So, there's this AMAZING Tubmlr blog called WriteWorld that posts writing tips, advice, and most importantly, writing prompts—they're usually pictures, sentences, or even songs. I've recently started responding to some of these prompts to work on my writing skills, and I felt like posting some of them here. You can also find them on my Tumblr (see sig for link), under the tag #writeworld. edit: uhm can i get these un-merged please ._. Spoiler: Prompt 1 - Picture Alec had had the suitcase packed for months. If you asked him why he didn't leave sooner then, he would only shrug, as if to say "I don't know." What he wouldn't say was how scared he had been to leave. "I'll leave tomorrow," Alec would tell himself. "I'll leave in the morning, before he knows I'm gone, before he can find me." Morning would come. Alec would stay. Only in retrospect would he realize that he was scared of the unknown—the world outside of the dingy little shack, away from his uncle, all by himself. What if it wasn't what he thought? What if it was worse than— Pain. Yelling. Useless! More pain, flashing light behind his eyes. You piece of garbage! More pain, a mangled scream. His own. You should never have been born! Sharp pain, then merciful blackness, nothing— Finally, one morning, something...different. Alec felt different. He couldn't feel the bruises, the cuts, the pain. He sat up on his cot and listened. No noise but the birds and the wind. Almost as if in a trance, he pulled the small suitcase from under the cot. It was the day. He quailed at the thought briefly, but the doubt was swallowed by this...this new feeling. It felt good. Comfortable. Calming. He didn't bother changing clothes from the night before. He stood, looked around one last time, then tiptoed out his bedroom door— "Where do you think you're going?" His uncle, big, angry, hung over, in the doorway. Alec clenched his jaw and tried to shove past. No luck. "You aren't going anywhere, you little brat!" A sloppy grab for his hair. Alec ducked under it and rushed through the new opening. There was the front door. He rushed into the kitchen and grabbed a coat, his uncle's, too big, and sprinted for the door. His uncle was there again, and mad. He brandished a kitchen knife. Alec froze. His uncle lunged, screaming. He missed—barely—and stumbled. Alec took the chance to slam the suitcase into his side. His uncle wheezed. Alec ran. He ran like he'd never ran before. Out the front door, into the grass—wet! Cold! He looked down; he'd forgotten shoes. No time to go back. He kept running. Cursing and shouting behind him. He didn't dare look back. More shouting, then quieter, then nothing. Breathing heavily, Alec turned around, standing on his tiptoes. His uncle slumped against the doorway, sitting, crying. Their eyes met. He was scared. Could he do it? Was this right? What would happen to his uncle, to him? And then the cursing returned. Alec should have felt something...anger? Hate? Disgust? But, there was none of that. He felt... Pity. Giving one last look at the old, rotting cabin, Alec turned his back on it. And walked. The sky was grey. The wind was cold. There was fog in front of him. No way of knowing what was to come. But it was—strangely—all right. He didn't turn back again. No more. He was done. Time to keep walking.[DOUBLEPOST=1358290013][/DOUBLEPOST] Spoiler: Prompt 2 - Picture Aaliyah pressed her hand against the cold observation window, staring. Words from a 250-year-old “science fiction” film sprang to mind: “They should have sent a poet.” “Enjoying the view?” Aaliyah turned to find Captain Hathaway standing behind her, hands clasped behind his back. Words failing her, Aaliyah could only nod. Hathaway walked to the window, standing next to her. “Cronos,” he explained. “Approximately 96% of the planet’s surface is molten lava. Most people tend to give it a wide berth because of that, but it’s not doing anything to anyone. Those bits of rock and dust circling it are its rings.” He huffed. “You’d think that after hundreds of years of space travel and hundreds more of basic astronomy, people would realize that that’s all a planet’s rings are, rock and dust and empty space.” “It’s beautiful,” Aaliyah breathed. “But…just those words don’t seem to fit.” Hathaway grunted in response. “‘They should have sent a poet,’ right? Contact, 1985, Carl Sagan. Good book.” Aaliyah blinked. “…It was a book?” Hathaway rolled his eyes, but made no comment. “So, why aren’t you on the entertainment deck? It’s where all the other passengers like to spend their time.” Aaliyah shrugged. “Well, the entertainment deck is fun,” she admitted. “But it feels a little empty, especially compared to this.” She gestured to the magnificent crimson orb. “This lasts so much longer and is so much more important than a go at the newest VR sim.” Hathaway was quiet for a moment, his gaze lingering on the view of Cronos. “You’re a different one, kid,” he finally said. “You keep doing what you do.” He turned and walked back toward the bridge. Aaliyah backed away from the window a few steps and sat down, the window fully in her view. She was going to stay for a bit longer…
