Promptly at 5

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The Faux Sting

Scott has a coworker, Paul, that he doesn’t like. In fact, he hates him. Paul is a veteran with a mild drug problem. Scott is a wanna-be actor who participates in flash mobs, and he decides to pull a trick on Paul. Scott knows about Paul’s struggle with drugs, and so one day when Paul is about to go out to lunch, Scott says something to Paul about the DEA/FBI doing a sting operation in town. Scott has set up a flash mob of friends to fake a surveillance of Paul while he’s walking around at lunch. Some of them even dress up in suits and shades and put ear buds in their ears and walk around whispering into the mics. The idea was for Paul to notice and get freaked out by it, and this works. Only, Paul gets triggered with flashbacks to his military time and starts taking out the fake agents (probably with something nagging in the back of his mind about how easy it is to off them - shouldn’t they be better trained?). He lures one into an empty stairwell and snaps his neck. He gets another to follow him onto the roof of a skyscraper where he then pushes her off. Another he shoves in front of a bus. etc, etc.      

Obviously, you can use any names/genders that make sense for you. Some things for the writer to play around with: Why does Scott hate Paul so much? How else can Scott be messing with Paul? Why is Paul so easily triggered? What other clever ways can Paul kill the fake agents?  

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The Grand Illusion

A powerful thing to put into any story is to have things not be what they seem to be. I think this is rooted in the life experience we all have - illusions abound - we can’t escape them and wouldn’t want to if we could. Every painting is an illusion, as is every movie, every tv show, every theater performance. And every person is actually not what they seem. This is the challenge of having a deep meaningful relationship with someone. They are never what they seem on the surface. And when we read a story, we like to explore this theme, this challenge that makes life so hard. We like the unreliable narrator, because so often in life we live that very thing. Our friend tells us what a horror his wife is. When we finally meet her, we find her charming and wonderful. Which is the truth? We like stories of secret identities because that’s what we live. We meet someone and fall in love and then after years of marriage and children, we learn that person has a darkness inside that we never could have guessed. The theme of things not being what they seem to be is a great one to include in any writing. What illusions of life have impacted you? Can you write a short story that incorporates that experience?    

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They’re Watching

A manipulative person is angry at a close friend or family member. They know that other person’s triggers very well, and so they set up a computer or cell phone to video the person blowing up and yelling at them over and over, and post the videos to social media in order to make themselves look like a victim. 

Why do they do this? Where does it lead? 

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A Little Bee Told Me

A woman, lets call her Beverly, is trying to kill her husband. Maybe he’s abusive, or maybe she’s a sociopath, or maybe she’s just greedy and he has a big life insurance policy. She knows he is allergic to bees, but doesn’t have the full blown kills-you-kind-of-reaction, perhaps just a low level allergy such that he swells up a lot. What a shame, as that would be such an easy way to off him. If only he were more allergic. Beverly then realizes, though, that she can add some bee venom to his food and see if that makes his throat swell enough to kill him. But first, she knows that poison is tricky, you can accidently kill the wrong person, and they have a child and she isn’t sure if the child might have inherited the allergy. Beverly does some research (or perhaps has a friend who is a bee expert) and learns that there are chemicals that can make bees angry and make them sting you, and so she puts that chemical in the child’s bath soap so that the child gets stung in a safer way. She learns the child is not allergic and so she can move forward with her plan. 

But maybe something foils her plan such as...the bee keeper friend is actually the husband’s mistress, or the husband overhears a relevant conversation somehow (a butt dialed phone? or a text sent to the wrong number, or...??) Or, maybe the plan does work, but the husband isn’t killed and just left severely disabled - so no life insurance and stuck with an invalid husband. Or, maybe it turns out the child is allergic to one kind of bee but not the kind that stung the child and so the venom winds up killing the child instead and/or along with the husband? Or...well...if you have any ideas you should start writing them down!   :p    

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The Dreamer

Someone keeps having dreams that solve some kind of giant problem which if solved could change the world. Perhaps, for example, the person is a geneticist, and in the dream they figure out how to cure cancer. Or they’re an engineer and they have figured out a trick to greatly reduce friction in machine parts. Or they’re a politician and have figured out how to avoid a war that is about to erupt in their country. Whatever it is, it’s complicated. 

When they wake up they try to remember it, but it fades quickly. They keep having the dream and after a few times they start leaving a pen and paper next to their bed. They start writing down bits and pieces of the dream when they awaken, but it’s always small bits and rarely in the correct order (sometimes they write down the beginning of the dream, other times the middle, other times the end). After this goes on for sometime, they are getting tantalizingly close to the solution when something derails it all. Perhaps they are slowly going mad during the entire process - doing crazy things like trying to sleep a lot in order to move the process along - maybe taking drugs for this reason but that just messes things up. They finally do go mad before they finish, or perhaps inadvertently kill themselves, or...well...the possibilities are endless.  

Whatever comes to mind for you, start writing it down now! Quick, before you lose the idea!!!  :)  

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The Not-So-Perfect Hiding Place

The main character (I’ll call her Mary) needs to hide or move some kind of very small item that is very valuable. It could be something like a very rare diamond, or a computer chip with valuable information on it, that kind of thing. Mary has a pet of some sort that she has swallow the item (it could be fun having this be an unusual pet of some kind - if sci-fi it might be a genetically modified pet - say a dog-cat, or a falcon-ferret, etc). If the item is fragile you might hide it in a small ball of wax. After Mary has her pet swallow the item she is able to hide or move it without detection and she knows it will just come back out eventually. But then the pet gets away from her somehow (someone leaves the gate/door open, or the leash breaks, etc). The pet is our of sight for just a short time, but then when Mary is looking through it’s poop for the item it keeps not being there. 

Did the pet poop somewhere while out of her sight? Or is it lodged in the pet? Should she have the pet get an ultrasound? How does she explain this to her vet? etc. etc. Things to consider to get started -- What is she hiding and why? Is she ever tempted to just kill the pet? Is the pet itself valuable (if say the genetically modified pet - it might be something that was difficult to make and has great value in and of itself -- maybe the animal turns out to never age -- or maybe it’s can sniff out diamonds -- etc.  Maybe the thing she’s hiding is the secret behind making this kind of animal? etc.)    

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Buncho prompts:

I woke up this morning with a bunch of prompt ideas -- I’ll give each one it’s own post -- 

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The Man Who Sold the World

A powerful alien race comes to earth and mistakenly thinks someone is the ruler of the world. It could be either someone who is powerful such as the President of the U.S., or for a much different (and I think more interesting) story, someone who is powerless. The aliens offer the person tremendous wealth in exchange for the world. The person makes the deal and the aliens believe they now own the world. (yes – likely inspired by David Bowie – one of my favorite musicians when I was a kid) (and yes, this definitely doesn’t need to be a man, but that’s the title of the song so...

For me finding good music videos that touch on my subject can serve as great writing prompts, or to flesh out a story I’ve already written. But I’ll admit sometimes I get pulled down the rabbit hole of the net. 

And yes, this prompt was previously posted on a couple of my blogs. 

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https://jackrloun.wixsite.com/scritchandscrawl/post/writing-prompts

Writing Prompts

Here are some writing prompts for you - and for myself maybe if I ever get the time to try and tackle these: The Man Who Sold the World -- A

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This is where I am going to keep my writing prompts.