shortfictionweeklychallenge

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Short Fiction Weekly Challenge

Friday Nostalgia Prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! Enjoy!

Extreme Weather: Characters living on starships or hermetically-sealed habitats usually don’t have to worry about weather. But most characters dwell in places where weather--especially extreme weather--is very much a concern. Suppose a freak hailstorm wipes out the crops? Or a warm spring melts the mountain snow too soon, flooding everything and leaving no water for the summer? Wildfires burning through grasslands, forests, and towns? Strong seas make water transport and fishing impossible? Volcanoes have both local and immediate effects as well as long-term and global ones. Smoke, ice, flood, rain, tornadoes, maybe solar prominences or meteor storms. Write about your character living through and dealing with wild weather. 

Bus Stop: How did your character meet their Love Interest? Blind date? Friend-of-a-friend? Co-worker? Professional matchmaker? Your world's equivalent of a dating app? Chance meeting at a bus stop? This week, tell the story of how they met.

Closure: When has your character known it’s over? Whatever events disrupted their lives (you know, the ones that make for interesting stories) are done and there aren’t any more surprises lurking around the corner. It could be the end of a chapter or the end of the story, or the calm between storms. But there is a sense of closure and completeness. How does your character recognize that moment? Do they? Do they enjoy the respite, or are they too worried about the next crisis? Do they recognize it only in hindsight? What do they do, and where do they go from here?

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Ten Years Ago Today

A decade of prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge.

Week of June 19, 2015

Best Buddies:  Does your character have a best friend?  The one they’d like to hang out with just for fun, whether fun is cross-country skiing on Hoth or downing shots in a Nar Shaddaa Huttball cantina?  The person who completed their sentences long before they met their significant other?  Maybe became their significant other?  Did your character stay in touch?  Have they grown apart or away, the friendship almost remembered, but not quite important enough to restart?  This week, write about your character being with, losing, forgetting, or reconnecting with their best buddy.

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SFWC Blast from the Past!

This week’s Blast from the Past prompt:

Sleeping Rough: Has your character ever been without a safe place to sleep? No money for a room, no one to share with, lost (urban or wilderness), or run away? Was it part of a training exercise, experiment, or mission and therefore only temporary? Was it indefinite, desperate, with no alternative and no end in sight? Was it voluntary and, despite the difficulties, still preferable to the situation they left behind? Have they been fortunate enough to never worry about housing, and how do they react toward another in poorer circumstances? This week, consider your character sleeping rough.

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Searching...

So many prompts to choose from. What can we find in the archive today?

Breaking Point: At some point, your character will have hit their breaking point. The last straw, crossed the line, they’ve had it with something, someone, or some situation, and aren’t going to put up with it anymore. Something has to change--so what is it? Mundane: the last straw with a job they hate. Relatable: their SO doing that thing (you know, that one thing).  A larger issue that requires recruiting others who’ve also hit their breaking point, or a tiny one like the takeout place getting their food wrong for the last time. Write about your character reaching their breaking point and what they change in response.

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Short Fiction Weekly Challenge

Friday Nostalgia Prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! Enjoy!

Dear John: before breaking up via text was a thing there was the "Dear John” letter. Has your character written one? Received one? Breakups are never easy. The letter (or text) means one person doesn't have to face the raw emotions (and possibly violence) of the other. So what would your character write, or what did their letter say? 

Discovery - In our characters' journeys, we make some surprising discoveries. Sometimes they're things about ourselves or our friends, other times they're discoveries about the world around us. Either way, they usually take us by surprise. 

The Other Big One: Retcon a Canon Character Death, or Resurrect a Canonically Dead Character: They didn’t deserve to die. They were fridged to further another character’s story. Their death was pointless. Their death was dramatic and appropriate--but what if they lived? A character you like. A character you hate--but they’re fun to write and died just when they were getting interesting. Maybe they’re now undead: a vampire, zombie, ghost, or ghoul. Whoever it is, how and why they died in canon doesn’t matter. This week, someone lives (or comes back from the dead).

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Ten Years Ago Today

A decade of prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge.

Week of June 12, 2015

You Were the Chosen One! Or Were You?: Game stories often cast your character as The Chosen One, the One destined to Fix All The Problems.  But not every character fits that trope, and not every one should.  Does yours?  Or not?  Emphatically not?  Or maybe they are, but not in the way anyone hoped.  Bringing balance to the Force by reducing its practitioners to two Dark and Two Light certainly fulfills the prophecy, but probably wasn't what Yoda expected.  Where does your character fall on the Chosen One continuum?  How do they show that in their story?

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SFWC Blast from the Past!

This week’s Blast from the Past prompt:

It Takes Two: Write a story in two parts.  Use any previous prompt (or pair of prompts) or choose your own topic. The reason for the division is up to you. Switch perspectives, follow a different character, or leave the reader with a cliffhanger. Publish on successive days or in separate posts. Each section can be any length but they can’t stand alone! They must need each other to be complete.

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Searching...

So many prompts to choose from. What can we find in the archive today?

Self Care: Write the kind of scene you need to write or read. Not necessarily the next one to finish your fic. The kind you need to write: fluffy happiness, cathartic violence, something silly, something deep and philosophical, something satirical and full of sharp cutting edges. This is for no one but you. There’s no obligation to share it with anyone, even SFWC. And if you prefer, take the week off and write nothing. Recharge. You have permission. Take care of yourself this week, however that looks to you.