Spoiler: Prompt 3 - Music Frank stepped nervously into the predetermined meeting place—an old warehouse, lit only by the crescent moon in the window. “…Hello?” he asked. “Is anyone here?” Something slithered in the shadows to his left. He turned, but whatever was there had gone. Suddenly the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He turned back around, and the dark-robed thing was standing right in front of him, encroaching on his personal space. “Holy—” “Well, well, well,” it purred in a high, reedy voice. “Look what has wandered into our home…~” Frank froze as tendrils of shadow appeared all around him, looking like snakes ready to pounce. “St-stop that,” he said, trying to sound braver than he felt. “Oh?” the robed shade said. “And why should I do that?” Frank swallowed and dug into his sweater pocket. “Because I have this!” He pulled out the witchstone pendant, which immediately started radiating light. The shade hissed and the shadow tendrils vanished into smoke with a collective squeal. “Why don’t we…put that nasty thing away…and discuss this rationally?” the shade tried to reason. “Because I don’t trust you,” Frank answered bluntly, reaching to tie the pendant around his neck. A shadow tendril reached up behind him and swatted his hand, causing him to drop the pendant. The shade staggered briefly when the witchstone’s light vaporized the tendril, but quickly recovered. When Frank reached down to grab the pendant back up, another tendril wrapped around his ankle and yanked him to the floor, dragging him backwards. “Let’s try this again, shall we?” If the shade had a face, Frank imagined it wearing a cat-like grin. “I think we got off on the wrong…foot.” More tendrils pulled a rickety chair from the darkness, while the one holding Frank let go. “Take a seat, Fred. We insist.” “It’s Frank,” he complained, but the shade paid him no heed except to push him into the chair with more tendrils. The shade circled the chair, making no sound. “You have something that we want very much,” it rasped. “It’s been taken from us, wrongfully hidden for centuries. And we want you to get it for us, yes?” “Why?” “Well, for starters, we won’t kill you if you help us,” the shade said, sounding bored. “We thought that might be good incentive.” Frank gulped. “…Good point.” “Yes, quite,” the shade agreed. “You see? This doesn’t need to be so hard.” Frank’s eyes darted to the door. “Say…say I don’t care if I die,” he said, causing the shade to turn and look at him. “If I don’t help, and I don’t care if you kill me…what then?” The shade seemed to ponder this. “An interesting proposal…” “Yes, quite.” Frank forced a smile. The shade shook its head. “We have considered your question,” it said. “If you do not care whether or not you die, then surely there is someone else you care for who need not die, yes?” The shade waved its hands and Frank saw an image of Evan, sitting outside his tent and conjuring flames boredly. Frank’s mouth dried. “You…you can’t!” he protested, starting to stand, only to be pulled back and tied to the chair by the tendrils. “He’s not part of this!” “Isn’t he?” the shade challenged. “We’d say that he became ‘part of this’ when you and he joined this cute little fight against us. So.” The shade drew close to Frank once again. “We’ll ask you once more, then: help us, and we won’t hurt your…friend.” Frank hung his head. “…All right.” “Glad to know you could see reason,” the shade chirped, the menace gone from its voice completely. “We take it you already know what we seek?” “Yes.” “Good, good.” The tendrils released Frank and pulled the chair from under him, causing him to fall on all fours. “We’ll expect it in ten day’s time, Fred, yes?” “Fine.” “Good.” The tendrils shoved him towards the door. “And take your little nightlight with you,” the shade spat. Resigned and ashamed, Frank leaned over to pick the witchstone up, only for one last tendril to shoot forward and push him over as he left. “We’ll be waiting…~” the shade’s voice cackled in an echo. Frank stood up, brushing himself off. He glared back at the warehouse, then looked back out at the harbor. Angry with himself for falling into such an obvious trap, he picked up the nearest rock and flung it into the water with a shout. A water spirit quickly rose from the water and threw the rock back. The rock grazed Frank’s head and he clamped a hand to the wound immediately. Already he could feel the warm, sticky blood pooling under his hand. Fantastic. Great job, Frank. Everything is completely screwed up now and it’s all your fault.
I figured everyone else that answered this prompt would've made it angsty and depressing, so I made it cute instead~ Spoiler: Prompt 4 - Sentence You've been pretending all this time? “You’ve been pretending all this time?” the governess asked. She was standing in the playroom doorway with her hands on her hips, but a smile threatened to break through her mock-stern expression. Little Clara was dressed in a pink, lacy gown, sipping tea with her toy bear and unicorn. She looked innocently up at her governess with those brown doe eyes of hers. "Uh-huh," she smiled. "Would you like to join us for biscuits, Ms. Maggie?" Maggie gasped dramatically. "Biscuits? But, Clara, you'll spoil your dinner!" It was Clara's turn to gasp. "Dinnertime already?" "Aye," Maggie grinned. "And you know what that means...?" "Papa's home!" Clara squealed, bobbing up and down in her seat before jumping up out of it and bounding for the door. "Ah, ah, ah," Maggie tsked, stopping her. "Does a proper lady leave her guests so rudely?" It took a moment for Clara to realize what she was saying. When she figured it out, her mouth formed a little "o" and she rushed back to the table. She curtsied to Mr. Bottomsworth (the bear) and then to Lady Bennett (the unicorn), thanking them both for attending her evening tea. Then she pilfered a biscuit from the table and ran from the room, shouting, "Papa! You're home!" Maggie heard Clara's father laughing jovially and Clara squealing from downstairs. She glanced furtively at the staircase, then, certain she wasn't being watched, snuck into the playroom and took a biscuit for herself. She hastily shoved it in her apron pocket and—not rushed—hastened down the stairs after her charge.
