/r/WritingPrompts
Writing Prompts. You're a writer and you just want to flex those muscles? You've come to the right place! If you see a prompt you like, simply write a short story based on it. Get comments from others, and leave commentary for other people's works. Let's help each other.
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We are a subreddit dedicated to inspiring people to write! Find a prompt that moves you and respond with a story or a poem.
The subreddit where it's all made up and the points don't matter.
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< 1. Prompt responses must be good-faith attempts at new stories/poems (No AI)
< 2. No sexually explicit responses, hate speech, or other harmful content
< 3. Be civil in discussion, feedback, and critiques
< 4. All submissions must be tagged at the beginning of the post, capitalized in square brackets
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- Writing Prompt: No restrictions (other than the rules of the sub) »SP
- Simple Prompt: Max 100 characters in the title (including the tag) »EU
- Established Universe: Based on existing fiction »CW
- Constrained Writing: Limitations or forced usage of words, letters, etc. (don't ask for less than 100 words) »TT
- Theme Thursday: Weekly themes announced Thursdays »MP
- Media Prompt: Audio or video »IP
- Image Prompt: A striking image or album »RF
- Reality Fiction: Things that have happened or could happen to unknown people »PM
- Prompt Me: Answer prompts by other users (if answered prompts before) »PI
- Prompt Inspired: Stories inspired by prompts older than three days (include link and max 1 a day) »OT
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Remember, spotlights rely on your nominations! So if there's anyone around the subreddit whose stories you love and you think deserves a shout-out, please do nominate them by sending us a ModMail.
This week we are celebrating u/writes-on-a-whim
Writes-on-a-whim has been sporadically around for a fair few years now. After dipping out for a while, it’s been nice seeing their name come up here again. Whenever they’ve been around, they’ve been wonderfully involved in our weekly features, showing their skill in collaborative writing, constrained writing, poetry, and prose writing to a strict word limit. Their fantasy world-building always draws me in and makes the world feel real and lived in. And they are very good at making me feel all the feelings with their emotive pieces. You can find more of their old pieces on their profile and I definitely recommend checking them out.
Want to congratulate this week's Spotlight recipient? Have questions you're dying to ask them? Please do so below in the comments!
#Congrats on your spotlight /u/writes-on-a-whim
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The post in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/scrawlquests/s/4Ou9BUDcTi
“You’re positive the reading still says this is anomalous?” One of the aliens reached across to poke gently at a monitor, and said “As far as our sensors can tell.”
“Well, if it says it's anomalous, it must be anomalous, but I'm certainly not seeing any energy readings or other effects that would indicate why a corpse could be considered anomalous.”
The two sea-cucumber-like aliens watched the unmoving form in front of them, clad in some kind of protective garment that clearly had not been protective enough.
“Any ideas what killed them, while we wait for the tighter scan of the anomaly reader?”
“Vented atmosphere would be my guess.” They gestured with a tendril towards the large ruptured tanks on the creature's back. “That's a lot of additional and bulky mass to have on you unless it's absolutely necessary. My guess was either that was necessary for performing some kind of task, or necessary for general upkeep, and the attachment points and feed lines from the tanks led into the suit.”
The reader gave a gentle chime, and the primary researcher for this pod leaned their mass forward to tap at the display with another tendril. “Fascinating.”
“So what kind of power was the anomaly? Something about energy manipulation, creation of mass, or some kind of mind reading effects?”
“None of the above. In fact, it looks like it was capable of temporal manipulations. Correction: The analysis says it’s still capable of that.”
“It’s dead: How's that possible?”
“Well, it's typically less about manipulating the entire stream of time, and rather about just fiddling with your place within it. It's a bastardized offshoot of teleportation, I think.”
This hadn’t really made sense to the other officer, who was much more at home with navigation charting and ship piloting. “So you have a theory?”
“I think that this creature is, well…is effectively immortal,” said the first. “In fact, by my predictions, in a few-”
The creature in front of them took a long,shuddering breath, causing both aliens to expel a viscous ink that quickly filled the space. The creature on the bench before them began thrashing and flailing his limbs, and the two were unsure if it was because of the unfamiliar surroundings or because of the blindness induced by the ink they secreted. Then, almost as an afterthought one of them said “I wonder if it's looking for a gaseous atmosphere mix, instead of breathing liquid?”
The other creature made a noise of revelation, and as they watched the creature scrambled around until its manipulators closed on the mask, lying loosely attached to their suit. They brought the mask over their face, and the aliens could see the lungs deflate and inflate with a huge mass of mostly-water, partially-air as the creature's eyes rolled back in his head and it went limp once more.
“What just happened?” said the younger of the two alien scientists.
“I think it died, again.” The biped had curled back into the same collapsed and huddled form they had seen when they first recovered the creature and brought it aboard their ship.
This cycle of life and death happened another three or four times before they were able to get the atmosphere mix correct. They were working with traces of air that had remained trapped within imperfections in the holding tanks, and as a result several of the atmosphere mixes appeared to briefly give the creature the ability to breathe, their eyes immediately rolling back in their head, and they passed out shortly after. But finally after turning down the oxygen ratio and replacing it with some inert gasses, this time when the biped stirred and took a few suspicious breaths, they appeared to tolerate it quite well.
At this point the ink had dissipated from the tank, replaced by the atmosphere mix, and so the odd anomalous visitor turned to eye the two aliens, looking up and down the tall, slender and tentacled forms.
