Week of August 25, 2023 Run!: Away? What from? Toward what? Who’s commanding your character to run and why? Is your character telling others to run? Are they sacrificing themselves to stop some horror? Are they about to become the horror? Are they furious? Is your character in danger? Are they panicked? Giving up? So many possibilities! Run with it! *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Practice Makes Perfect: No matter how skilled your character is, there's always room for improvement. What does your character do to keep in practice? Are they building on existing accomplishments or learning something new? Is it a skill they need for their main occupation, or something they do for fun? Are they edging toward perfection, or always terrible but having a great time anyway? Practice your own writing this week. Rude Awakening: All was going well--except that it really wasn’t and your character only just now found out. What situation has drastically changed and why? Did it actually change, or did your character’s knowledge or perception change? Was someone keeping the truth from your character? Were they willfully blind? What are they going to do now? Was your character the one hiding the facts from someone else? Were they protecting someone or covering themselves? This week, give your character a rude awakening.

Week of August 18, 2023 Shipwreck!: Shipping is popular in fandom, so how about shipwrecks? Two characters who definitely do not belong together, but their horrible relationship is fun to watch? One character’s arc making them less compatible with their current partner? Another character deliberately sabotaging your main character's romance? This week, write a shipwreck. *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Windfall: Something good fell in your character's lap, something they weren't expecting. Does it come at an opportune time to fix a problem? Does it cause a headache (or heartache) down the road? Or do they make cider, as one does with windfall apples? Am I a Joke To You?: When has your character been earnest, but wasn’t taken seriously? Are they usually the clown? Are they known for lying or exaggerating? Maybe the problem is on the other side of the equation. Did the subject make the other person uncomfortable and they dismissed it with humor? Is your character the one making light of the situation? Humor often eases conflict but it can be tone-deaf too. Write about a time when it was.

Week of August 11, 2023 Miracles: Do miracles occur in your character’s world? Has your character experienced any? What ones, or what ones are they aware of? Are they events that happened long ago, preserved only in stories, or are there people living who can testify to them? What about more mundane miracles? The kind that border on deus ex machina but have an in-universe explanation? Or even more mundane--the engineer who unfailingly repairs your character’s ship or gear, the friend who shows up exactly when your character needs them most, the news item that crosses your character’s feed and solves their unsolvable mystery. What does your character consider a miracle, and when has it occurred? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Long-Distance Connections - Your character's friends, family, colleagues, or loved ones won't always be close at hand. How do they maintain the relationship? Do they enjoy real-time, visual and audio transmissions? Is there a delay for distance -- or surreptitious monitoring? Pre-recorded messages? Text messages? Letters? Maybe contact isn't possible at all. What do they share? What do they hold back and why? Consider time as a separation, and how a character might stay connected to someone lost to them, or discover a connection to the past. Folk Tales: All cultures have folk tales--the stories people tell each other. The ones everyone knows, or knows a version of. They may be written down, or they may only be told around the campfire, the coffee pot, or in the chatroom. They may be cautionary tales, stories of heroism, or horror. Modern urban legends fall in this category. What ones does your character know? Where did they hear them? Which ones do they share and why? Let your character be the storyteller this week.

Week of August 4, 2023 Sales Pitch: We’ve had prompts for buying and shopping but how about marketing? Your character has to buy things--see previous sentence--so how do they decide where to spend their money? What convinces them to choose one item or service over another? Are they looking for value, a good deal, a known brand, or status? Straight-up adventuring doesn’t always pay well--how do they get someone to buy the loot they collected but can’t use? How does your bounty hunter or smuggler advertise their services? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Pay Attention to the Man Behind The Curtain: What’s going on behind the scenes in your character’s story? Who’s plotting and planning, and what do they have in mind? Is it your character’s nemesis building their next death trap or world-dominating scheme? Is it a rival, itching for the opportunity to embarrass your character at their next meeting or conference? Maybe it's a good thing. Suppose a potential love interest is working up the courage or arranging an opportunity to confess their feelings. Perhaps there’s a companion planning a surprise party, or just a pleasant surprise. Maybe their doctor is trying to figure out how your character’s mild-mannered alter ego has so many grievous injuries. This week, write a story that advances your main story and character, but doesn’t directly involve them. YOLO: as in “You Only Live Once.” A close cousin to “I dare you,” YOLO is more your character working themselves up to do something than showing off. Apply it to anything your character might hesitate about: strange new food, a remote camping trip, karaoke, bungee jumping. Write about your character or one of their companions trying something risky or otherwise outside their comfort zone.

