prompts(whichever you like to do more) about a small country’s revolution with spies and the like. No pressure or anything! Have a nice day!

Now you’re making me want to read your story! Well, if you’re okay with a mix of formats, here goes:

- All the roads to the location of the emergency political meeting are closed off, the air is watched by drones, and a full suit of trained guards patrol the Freedom bridge that spans across the political district. The only way in free from surveillance? The underside of the bridge, and a bone-shattering drop.

- “Council, bad news! Prince Shemavri was at their war meeting!“ From the back of the hall, a uniformed figure adorned with a crown separates itself from the rest of the council members and slips quietly through the door.

- “They deported us to this island for criticizing them. If they decided it would be a good idea to group all the rebels together, they well deserve the consequences.“

- A leader, a thinker, a criticizer; the front figure of the revolution has everything. Yes, she literally has everything, because she’s also the supreme ruler of their nation.

- Three double agents are sent on a mission together to infiltrate a suspected base.None of them knows that the others are spies for the ones they’re spying on, too.

- “Don’t be naïve. People know, they suspect and whisper yet nothing changes. Showing people the truth won’t end this regime. So we show them the lie.“

Hope this was what you had in mind, and you have a nice day too!

- Mod C

Some fractured fairy tale ideas...

- Cinderella went to the ball to kill the prince.

- “All hail Alice, the Queen of Hearts.”

- Rapunzel is the witch’s illegitimate daughter, and she is being kept safe from a king who would have her killed on sight.

- The Little Match Girl is a now phantom luring people to their deaths.

- Little Red Riding Hood is a werewolf.

- “So… You’re the Pied Piper, eh? I thought you’d be taller.”

- Princess Snow White and the evil Snow Queen? One and the same.

- “If you value your life, my life, the lives of everyone in this city… you won’t wake the sleeping princess.”

- The land of the Twelve Dancing Princesses is falling apart at the seams, and the rest of reality with it.

- A witch who made some bad decisions in her youth is forced to adopt and raise a child.

- After Jack the Giant Killer ruthlessly murdered their king and threw their world into turmoil and war, the inhabitants of the Sky Kingdom must rebuild their lives.

- “What… what is it?” “A firebird – the last of her kind.”

not sure what should happen next in your story?

Embarrass your protagonist. Make them seem weak and vulnerable in some way.

Shoot someone. That always takes the reader by surprise. 

In relation, kidnap someone. Or, rather, make it seem to your protagonist like someone has been kidnapped. 

Have one of your side characters disappear or become unavailable for some reason. This will frustrate your protagonist.

Have someone kiss the wrong girl, boy, or person, especially if you’ve been setting up a romance angle. It’s annoying.

If this story involves parents, have them argue. Push the threat of divorce, even if you know it won’t ever happen. It’ll make your readers nervous.

Have someone frame your protagonist for a crime they didn’t commit. This could range from a dispute to a minor crime to a full-blown felony.

If this is a fantasy story involving magic or witchcraft, create a terrible accident that’s a direct result of their spell-casting. 

Injure your protagonist in some way, or push them into a treacherous scenario where they might not make it out alive. 

Have two side characters who are both close to the protagonist get into a literal fist-fight. This creates tension for the reader, especially if these characters are well-developed, because they won’t know who to root for.

Make your protagonist get lost somewhere (at night in the middle of town, in the woods, in someone else’s house, etc.) 

Involve a murder. It can be as in-depth and as important as you want it to be. 

Introduce a new character that seems to prey on your protagonist’s flaws and bring them out to light.

If it’s in-character, have one of your characters get drunk or take drugs. Show the fallout of that decision through your protagonist. 

Spread a rumor about your protagonist. 

If your protagonist is in high-school, create drama in the school atmosphere. A death of a student, even if your protagonist didn’t know them personally, changes the vibe. 

If your story involves children, have one of them do something dangerous (touch a hot stove, run out into the road, etc.) and show how the protagonist responds to this, even if the child isn’t related to them. 

In a fantasy story, toss out the idea of a rebellion or war between clans or villages (or whatever units you are working with). 

Add a scenario where your protagonist has to make a choice. We all have watched movies where we have screamed don’t go in there! at the top of our lungs at the main character. Make them go in there. 

Have your protagonist find something, even if they don’t understand the importance of it yet. A key, a document, an old stuffed animal, etc. 

Foreshadow later events in some way. (Need help? Ask me!)

Have your protagonist get involved in some sort of verbal altercation with someone else, even if they weren’t the one who started it. 

Let your protagonist get sick. No, but really, this happens in real life all the time and it’s rarely ever talked about in literature, unless it’s at its extremes. It could range from a common cold to pneumonia. Maybe they end up in the hospital because of it. Maybe they are unable to do that one thing (whatever that may be) because of it.

Have someone unexpected knock on your protagonist’s door. 

Introduce a character that takes immediate interest in your protagonist’s past, which might trigger a flashback.

Have your protagonist try to hide something from someone else and fail.

Formulate some sort of argument or dispute between your protagonist and their love interest to push them apart. 

Have your protagonist lose something of great value in their house and show their struggle to find it. This will frustrate the reader just as much as the protagonist.

Create a situation where your protagonist needs to sneak out in the middle of the night for some reason.

Prevent your character from getting home or to an important destination in some way (a car accident, a bad storm, flat tire, running out of gas, etc.)

When you start to stir this morning, you cant help but wonder if you’re having a particularly odd dream, the stats hovering behind your eyelids, making that the only real conclusion. Opening your eyes and blinking a few times, you frown in confusion. Hanging before you in the air, are the same set of stats you could see with your eyes closed. They seem to be gaming stats of some sort, something that confuses you since, whilst you enjoy them, you rarely get the time to play them anymore, so you generally don’t dream about them. Sitting up in bed, you find the stats following you easily, somehow not obscuring your vision. You’re still convinced this might be some kind of weird dream, despite the cold slowly seeping into your feet, now that they are touching the floor. With a sigh, you try to pay attention to the stats again, deciding that you may as well fuck around with them, since its just a dream. 

Over the course of the morning, you mess with all of your stats, finding you can move them around with a brief thought. To your surprise, and delight, they seem to work, but as the day wears on, you start to realise that this might not be a dream after all. 

As you sit there, absently using your increased strength to open that jar you’ve been trying to crack into all week, you contemplate what this might mean for you. Is it permanent? How far reaching can you make this? What will you do with this kind of power? Already you’ve used your charisma to convince the crabby old landlord to give you a few more days to pay rent, a usually impossible task. You’ve used your luck and found a hundred dollars stuck in a hedge outside, and you used your intelligence stats to finish the essay that you had been stuck on all week, because you forgot all the subject matter. Luckily, no one else seems to see the small window of stats. You even figured out how to make the little window fold away to one side, almost invisible, if you weren’t already aware it was there.

A soft hiss of air interrupts your thoughts, the jar opening with surprising ease. Suddenly, your stats glow brightly the numbers increasing on each and the small letters above the stats finally draw your eyes up,something you hadn’t really paid attention to until now. You watch as the simple “Level: 1″ slowly shifts to “Level: 2″, and it dawns on you that this might just be the beginning.