Category Archives: Methods

Writing prompt: the woods burst into flame

Leave a reply

Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The woods burst into flame”

 

The sky seemed to darken in an instant. Heavy clouds swirled, and lightning flashed. Only a moment ago, it had been a perfect summer day. Around Nadya and Vanya, the woods burst into flames.

“How?” Vanya cried.

Nadya grabbed Vanya’s hand and ran. Vanya had such a habit wanting to know the why of things, and as the flames licked around the great trees, the why was not currently important. Nadya saved her curiosity for the relevant time.

Flames seemed to repel them on all sides. Above, dark clouds still swirled. Flocks of bird and animals also fled the uncanny fire too, and so the air and trees were full of frightened motion. Nadya and Vanya were encircled by flames. There was nowhere to run.

Vanya sat on the ground and began to cry. “It’s so hot, I just want to go home.” He was only six, and even in her frustration with her brother, her heart ached for him. As the big sister, it was her job to provide safety, but she too was tempted to collapse onto the ground and give in. It seemed inevitable at this point.

“Vanya, come with me,” Nadya said, a sudden idea in her mind. It might not save them, but it was something. “Climb this tree with me.”

“But—” Vanya tears paused as confusion took over, “Papa says we must never climb those trees. That children who do are never seen again, or fall to their death.”

“Vanya, look around,” Nadya said, suddenly manic with the idea, “we could use a miraculous disappearance. I don’t know where we’d go, but it couldn’t be worse than here.”

Nadya and her brother climbed the tree. The texture was odd under hand, untreelike. When they neared the top, she heard a sound. It was the piercing cry of an enormous bird. Nadya was so startled she almost fell as the six-foot bird emerged from the storm clouds. One bird grabbed Nadya, and the other grabbed Vanya. The two birds flew high into the sky, and the children looked down onto the burning forest. Nadya hoped that the birds were kindly disposed to children.

Writing prompt: using an illustration as inspiration

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

I wrote this prompt while looking at the image below, which I made for my worldbuilding exercises, discussed here.

SONY DSC

Enh and Della sat at the table, staring out the window rather than at each other. Enh hadn’t seen Della in fifteen years, not since that terrible night. And now they sat in a beautiful café, staring out at the sea rather than talking. Out of the blue, Della had contacted her two days before. She still hadn’t explained why, and Enh was growing uncomfortable. In the distance, a sailboat skating gracefully by. Enh wished she were there. Anywhere but here.

“It’s good to see you again, Enh,” Della mumbled again. Enh just nodded this time. Della’s voice, so distinctive, was unchanged, and she mumbled just like she had so many years ago. She paused for a long time. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

Enh sighed. “You contacted me. And you still haven’t told me why yet. I didn’t come here to reminisce. I came here because to asked me to, and I’d prefer you get to the point.”

Della’s eye’s narrowed. When she was young, she might have cried, but evidently she was past that. “You always make everything hard. Fine, I’ll just say it. I found out that Intira might be alive.”

Enh dropped her fork. Visions of that night came unbidden. The night they found the bike on the beach, but not Intira. Intira’s angry note, condemning all their undermining, how they had never really been friends. A man who’d seen her running into the ocean. Her clothes, found a month later on the coast.

(As it happens, the end of this prompt became inspired by another illustration, see below.)

SONY DSC

Writing prompt: The Little Viking

1 Reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The Little Viking”  (this prompt inspired by a little Viking figurine in my office, as pictured.)

It wasn’t easy for Olie to be the littlest Viking in his boat. Big Thorvald stood two heads taller than him, and most of the others stood at least one head taller. Olie even had a special sword made to be lighter and shorter for him. The others were mostly polite to his face, respecting his moniker of “mad herring”, but they laughed when they thought he couldn’t hear. He heard.

There were advantages to his stature. He knew that, he just wished he could convince the others of it. Once in battle, his enemy, a great hulking man with braided red hair, took a mighty swipe with his sword. Fortunately, Olie was so low the blow only took one horn from his helmet. And then he stabbed the red-haired man and danced on his corpse. But did his boat-mates remember that? No, they laughed at his one-horned helmet.

Then one voyage, Olie spotted a tiny Viking on another boat. Here was a man who could understand him, perhaps teach him battle techniques. At the very least, here was a man who he could drink a lot of mead with. When the boats landed in the trading town, Olie immediately rushed to the other ship, neglecting his duties, but not caring.