Week of July 28, 2023 Panic Mode: What event sends your character into a panic? Is it an actual, obvious threat to life and limb, or something more existential? Is it a situation they know sends them into a panic, or is their reaction a surprise even to themselves? What is it they’re afraid of? Is their panic justified? Can they avoid the situation or must they face it? Will anyone help, and how? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Popularity Contest: We often make our characters strong and confident, people who believe in themselves and what they’re doing. But being popular isn’t really about believing in yourself and what you do--it’s about other people liking what you do. Sometimes the two coincide. It's certainly easier when your character is popular in their own story just for being who they are. What about the flip side? Were there times your character did things just to be popular? Did it work? Do they chase popularity and find it elusive, while the praise falls on other characters? Are they popular and followed and copied and really wish they weren’t? Do they care? What sorts of things would make them popular in their culture? If they truly don’t care, why? Are there consequences for not just winning or losing the contest, but ignoring it altogether? Our Song: Many couples have a special song, one they associate with being together or with the other person. How about your character and their SO? What’s their song and why? What about former partners and their special songs? What happens when our song plays, but the other part of our isn’t in their life anymore, or at least not right then? Does their song stay the same or get replaced? Added to? Is our song for your character and their SO or something else: their first starship or car, a city or planet, or a mentor or close friend?

Week of July 21, 2023 Code of Conduct: It’s fun to assign your character a D&D alignment, but most characters are more complex than that. Often their actions seem contradictory, but are consistent according to your character’s personal code. So what is it? What combination of lines they won’t cross and clearly acceptable behaviors make up your character’s morals? Is it something they learned or something they developed on their own? What events in the course of their story test them, and how do they respond? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Success: It’s said that nothing worth doing is ever easy. Certainly your character’s journey shouldn’t be, or it wouldn’t have been interesting. And the writing of it might not be either, but now it’s done. Quest complete, journey over, book finished. How does it feel? Does your character celebrate? How? Is this success just a little one on a much longer road, or is it the big one they’ve been waiting for? If so, is there a bigger goal on the horizon, one they couldn’t even see until they got here? Let your character bask in success for a change, and think about whether their story is really over. Surprises--Unexpected, sometimes good, sometimes less so. A party, a gift, a visit from a relative (or enemy--or both in the same person), or even a good jump scare. This week, give your character and readers a surprise.

Week of July 14, 2023 Pyrrhic Victory: Some victories come at a cost, and sometimes that cost is enough to obliterate the success. It’s winning the battle, but losing the war. Perhaps your character encountered the concept in the literal, military sense. Maybe winning an argument with a friend or lover cost them the relationship. Of course they were in the right, but was being right worth it? Did your character consider the cost or were they blind to those potential consequences? Why was being right so important, and what did they hope to gain? When has your character been on the other side--letting another win but walking away with the real victory? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Titles--Queen, Lord, Baron, Senator, President, Minister, Director, Sir or Madam. A title might be formal, bestowed in a ceremony. It might be a basic term of respect or polite discourse. Or it might be earned by appearance, action, or affiliation: Erik the Red, Catherine the Great, Jabba the Hutt. What titles does your character have? Hospitality: Guests arrive, Unexpected or otherwise. How does your character treat them? If your character is the guest, how are they received? What's expected in their culture and do they conform to those expectations? Are the guests using those norms against your character to get in, get close, get something they might not otherwise? Are they just being annoying? How long do they stay, and how does that change the expectations of both your character and their guest? What does your character think about their obligations as a host? As a guest? Do their actions reflect their beliefs?

