Category Archives: creative writing

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fun with writing prompts

I’ve started doing this thing on my dumb Tumblr thing where I take a picture from one of the blogs I follow, and use it to inspire a little bit of prose fiction.

I really liked this one, so I’m sharing it here.

Illustration for article ‘The Scientist, The Humanist, and Us’ (1981) by Ron Walotsky in Future magazine.
Illustration for article ‘The Scientist, The Humanist, and Us’ (1981) by Ron Walotsky in Future magazine.

“Everything in our world, from the food we eat to the bombs we use to kill each other, is just reflected light.”

Poe floated in the isolation tank, the lecture playing into the darkness from an unseen speaker.

“Reality is real because we all agree upon it,” the lecturer continued.

Was there anything beyond the darkness of his solitude? Did the world exist if he wasn’t there to experience it?

If it wasn’t there, what was holding the isolation tank?

“Or maybe reality exists because we are, all of us, inside the mind of an even greater being, the way our thoughts and ideas – our reality – is within our own.”

Poe exhaled all the air from his lungs, and floated in the darkness.

 

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my good idea was so good someone already did it!

I’ve been writing this science fiction short story for a little while, now, and I think I’m about 3/4 finished with the puke draft*. I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction for fun, because that’s where my head is right now (Lightspeed Magazine and the Expanse series have been delightful companions, as was the most recent Twelve Tomorrows) but also for inspiration, because that’s where my head needs to be right now.

So when I’m not actively writing this story, or thinking about what I’m going to write next in it, my brain is kicking around lots of other ideas that I are interesting to me, like What if future humans built a ring around Earth, sort of like Ringworld but smaller, and the story was told from the point of view of the last generation to live on the planet? It turns out that this has already been done, which is both reassuring — Hey! My good idea was so good someone already did it! — and frustrating — Shit! My good idea was so good someone already did it!.

I have learned not to talk about things that are ideas, or share details of works in progress, because it’s a great way to bring the work to a screeching halt for me, but I have this idea for a short story (like, very short, just a couple thousand words) that I like so much, I have just decided right now in this very instant that I will not reveal what the idea is, and will instead write it out and make it a story.

So now this is a much shorter and less interesting post than I thought it was going to be when I started.

BORING

 

*The puke draft, as defined by my friend and mentor Amy Berg (who created both my role on Leverage and Eureka), is the draft you write first, where you just puke up everything onto the page, without stopping to fix stuff or redo stuff. I add to this the following: you go all the way through until the story is done, and then you can go back and start washing away the puke to leave behind the yummy undigested morsels of delicious story.

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What’s this guy’s story?

So this may be fun for some of you.

Last night, I was looking for a new sweater online, and this picture came up in the search results:

what's this guy's storyThere is so much … wrongness … in this picture, I began to wonder: what’s they guy’s story?

Like, not the model who’s getting paid for the gig — good for him. I mean, the fictional guy who is wearing this … thing.

You get  up to 150 words to tell his story, if you want to do that. Mine is on the other side of the thingy.

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1964 green dawn lifotff by Bonestell. Found on Flickr.
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From the (Ficlets) Vault: A Godawful Small Affair

Does anyone remember Ficlets? It was a really fun collaborative writing site that allowed us to write stories no longer than 1024 characters, and anyone could write prequels or sequels to it.

I loved Ficlets, and it played a significant part in my growth and development as a writer, because the limitations it imposed on us, as well as the short format, made it fairly risk-free for someone like me who was just figuring out what his writing voice sounded like (and how to use it).

Some of the Ficlets I wrote are pretty good, and others aren’t, but they’re all things I made where something wasn’t before. This one, which was inspired by listening to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars on repeat a lot, is one of the better ones I did:

A Godawful Small Affair

by Wil Wheaton
originally published at 01:55PM on Wednesday, January 30, 2008

“I want to move to Mars, and open up a bar,” Gregor said.

Matti inhaled deeply, and let a cloud of pale blue smoke surround his head.

“What would you call it?” Matti said.

“Moonage Daydream.” Gregor said.

They sat together on a crumbling balcony, exposed rebar and radioactive dust, and waited for the rocket, three miles distant, to launch.

“What’s it mean?” Matti said. He flicked the butt of his cigarette over the edge, and watched it fall out of sight.

“It’s the title of an old song,” Gregor looked past the rocket, to a horizon he knew he’d never cross, “from about a hundred years ago.”

“Nobody’s going to get it. Why would you pick something that old?”

“Because back then,” Gregor said, “people had hope.”

The ground shook, and they watched the rocket climb into the sky.

If you follow that link, above, you can find some stories other folks wrote when they were inspired by this one as a starting point. Hell, if you want, you can write a prequel or sequel and post it in a comment here, just keep it to 1024 characters or less, because that’s the rule.

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