Writing Prompts

FICTION: Changing Our Stars

/ Stuart Danker / 1 Comment

Changing Our Stars - Person looking up at stars

This is an assignment for a writing course, and I figured I’d use it as an excuse to post. Enjoy.

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Clara strode through her neighbourhood, street lamps so far apart she spent a bulk of her walk in darkness. Purple clouds blotted the stars, threatening to swallow her whole too.

It wasn’t the best idea, being out at night, but she had to get out of her cramped room; a cramped room that her boyfriend was currently sharing with some skank from God-knows-where. It took all her willpower not to clock him in the head—and that bitch too.

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NON FICTION: Life’s Biggest Goal

/ Stuart Danker / 1 Comment
holding-hands-grasping

Photo credit: Sam Caplat

Via Daily Prompt: Cling

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I can’t polish a blank page, which is why I actually started writing this piece — I wanted to prove to myself that I couldn’t polish crap either. I haven’t been able to write as freely as I’d like lately, and it’s probably because I’m clinging to perfection.

Much of my workflow involves tinkering the first sentence over and over until I realise I’ve veered so far off what I actually wanted to say that I end up abandoning the piece completely.

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WRITING PROMPT: God Of Gamers

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clouds

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Writing prompt: One morning humanity wakes up to a message in the sky. “Sorry was AFK for a bit there” -God

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“How do you think it got there?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably some skywriters with a good idea of a prank.”

“Skywriting? But it’s been there since this morning!”

I leave the stranger behind, because I don’t need more questions that I can understand myself. Why don’t you come up with your own explanations then? If I’d stayed there for another minute, I might’ve snapped at him. Thank God, heh, I had the presence of mind to leave. Who knows what else I’d have done. I’m just on edge, is all. But deep down, I know I’m fuckin’ terrified.

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FICTION: Festive Doom

/ Stuart Danker / 1 Comment
new-year-party

Photo credit: Rolands Lakis

Via Daily Prompt: Festive

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There’s a weird relationship between happy tunes and horror movies; the twinkling of a baby mobile, or tunes from a theme park. You don’t get the same chill from, say, dubstep or emo rock.

The advertisement jingles in supermarkets are right up the horror-movie aisle (heh). How could anybody be happy about a ten percent discount off a two-dollar item? My heart goes out to the staff every time I shop in a supermarket that repeats music and the month’s current offers.

Today, I find myself at the hypermarket deciding on a door gift for a new year’s party. Should I go for the wine, or the snacks? I visualise a wine snob at the party—and it’s a real possibility because I don’t know anyone there—frowning at my ten-dollar bottle of wine. But ten-dollar wine is classier than twenty-dollar bags of Lays, surely?

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WRITING PROMPT: A Birthday Wish

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Birthday Cake.jpg

Prompt: You are in your twenties. You wake up to find yourself in your eight-year-old body. You are in the time and at the place you were when you were 8, but with all the memories and mannerisms of your twenty-something self.

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The smell of bacon roused Jess. It’s a smell that took her back to her eighth birthday; the most memorable one of her life. Dad had said that she’d become a big girl, and Jess had to agree.

She was certain that it was that exact day, because underneath the salty tang of the bacon was a hint of whiskey, a combination that’s involuntarily etched in her mind like a badly-drawn tattoo.

Barbie dolls and My Little Pony colouring books were strewn about her room, remnants of love from her late mother.

Wait, mom’s still alive, isn’t she? Am I dreaming?

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