The other tiny Viking turned around—it was a lady. Olie’s village used to have women on the boats, but when there were enough men, they opted not to. Here, finally, was a Viking he stood over. He smiled broadly at her.

“Don’t get any ideas,” the woman said, smiling back. “I might be as little as you, but you know as well as I do how hard we fight to make up the difference.”

Her eyes glinted, and Olie saw that she probably would punch him as easily and effectively as any of his boatmates. “This is true. Let’s drink now and save the fighting for later.”

Writing prompt: The Melt

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The Melt”

Elijah strapped the packages and foodstuffs to the sleigh. When they were secured, he went and fed the dogs. It would be a long day for them tomorrow. It was the hard time of year. It was time for the Melt. Each year their small community packed onto sleds to escape the floods of the spring melt. One who left too early faced oppressive cold and winds in the high country. One who left too late faced mud and run off and risked the sudden floods. This winter’s weather had been tumultuous, and Elijah felt uneasily that they might both be too early and too late. This year, perhaps nothing would be right.

#

In the morning, Elijah and his neighbors left their communal home. It would not be there when they returned. Ahead of them stood miles of whiteness, the great fertile flood plain. The world was silent but for the creaking of the ice under the sun. All day long, the dogs pulled the sleds. Elijah and the stronger men and women skied alongside the sleighs. The children and the elderly rode the sleighs.

Late in the afternoon, the party came to a river.

“This ice is no good,” Elijah’s sister Elta said. “Look, cracks run deep into it, and the color is not right.”

“I said we left too late,” someone said.

“We’ll have to go around,” Elijah said, trying to force an air confidence he did not feel. “This has happened before.” It had happened before, but never without death and suffering. The fickle sun shone down, weakening the river further.

Writing prompt: giant sheep

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Giant sheep” (This prompt is loosely inspired by Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith, which involves ranching gigantic sheep that produce an immortality serum. If you are looking for weird sci-fi, give in it a try)

John’s sheep Dolly stood with effort. She had eaten everything on this patch of the ranch, and regrettably had to drag herself to another patch. This part always worried John. Although Dolly’s bones were engineered to include carbon nanofibers, her tremendous weight still caused fractures sometimes. A few generations ago, the sheep were only 50 feet tall. Now they were 100 feet tall, and maybe that was just too tall.

Dolly sensed the danger, too, and she walked gently, testing each patch of ground before placing her weight more firmly. John stayed well back from her path. She had lost her balance before. Other ranchers had died in this way.

Dolly set another foot down. John heard a cracking sound. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!” He shouted. He ran from Dolly. She gurgled in surprise as a sinkhole opened under her hoof. She tumbled to the ground. Her eyes were wide and she bleated deafeningly. The fall must have injured her.

John sighed. Ohio simply wasn’t Norstrilia, and this stupid form of husbandry should have stayed on that god forsaken rock. He ought to switch to giant chickens.

Writing prompt: the spongy place in the yard

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The spongy place in the yard” (As a kid in the northeast, this happened in my backyard. I thought there was something under there, which made a perfect launching point for a prompt.)

Every spring, after the snow melts, the backyard gets spongy. I always knew why, and though I told mom, she laughed and smiled in that patronizing way. I knew there was something underground. The ground just sagged too much, the way the ceiling sagged and my grandmother’s abandoned childhood home. I could tell by the way it looked that it was a sagging ceiling too. I was just seeing it from above.

Then I noticed that the neighbor spends a lot of time in her shed. Hours. She must be about two hundred, hunched and always walking with a hand against the small of her back. Summer or winter, she walks with a throw wrapped tightly over her shoulders.

So last night, I went into her shed. Sure enough, under a sheet of plywood, I found a staircase downward. I turned on my flashlight, and I went down the winding stairs. There must have been fifty, I lost count. At the end of the staircase, I found myself in a huge earthen room, taller than any room in my house. And on the ceiling, they hung, dozens of little people like my neighbor. They were all wrapped up in throws like the woman. Then they noticed me, and I discovered they weren’t throws. They were wings. And they were flying after me.

I panicked, and I ran down a corridor into the darkness. I dropped my flashlight, but I kept running, because duh. I hear the rustle of their wings in the darkness, searching, like the sound of a sheet being snapped again and again.

 

Writing prompt: The special box of chocolates

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The special box of chocolates” (author’s note: I am apparently a terrible Valentine. This was the less horrifying of the two prompts I wrote today. You were warned.)