Just a heads up, I'm leaving for vacation where the internet is spotty at best so this probably won't get updated for a couple of weeks. Here's this week's prompt......happy Friday and happy writing! Week of July 7, 2023 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? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Exposition - Think of Yoda explaining The Force to Luke, or The Man in Black discussing iocane powder. Your characters have information, your readers need to know it too, and you don’t want them falling asleep, ignoring it, forgetting it, or putting the book down. This is the challenge of exposition. The most common way to convey information is a variant on a lecture, where a knowledgeable character explains everything to listeners. But it needn't be so dry. Have the listeners ask questions. Make the lecturer defend something terrible or nonsensical, and believe it. Use implication, and let your readers fill in what’s missing. Make exposition interesting and memorable. Soulmates - Fandoms sail on ships. Does your character have a soulmate? It need not be a designated love interest. A soulmate doesn’t have to be romantic, though they often are. It’s someone with whom your character shares a special bond, an almost inexplicable affinity. How did they meet, discover their shared interests? Are they in the discovery process? Do they deny the attraction? Or is your character convinced they’ll never meet anyone?

Week of June 30, 2023 False Friends: We have plenty of prompts involving your character’s true companions and best friends and soulmates and lovers. What about those who pretend to such trust but don’t deserve it? The ones who show a false, friendly face to get what they want, but have no feelings or loyalty to your character. They may, in fact, be actively working against them. Are any among your character’s companions a false friend? When does it become apparent? Does the reader know but your character doesn’t, and how obvious are the hints? Is your character the one showing the false face? Is it a short-term thing, needed for the plot, or is your character the type to deceive everyone? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Goals: Your character is nothing without goals. Pursuing their goal is what propels the story forward. Step back for a moment and consider how and why they set that goal. Did they wake up one morning and know what they wanted to do? Did it grow organically out of life experience? Did they go through a modern, goal-setting exercise? Is theirs a reasonable goal, achievable with a stretch, or are they unlikely to ever achieve it? Do they keep moving the goalposts? Does someone move them for your character? Set a goal this week. Flirting/Kissing/Smut: Flirting has verbal components but much is conveyed through gestures. And, as usual, societies all have their own vocabulary for showing interest. Experiment with non-human ones! Then there’s kissing (where do the hands go?) or further. This week, have your characters demonstrate sexual attraction to each other, and take it as far as you wish.

Week of June 23, 2023 Mercy: Usually considered the opposite of vengeance, mercy offers gentleness toward a being who by all rights deserves nothing of the kind. It’s an act usually associated with “good” characters, but heroes can be vengeful and villains merciful when it suits their purposes. Has your character ever offered another mercy? Is it in their nature to do so? What about refusing it, or refusing to grant it? Do they feel they (or the person at their mercy) deserve punishment? Do they see granting mercy as a weakness and themselves (their enemy) weak if they accept? Is anyone surprised in the exchange? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: The Clothes Make the Man (or Woman): You choose your character’s outfit, so what does it say to the others in your story, and to your readers? Are they always dapper and well-dressed, usually a mess, or something in between? Does your character actually care? How do they show it? Have they ever used expected attire as a way to get somewhere they’re not supposed to be? If they wear a uniform, is it one mandated by their superiors or by long-standing custom? Are they able to personalize it? To what extent? Do they have a special outfit they reserve for certain occasions? What about holidays or ceremonies that require special clothes? NO PANTS! Relaxing at home. Nothing planned, nothing going on, nothing pending, no crises. No pants. What's that mean for your character? Is there any place or time when they can truly relax? Do they fantasize about relaxation while dashing between disasters? Are they stuck in the doldrums, praying for something--anything--to happen? Or do they take "no pants" more literally?

Week of June 16, 2023 Adopted: Is your character related to the people who raised them? Have they welcomed a person into their family as a child or a sibling? Were they raised by their birth parents, but one or more of their siblings or other relative was adopted? Was the adoption a secret or was it known openly? Was it unofficial or were there numerous rules and customs to follow? How did this affect their family dynamic? Were there different rules or was everyone treated the same? Was “you’re adopted” thrown around as an epithet or an excuse for difference? Or was it joyful, a fact your character will never forget? This week, consider ways to make that found family a “real” family. *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Guessing Games: Twenty Questions. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? I Spy. What do I have in my pocket? Guessing games and riddle contests are at least as old as language. Today they're children's games, played to pass the time while waiting or traveling. But they're also ways of challenging your perceptions and seeing through someone else's eyes. This week, engage in a guessing game with your character or their companions. Inappropriate Use of Power- To be honest, the germ of this idea came from imagining a youthful Obi-Wan trying out his Force Persuade skill on a bartender with a handwave and a “you don’t need to see my identification.” And while the tone of the inspiration was silly--what’s to stop scheming Sith from reading their instructor’s mind for quiz answers--it can be sinister as well. It’s not limited to Force-users, or indeed any character with special powers. Authority and trust can be misused as well, and to silly or sinister ends. Was your character tempted? Did they witness an event? Did they stop another character?