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Short Fiction Weekly Challenge

Friday Nostalgia Prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! Enjoy!

Deadly Sins - Everyone struggles with one of them at some point: wrath, pride, envy, lust, gluttony, greed, and sloth. Sometimes they spur us on to do good things. Other times, they hurt us and others. Write about your characters' struggles with the worst sins of them all. 

Going Camping!  Camp is everywhere this week. In its broadest definition, Camp is something so over-the-top, in poor taste, or ostentatiously awful it's enjoyed as ridiculous or ironic. Ideally both at the same time. To say camp has no standards is to misunderstand its true nature: it’s not mainstream, doesn’t want to be, and is quite happy as it is thank you very much. This week’s challenge is to incorporate camp in your writing. Introduce (or bring back) a campy character. Include a campy setting. Tell a campy story. Write something campy!

Given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've decided to ignore it: Games update, movies and books have sequels, shows continue running, so canon keeps changing. What canon development do you dislike so much that your stories will go on as though it didn't happen? The magnitude of the development is irrelevant. It can be anything from a character’s preferred wardrobe to an entire setting, tone, or theme change. If you’re looking at your own work, consider some experimental tweaking--as much or as little as you like.

[shortfictionweeklychallenge]

Ten Years Ago Today

A decade of prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge.

Week of June 5, 2015

Milestones: Milestones are more personal than Rites of Passage or Turning Points, both previous prompts.  It's something significant for your character, something they might mark, independent of holidays, formal anniversaries, or rituals.  The day your character finally paid off a loan--or the day they took one out to finance their dream.  The first time your character felt like they belonged among their peers--or when they realized they never would.  Their last drink, their first dance, moving out, moving on.  Tell a story about your character reaching or remembering a personal milestone.

Mixed Doubles: Combine any two prompts you like and write a story!  For added fun, choose randomly.  Three years of prompts means more than 150 prompts to pick from.

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SFWC Blast from the Past!

This week’s Blast from the Past prompt:

Scary Stories--As long as there have been campfires, there have been spooky stories. The kind that send a chill up your spine, make you look over your shoulder, or sleep with the light on for a bit. This week’s challenge is to tell a scary story, either one featuring your character or an in-universe story they know and relate to others. Get creative and have fun!

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Searching...

So many prompts to choose from. What can we find in the archive today?

I HATE This Song: We've had several prompts regarding music, most of them positive. How about that one song or genre your character can't stand? An ex's favorite song? The song that reminds them of a bad time in their life? The song that played over and over and over and over until they couldn't stand it? A song they mistake for one they enjoy and it disappoints them every time? A song that grated on them from the beginning and their opinion went downhill from there? Write a story about your character and the one (or perhaps several) pieces of music they absolutely hate.

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Short Fiction Weekly Challenge

Friday Nostalgia Prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! Enjoy!

Sole Survivor: Sometimes it’s a mission gone bad. Only one of the team made it back. Maybe no one was expected to return, but one did. Maybe it was a game, and they were the last one standing when everyone else got eliminated. If it wasn’t your character, perhaps it is a close associate or even a new contact. This week, consider a character who survived a situation no one else did. How did they get there? Where do they go afterward? How do they deal with it? Has it happened before? Is the character considered Bad Luck personified? Are they Good Luck--guaranteed to win? Write about your character being the sole survivor, or encountering one. 

Worlds Colliding - Our characters fly all over the galaxy and meet people from many different worlds - metaphorically and literally. Relationships, friendships, and partnerships can develop, which often results in those two very different spheres of living coming together - which can be tough to navigate. Write about a time when your character's world met up with another's, and how they reacted.

As Time Goes By - No matter where you are in your character's story they are probably quite different from when they started. Maybe some are ready to settle down and others are starting to feel the passage of time. (All that Force leaping can't be good for the knees!) Has your character noticed any changes or have they stayed the same while others changed around them? Tell us about it.

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Ten Years Ago Today

A decade of prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge.

Week of May 29, 2015

Lost and Found: Characters lose things: keys, rings, treasures, friends, their way.  They find things too: rings (again), companions, their courage.  This week, write about what your character has lost, or what they found.  Or both.

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SFWC Blast from the Past!

This week’s Blast from the Past prompt:

Limits-- No character is all-powerful, or at least, interesting ones aren’t. There are limits to what they can do, be it legal, physical, mental, or self-imposed. What happens when they come up against them? Do they push past it, accept it, or back away? Limits are often there for a reason and breaking them can have consequences. Explore some this week.

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Searching...

So many prompts to choose from. What can we find in the archive today?

Relying on Technology: regardless of setting, our characters rely on technological innovations. In a fantasy setting, those might be cunning spellwork or finely-crafted weapons. The far future could have memory-dubbing and cybernetics. In any setting, food production, travel, and medicine often employ technology we barely acknowledge. What technology in your character’s world do they absolutely rely on? What can they not get along without? Do they even realize how much they need it? What happens when something goes wrong in the way it functions? What if it breaks and can’t be repaired, or at least not easily or quickly? How much trouble do they have when the things they expect to work just...don't?

[shortfictionweeklychallenge]

Ten Years Ago Today

A decade of prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge.

Week of May 22, 2015

You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Every character wants something.  It might be tangible: food, money, an ancient artifact.  It could be intangible: respect, success, fame or infamy.  Often, their entire story is the pursuit of their desire.  But something always gets in the way.  What happens when something or someone thwarts your character?  Gets in between your character and what they want?  How do they deal with it?