We’ve come a long way with chocolates, I mused to myself, leaving the confectionary with a gleaming heart-shaped box full of truffles. I’d had the old versions, with just sugar and caffeine as their chemicals of action. They tasted nice, but it was a letdown compared to the modern thrills. I pulled out the guide on the walk home. The one with the ripple caused increased *ahem* blood flow, the one with the white stripe caused relaxation, the triangular one caused a sort of numbness that increased stamina… my favorite was certainly the square dark chocolate one that sort of made you feel like the other person, especially if they had one too. I slipped the guide back into the box, and grinned at the knowing leers as I walked.

My husband’s eyes flickered when I arrived home. “Ha, really John?”

“I get it every year, I know,” I said sheepishly. “But I so look forward to it.”

“I do too,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. For a bit, we needed no chemical excitement at all.

I stumbled out of the bedroom, feeling pleased with myself. But then I saw the beautiful box of chocolates, chewed and gnarled. The dog. Oh my god, he could be poisoned!

The dog, a great, powerful bulldog, came around the corner, and then I realized that poisoning might be the least of my issues. He snorted, and he looked me in the eye. I dashed out the door, half-naked, into February.

Writing prompt: The devious cat

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The devious cat”

I lie on my couch and watch my master. I gurgle and roll around, feeling the suede fabric against my fur. This time of year it’s a combination of pleasure and a little pain, with the sound of a thousand static shocks singing out. My roommate turns and smiles at me. She doesn’t know what I am, but that’s okay.

I leap down and saunter over, and my roommate coos. I taste the ground as I walk with the pads of my paws; there is pollen and dust and dead skin cells. I load them into storage for now. When I sleep, I will upload them to the cloud.

I wonder how much longer we will be here. How much data will be enough for the creators? I don’t know how long we’ve been here thus far. My task is a small part of a large one. Sometimes the other gatherer and I talk about the creators, but not often. We are always gathering the same information, he and I; it is hard not to feel competitive.

My roommate pets me. “Oh, who’s a friendly kitty today?” She adjusts my collar. She thinks she owns me. It’s cute, and I don’t discourage it. Time to nap and upload data.

Writing prompt: Red

Leave a reply

Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Red” (this prompt was inspired by my science fiction group’s monthly theme. Red was chosen relating to February and Valentine’s Day, but we know there are other themes red suits as well.)

I woke to fresh snowfall outside my window, but it wasn’t the glittering field of white that caught my eye, it was the speckles of red in the white. I woke up and pulled on my robe and slippers and blundered into the brilliant glare. There in the snow, not thirty feet from my house, I found the red in the snow. It was clearly blood, and a lot of it. I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the snow. I kicked at the snow. Perhaps, somewhere, there was a clue to what had happened in the field, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to touch the sullied snow.

My dog, Clover, ran out from the house, through the door I’d left standing wide open. He bounded over, initially happy to see me, but after a moment concerned himself with the patch of snow as well. He didn’t have my compunctions about the blemished snow, and instead buried his face into it, seeking the heart of the problem.

He brought his face up, smeared with red and frost. And in his mouth was a pendant, with the sign of a saint I didn’t know.

“Good job, boy!” I said, and Clover dropped the chain in my hand, and proceeded to kiss me with his scarlet smeared mouth. I screamed and ran back into the house, someone or something’s sticky blood all over my hands. Clover cocked his head to the side and followed behind me. I washed my hands and then I went to the computer to look up this saint.

Writing prompt: the lights blinked off on the ship

Leave a reply

Time: 5 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Lights blinked off all over the ship”

Daisy watched as lights blinked off all over the ship. First at the front of the boat, then progressively to the back. Finally the whole boat was engulfed in blackness. After her eyes adjusted, Daisy could see the stars glittering off the ocean. She hoped that now, the enemy could not see them. She didn’t know how the enemy saw.

Her master approached. “Don’t worry, doggie. I know it’s dark, but dark means safe.”

She could hear the fear in the girl’s voice. She started to shake. This corridor was dangerous, even a dog knew. It was the only way to the fabled north sea. In the north sea, everybody played games all day long, and the sun never set. She licked the girl’s hand. It made Daisy feel better to try to please her master.

She heard the buzz of engines above. She cringed. Her ears were better than her master’s.

“What is it, Daisy, what do you hear?”

She wished she could tell her master to run, to hide. But she couldn’t. She could only hope. So she licked her hand and stared into the little girl’s wide, friendly eyes. She looked over her shoulder. She heard the engines now too.