Week of June 9, 2023 Spark Joy: What things in your character’s life make them happy? Little things, big things, maybe not things at all but places or experiences. Alternately, what’s something about your character that makes you happy to write them? Their relationships, their dialogue, the way they dress or where their story is set. This week, write something that sparks joy for you or your character--ideally both. *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Old Habits Die Hard: Nearly everyone carries some habits from the past that don’t fit or are just plain weird in their current situation. What are your character’s? What behavioral quirk did they pick up in their life and why? Is it still useful, which is why they still do it? Is it harmless and unremarked on? Is it noticed and companions are too polite to mention it? Or do they mention it, and your character only then realizes what they’re doing? Was it ever useful or just a quirk? What habits--harmless or otherwise--have your character picked up and why do they persist? Change of Heart: Characters often grow and change in their stories, but usually their core beliefs remain the same. Suppose they didn’t? Some of the most satisfying stories--fiction and non--involve a character having a complete change of heart. The miser-to-generous is well-known, but consider any strongly held belief for change. What experiences make the character reconsider? Is it momentary and fleeting, or long lasting? The change doesn’t have to be for the good, either. A kind character could become cruel, or an open-minded one become hidebound and inflexible. Write about your character’s heart growing--or shrinking--three sizes, and what happened when it did.

Happy Friday!!! Here's this week's prompt.... Week of June 2, 2023 Relying on Technology: Whatever your setting, fantasy to sci-fi to modern world, your characters use technology. What’s most crucial to them? Their ship? Their everburning torch? Radio? What, if any, changed during their lifetime? Are they early adopters, picking up the new shiny as soon as it's available? Are they curmudgeons, sticking with the tried and true? What happens when they have to change because their favorite thing is no longer available or isn’t working reliably? In what way does your character rely on technology? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Frustration: Sometimes events (aka the writer) conspire to thwart your character. It might be a series of minor things--the coffee machine broke, the bus was late (so they caught it but were late anyway), and to top it off all the good donuts were gone at the meeting...where the project no one else wanted ended up in their lap. Yay. Maybe it's a repeated error: the food stall never gets their order right, the clerk always mispronounces your character's name. This week write about someone or something getting on your character’s last nerve. Persuasion - A salesman, a con artist, a propagandist, an advertiser. But also a lover hoping their beloved feels the same, a scientist with a new theory, a lawyer defending their client or prosecuting the law, a child wanting to keep the cat that followed them home. Persuasion is all about convincing someone and bringing them over to your side of the argument. It doesn’t have to be successful! Some characters never agree, but they do like to argue.

Now for the current week's prompt..... Week of May 26, 2023 Devil’s Price/Faustian Bargain: Would your character sell themselves (or someone else) to Satan for one corn chip? Seriously, though, even in worlds without the concept of a supreme evil or a soul, a character can make a deal with the devil, where they give up something of spiritual value in exchange for worldly benefit. Moreover, the character must know the nature of the trade; that they’re making a pact with an amoral entity or transgressing their own code for a concrete benefit. A character may do so willingly, eager for knowledge or power, or they may feel forced into it when all their options are bad. In either case, they often don’t realize that what they’ve lost was worth more than what they gained until it’s too late. If ever. Has your character ever been tempted? What was the final price? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Interrogation-- Question-and-answer, a classic back and forth dialogue. While the word suggests police procedurals, spies, or war, it can be far more broad than that. Interrogation encompasses a doctor trying to make sense of a patient’s symptoms or a job interview. Consider a character who gives way more information than required, or an interviewer who never manages to ask the right question. Irritating Habits--Everyone has them. What about your character or one of their companions? Gum-chewing, whistling, smoking, a preference for odiferous delicacies? Who annoys who and how? Consider too that what's rude, irritating, or just plain gross in one culture may be perfectly acceptable or even polite in another. The converse is true as well.