This one is a sequel to the first prompt I posted, though you don't necessarily need to read that one. I'm not quite so pleased with this piece... Spoiler: Prompt 5 - Picture Behind his closed eyelids, Alec registered two sensations. First, wet, cold. (He remembered rain last night.) Second, light, yellow and blinding. He winced, squeezing his eyes shut, then slowly opened them. Grass, soft, golden in the sunrise. He looked up, squinting. There was a bird in front of him, sitting on a tiny stump on spindly legs, peeping around. Alec’s hands clenched and he pushed himself up onto his knees. The bird, startled, flew away. Little wonder he was so sore—not just because the ground was uncomfortable (which it was), but he’d been sleeping over his suitcase, too. He groaned and stretched—ow, stiff—and cast off the too-big coat, shaking the water off and laying it flat on the grass. Next he shed his soaked shirt and set that to the side as well. He flipped his suitcase open, and pulled out a new shirt—not sure whether to be glad the suitcase was dry, or resentful that he was all wet. Alec sighed and just pulled the shirt on, then looked at the wet one on the grass. Putting it back in the suitcase would make all the other clothes wet and unfit for travelling in. Yet he didn’t want to wait around for it to dry, either. … He picked the shirt up and, unhappily, slung it over his arm after slipping the coat back on. He didn’t have a lot and couldn’t afford to leave anything behind, and he had to keep moving. There was bound to be something ahead. He walked into the east, towards the sunrise, searching for his new beginning.
So on a whim I did another one of these babies yesterday, incorporating part of a story idea I've been kicking around for a while~ Spoiler: Prompt 6 - Picture Clark had to admit, even as he was stuck inside of it, that the canyon was rather beautiful. His superiors had told him that they had discovered that the tablets they had been seeking for so long were hidden deep in an old hidden cave, and had thus assigned him to retrieve the tablets. What they seemed not to realize, though, was that the cave went on and on, getting smaller and smaller, until it was nothing more than a tight crawlspace that finally opened up into an enormous canyon floor. Freeing himself from the crawlspace, though, had collapsed it behind him. Fantastic. He groaned inwardly. Well, these tablets weren’t going to find themselves… Light filtered down from far above, giving the canyon floor an ethereal atmosphere. A few small lizards skittered around Clark’s feet as he ventured over the uneven ground and further into the canyon. He frowned when a shower of pebbles and sand rained down on him from above and looked up where it seemed to have come from, shielding his eyes against the sun. Nothing. He rolled his eyes, Probably some animal up there. Clark suddenly heard a crunch under his foot. He looked down to find that he had unwittingly stepped on one of the lizards. Geez, the things were everywhere! …Now that he looked closer…all the lizards seemed to be heading in the same direction. “There are no coincidences in this line of work,” his superiors had told him once. And he had seen for himself how weirdly right they had been. “Well, well,” he murmured, grinning. “Lets see where you fellas are headed.” After about an hour of following the lizards (their footfalls were strangely loud, even in a canyon like this one), the canyon opened up into a large chamber. Rather than filling the chamber like he expected, the lizards continued to move in a more or less straight line towards one nondescript part of the canyon wall. “Gotcha,” he smiled. Had anyone else been there, they might have described his smile as “cheshire.” Kneeling down, taking a modicum of care not to crush any more lizards, Clark inspected the wall with his eyes and with his fingers. Nothing stuck out in particular, but it didn’t take long for his probing to locate an unusual depression in the rock face. That couldn’t be natural. Looking more closely at it, it almost looked like a button. Jackpot! Greedily, he jabbed the button, and the reaction was instantaneous. Something shifted behind the wall, and the room shook gently around him. A capsule slowly ejected from the middle of the wall, where there had previously been no sign of such a thing being built into the rock. This was it! He’d found the tablets! His superiors would reward him so greatly! He’d— The capsule had come out all the way by now. But the contents were not tablets. …Well, yes, they were tablets, but Clark knew, his heart sinking deep into his stomach, that iPads were decidedly not what his superiors were looking for. Before he could make any further action, though, something heavy struck the back of his head, and he pitched forward into the sand beneath him with a muffled shout. Quickly fading out of consciousness, he saw a tiny teenage girl dart in front of him, hastily collecting the iPads from their receptacle and stuffing them into a rucksack. He cursed at himself for not realizing sooner that he had been followed. “Sorry about the whole braining thing,” she apologized, sounding surprisingly sincere. “But we’re trying to stop the apocalypse. You get that, right?” Clark could only growl weakly in protest. "Oh, good, you understand," the girl sighed in relief. "Well, thanks for not putting up a fight. Hope you can find a way out of here!" She gave a shrill whistle, and a rope tied to a harness began pulling her up out of the canyon. “Nice to meet you! Wish us luck in stopping the end of the world!” Clark’s last conscious thought was a lament that even if he made it out of the canyon alive, his superiors were definitely going to kill him.
