Let's All Write Short Fiction! Now with new, disastrous prompts

Writing is fun! What’s even more fun is doing it as a community. So I figure we can come together and write stories based around common prompts! I don’t want this to be very serious or high stakes, mostly just something to do for fun and to help develop our writing skills in a casual environment. I thought about making it a competition but to be honest I’m not a huge fan of those. Of course, if you want serious feedback and crits and stuff, go right ahead and ask for them! And if enough people desire a competetive aspect, I don’t see a problem with starting that up.

So how will this work?

Every 2 weeks a new prompt will be selected, and anyone who desires can submit a short story based on it. No strict word limit, but it’s better to try and not make it too long. Trimming the fat from a story can do wonders to improve it! I’m not going to impose any real “rules” here though, more just gudelines to give people direction if they want it. You can just write any story you want to, i won’t stop you!

What if I suck?

Write anyway. There’s only one way to improve, and that is to keep writing. It’s ok to suck. Most people don’t get good at something without sucking at it first. I am far from a great writer but I’m not gonna let that stop me!

Submission

Don’t put the actual text in this thread, that would just make the whole thing unreadable. Instead, please use a service like Google Docs to host your stories. Just post a link in the thread, along with the title, wordcount, prompt and any other relevent details (such as whether or not you want crits, etc). There’s no hard deadline so if you want to submit something for an older prompt, that’s fine so long as you specify that you’re doing so!

I’m planning on keeping an archive of submitted stories in the second post of this thread, so you can browse at your leisure. Please message me if you want yours to be removed!

Feedback

Please be mindful when giving and receiving crits. Makes sure that the criticisms you give are actually constructive, and do your best to accept criticism from others, even if you don’t agree with them. Basically don’t be a prick. For the sake of ease, specify whether or not you want people to give you feedback and don’t give people crits unsolicited.

Also, remember to proofread your stuff! It will make everyone’s lives easier.

Prompts

You can write your story based on the current prompt(s) primarily, but if you see an old one that you absolutely love and want to use, i ain’t gonna stop you. I’m not planning on being very strict here, it’s all for fun. Or you can use a totally different prompt from somewhere else, or no prompt at all! The world is your oyster!

If you have a cool idea for a prompt, feel free to suggest it! I have no intention of coming up with them all myself. I assume people reading this will already be familliar with the term “prompt”, but if you’re not- a prompt can be anything from a genre theme, a piece of media or art, a concept… whatever it would be fun to base a story on.

6 Likes

:sparkles: Submitted Stories :sparkles:

Round 1: Magical Realism

Prompt summary: (see post below this one)

Round 2: Apocalypses

Prompt summary: This post.

-none yet-

Round 1: Magical Realism

Magic realism is a genre that basically is about having a realistic setting with magical or strange elements introduced into it. Most commonly this is seen in urban fantasy and the like, but explicit magic stuff isn’t really required. To me at least, it is more about the feeling and tone than just having magical things exist. If you’ve ever played Kentucky Route Zero (you should, it’s great), that’s the most perfect example of the tone that I personally associate with magical realism. But ultimately it can’t be defined so narrowly, and the real key is to just let your imagination run wild. Wikipedia sums it all up better than I ever could, so take a peep there if you want a proper explanation isntead of inane ramblings (I especially like the bit about authorial reticence).

For our first prompt, I will give everyone who wants it a tweet from the magic realism twitter bot, and you can write a short story based on it. I love this bot and the bizarre situations it generates, and I feel they’d be perfect for inspiring a story. Feel free to interpret them as indirectly as you desire, too!

Run time: Feb 13th - Feb 26th

2 Likes

I’m in for this prompt

This seems like a really neat idea. Count me in for the first prompt.

Oh cool, I wanna write a non-essay thing and I don’t think I’m drowning in essays this week. Let’s prompt it up.

Let’s do it, I can go for writing something creative!

Fuck me up, Socrates. I write too much and I love that bot.

alright pals, lets go. I wanted to find a way to get tweets at random but nobody seems to have made a thing that does that. Ah well!

@KingCarnival:

@VegaBaby:

@Fefnir:

@BabsScriven:

@Daeren:

Someone please select a tweet for me too! I want to play my own game as it were :smiley:

1 Like

Hey! Sign me up! Also here’s your tweet
@NoodlyVampireQueen

https://twitter.com/MagicRealismBot/status/830659756935098368

One day I’ll figure out how to embed. Teach me how to embed.

Sure, let’s give it a look. Hit me, dealer person.

God DAMN King Carnival got a good one. I’ve actually had a scenario kinda like that in one of the games I’ve ran. Mine though…not sure, I’ll have to let it percolate for a bit.

Hit me up, yo. I love this kind of stuff.

You just post the link on its own line and it embeds it. I noticed it doesnt work if you have any spaces in front of it and this website seems to insert spaces on new lines sometimes so maybe that’s what’s doing it? Anyway, more prompts!

@Jenner:

@Staghorn:

@Zim:

One of the reasons it stood out to me was i figured there could be some interesting ways of interpreting “storms” beyond just literal storms. But if you decide you just cant do anything with this one i can find you another, i suppose. Or you can trade with someone else perhaps, if you find someone who wants to take that tweet off your hands!

I’d be interested in this. Hit me and I’ll do something during the weekend.

No, I can definitely do something with it. Just need a bit to think.

Here you go!

1 Like

Well, I’m already working on a Steven Universe AU fanfic, so I guess magic realism is right up my alley. (Shush I know it’s more technology than magic there but it’s alien tech so :V) Hit me with one.

Count me in!