Week of May 19, 2023 Bragging: Does your character like to toot their own horn? To tell everyone within earshot about how awesome they are and the amazing things they’ve done? Do they manage to steer any conversation around to themselves? Do they perhaps embellish the truth a little? A lot? To be fair, there's nothing wrong with being proud of accomplishments, or telling other people about them. Does your character take it too far? Are they rightfully satisfied with their performance and someone else accuses them of bragging? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Fight! Fight!: Let's start with a fight scene. A physical fight scene. Not a heated argument, not a verbal fight, the real deal. Combat tells a story just as much as description or dialogue. It's not a litany of who punches who. Fighting characters both want something and their method of settling is violence. They might not want the same thing and what they do in the fight will reflect their goals. Are they both (or all--enemies might bring backup or it might be a multi-way disagreement) committed to fighting or will one back down? How far are they willing to go? Does someone have to die? Is injury or humiliation enough? What happens to the winner? This week, tell a story where a fight scene expands on characterization, is central to the plot, or both. Favorite Song: What's your character's favorite song? Do they hum it without thinking? Do they play it on repeat until everyone else is sick of it? Is it an old pop song, a recent one, or maybe a very old folk song? Where did they learn it? What do they like about it so much? Does it have any significance beyond "just like it?" Is it always the same song, or is theirs more of a favorite repertoire? Write about your character and the song(s) they like best.

Week of May 12, 2023 Escape!: Maybe they’re captured, maybe they’re trapped. Maybe the ship is crashing or sinking or under attack. Maybe it’s a natural disaster destroying their home or planet. Maybe the disaster is man-made or slow but inevitable. Maybe it’s a bad relationship. Maybe it’s their parents. Maybe they’re a slave or a prisoner. Maybe they’re claustrophobic. Maybe it’s grand, maybe it’s desperate, maybe it’s planned, maybe it’s a spur of the moment opportunity. Write about your character’s escape. *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Pratfall: Think of the characters played by actors like Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, or Rowan Atkinson. All of them rely on funny physical stunts. Add humor to a story with an event going wrong, give your readers a break from a serious situation with a physical joke, or run with the prompt and craft an entire story where what happens in the character’s physical world is hilarious. This week, it’s time for clowning, mime, and slapstick. Embarrassment: Everyone has that moment they'd rather forget. The time when every eye was on them, but not in a good way. What about your character? When has the glaring spotlight of public embarrassment shone on them and why? Is it a story they'll never tell? Is it the hilarious tale told for laughs well after the fact? Or is it one of those things that slips out after too many intoxicants?

Week of May 5, 2023 Priceless: What’s most valuable to your character? Something that can’t be quantified, something without a price tag attached. Intangible things: Friendship, love, joy, happiness, family, all usually considered positive. Negative ones too, like vengeance. Something impermanent, and thus valuable for its rarity: quiet in a crowded place, a sunset or sunrise, a favorite season. Perhaps it’s a precious memory of a place or person long gone. Certainly money can help your character get many of these things, but your character must have something that cannot be bought or sold, something beyond money, something priceless. What is it? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Don't Fall Asleep: We’ve had several prompts regarding rest and sleep. How about the opposite? When has your character needed to stay awake when they otherwise would sleep? These usually aren’t entirely voluntary situations: guard duty, cramming for tests, finishing a report or project in the wee hours before it’s due, or working a double shift (for any number of reasons). Why does your character have to stay awake? What methods do they use? What’s available to them? Suppose they can’t rely on their usual stimulant beverage of choice? How much of a challenge is it to stay awake, anyway? It would be harder to stay awake for a boring stint of guard duty than an eventful one--but then making decisions while sleep-deprived has its own consequences. Keeping Secrets: Not always a great idea, but one our characters often do anyway. Secrets can be anything from being Darth Vader’s son to the family fried chicken recipe. How does your character keep it? Not telling is far too easy. If the secret is important to your story, your character should find it challenging to keep that way. Do they rely on half-truths? Out and out lies? Evasion? A clever disguise? There are likely to be holes in whatever fabrications they’ve employed--who finds them and what do they conclude? Is your character the one poking holes in a companion’s cover stories and wondering what they’re hiding and why? This week consider not the secret itself, but how your character--or someone they care about--protects it.