“I take it you're the ones I have to thank about this excursion?” he said. Then he gestured to the inside of the holding tan. “What happened to my ship?”
The creature’s database on the ship was surprisingly complex for such a simplistic stack of silicon and microscopic electrical wires. They managed to pull what data they could and glean enough to approximate the language relatively well. The aliens lacked anything resembling mouths, but they had managed to find a way they could modify the air scrubbers for the room to produce the appropriate vibrations to match the biped’s speech. Furthermore, the data that had been onboard indicated these were ‘humans,’ but specifically this was an anomalous human their kind called a ‘superhero’; The opinions of the aliens was still out as to whether simply being unable to die was that spectacular of an ability.
“Greetings, superhero-human,” came the mechanical reply, and the man jumped in surprise.
“I thought the voice would be at least vaguely coming from your direction,” he griped, but repeated his earlier question: “Where’s my ship?”
“It was recovered, and what we believe to be the damage has been patched and repaired.” The aliens tutted at him like fussy parents. “You know, fission engines are inherently risky at the best of times. You're lucky that the breach you suffered was just an atmospheric one, although we're still confused as to how a full human body such as yours emerged through a meteoroid hole the size of one of your ‘baseballs.’”
The human flexed their shoulders, rolling it as they groaned at a twinge of lingering pain. “Very painfully and piece-by-piece, I'm afraid is the answer,” he said. “My regeneration must have kept everything just barely together afterwards. Then I seemed to recall a darkness and choking as well.”
“The void of space, perhaps?” one of the aliens offered, hoping the human would not recall or begrudge them for their initial uncomfortable attempts to save them.
“Seems like it felt a lot more…wet than that,” he said, but shrugged. “In any case, I appreciate the lift and pick up, so after I've answered whatever question you’ve got, I’ll grab my ship and be on my way. I suspect I'm already late enough getting back as it is.”
The two aliens made apologetic gestures as one of them said “I wish that could be the case, but we will need you to remain here a while longer. It is our duty to investigate an anomaly such as yourself, and our readings are showing that your world has a statistically-significant higher degree of anomalous beings compared to the galactic mean. We need to send down a scout to investigate and gather more detailed results.”
“You're going to cause quite a ruckus looking like that" said the man, eyes locked on the aliens as, without looking, he fished around in his side pouch with his free hand.
As he searched, the first alien said “We agree, which is why we have arranged for a comprehensive biomimicry suit to be calibrated to your specifications. It will not have quite your resilience to damage,”they said apologetically as one of them step forward looking for all the world to the human like himself, “But it should be close enough to you allay most suspicions.”
The human found what he was looking for, hand closing around a slim, dull gray cylinder that he pulled back and stuck into a pocket. “So I stay back here and play guinea pig while you're taking my place down on the surface below?”
“That's a bit of an oversimplification to the aid you will provide our people, but the underlying sentiment is accurate.” The alien gestured towards the ship. “However, provided we do not give them a reason to suspect, we should be able to return quite handily, and we promise we will not impune your reputation with our actions.”
“Reputation’s not the problem I’m thinking of,” said the human, stretching his limbs again. “I’m more concerned about sticking around here and getting poked and prodded.”
‘Well, we can assure you that, given your remarkable regenerative capabilities, you will not be killed here.”
“There's nothing I found yet that will kill me stone dead for sure,” the superhero said defensively, “But I'm sure as hell not eager to have those limits tested out, especially by a bunch of jellyfish who have no idea which way a human is put back together properly.”
“Oh, we'll be able to figure it out,” said the first enthusiastically, but the human just shook his head.
“No, I think I'm going to take my chances.”
With that, he held up and flicked open the end of the metal tube he held. Within, a hazy blue light immediately shot forth, as he passed over the aliens their forms shriveled and burned.
“What is this?!” one of them screeched, as they began to melt and diffuse into loose cellular clusters.
The superhero shrugged apologetically, saying “It's just an alloyed alpha, beta, and gamma emitter rolled into one. Plays merry hell on your cell integrity if you're not used to it, but gives you a good sunburn and some nice cancer in 20 years even if your skin does repel the first two.”
He waved it over his own arm by way of demonstration, and there was a crackling sound as red welts immediately appeared on the surface of the skin. Then he pivoted it back up to continue melting the last parts of the aliens he could see. As the last of the aliens melted away, the superhero turned back to their ship, still sitting hovering and unharmed in the small hanger node.
Launching, he thought he heard an odd thump, and as he turned he glared in shock as he could see that the body double of himself was grappling on the outside of his ship, banging a fist against the window. Grimacing, the superhero stood, unbuckling his harness and popping the cockpit. He had grabbed a fresh oxygen tank, not bothering to repressurize the cockpit, and as his magnetic boots clung to the wing of his ship, he squared off against the imposter as his own ship began the slow hurtling flight back towards Earth.
Blow for blow it seemed like he was evenly matched, until for a moment he seemed to have the upper hand. Pinning his opponent against the wing of the ship, he raised a repair wrench high, ready to bring it down on the disguised alien when he felt his opponent shift and struggle at the last possible moment.
Sitting back in the cockpit, the superhero known to Earth as The Immortal held the controls. It was time for him to return home, as he watched a body much like his own tumbling out in the void behind him.
Write a story involving this overturned truck (no one was in it btw): https://imgur.com/fTtOlvh