Week of April 28, 2023 Dodged a Bullet: Unless your character is Neo from The Matrix or a Jedi (or Sith), it’s unlikely they’ve literally dodged a bullet. What about a metaphorical one? Most often, these situations are avoided by luck or unrelated actions, not by foresight. What close calls have they had? What situation could have turned out disastrous but didn’t, and why? Whether it’s a big deal, like a planetary lockdown your character narrowly avoids, or a minor one like an outbreak of food poisoning at the restaurant your character decided not to go to at the last minute, when has your character dodged a bullet? And if it applies, go ahead and explore the literal meaning as well! *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Left Behind: A friend, a lover, a prized possession, relationship baggage, clothes that don't fit, heirlooms they hate, roles they can't fill. What did your character leave behind to start their adventure? Was your character the one left behind when everyone else went away? What happens in a story where the adventure comes to them? In the “go ahead without me” trope, who gets left behind and why? If your character, why were they left and why did they ask? Who faces consequences when all the others return home? Hugs: Whether romantic or platonic or somewhere in between, hugs are a universal human gesture of affection. Who does your character hug, or who would they like to receive a hug from? If not human, does their species show affection in that way, or do they at least understand the human impulse? Do they hug everyone or reserve it for certain other characters? Do they dislike hugs except from a few? How do they react when getting a wanted--or unwanted--hug? What’s different in their hugs to lovers, to their children, or close friends? Write a huggable story this week.

Week of April 21, 2023 Fortune Telling: Who doesn’t want to know the future? What can your character do to find out? Are there methods like horoscopes or tarot? Tea leaves or I Ching? Dreams or visions? What omens do they see and what do they believe they foretell? Are any of these methods reliable or are they all superstition? Do some of them work but not others? Or does the talent or skill lie with the practitioner, not the method? Most importantly: are the predictions reliable? Are they vague enough to be true whatever happens? Does your character have real options, or are their actions preordained? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Credit Where Credit is Due: When a companion or an advisor comes up with a good plan, will your character act on it? Suppose it was someone they disliked? A rival? When it comes time to take credit, will they acknowledge the help? What about a time when a mentor or superior used your character’s advice or idea? Were they praised? Or blamed, if the plan didn’t work so well? Did your character throw someone under the bus? Was your character the one run over? How do their actions affect the rest of their story? Is your character willing to give credit where it’s due, or do they hog the spotlight (except when it’s inconvenient)? Beneath Notice: What things in your character's life or world are invisible because they’re common or believed to be unimportant? Cooks and cleaners are often beneath notice, giving a clever character a way into a secure place. Or, an enemy a way into your character’s stronghold! Most such duties are also necessary--so what happens when your cyborg character’s mechanic is kidnapped, or their janitorial staff quits en masse? Could your character cripple their enemy by stirring up unrest among their underlings? Notice who’s usually overlooked this week.

Week of April 14, 2023 Critical, Need-to-Know Information: Your character’s going to be In A Situation--what do they need to know? Do they get it? Who do you have deliver it and how--both to your character and your readers? Are they deliberately denied helpful information, or is the intelligence just not available? Was a crucial bit overlooked by those preparing the briefing? Does your character ignore the vital detail(s) and focus on less important things? Do they immediately grasp that critical piece and its significance? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Silent Partner - One of the participants in the conversation cannot be heard or understood directly by the readers. Maybe their speech is inaudible or garbled. They might speak a foreign or nonhuman language. Perhaps your character is rehearsing and anticipating audience questions. Their partner might simply not speak for biological or personal reasons. One character does all the talking, but the reader still needs to follow the conversation. Looking Back: Whether it's with fondness or relief, everyone thinks about their past sometimes. Something that held them back, or something that propelled them forward. They might consider time with a mentor, a formative event, or just a memorable vacation. Write about your character reminiscing.

Week of April 7, 2023 Practical Jokes: Practical jokes sit on one end of a continuum through harmless (if annoying) pranks, and outright bullying. All too often people hide their malicious intent behind the word “joke” to minimize the victim’s pain. But practical jokes can be fun when they end with everyone laughing, and even annoying pranks do no real damage. When has your character pulled a practical joke? Been the butt of one? Watched it go down? Was it really a joke, or torment in disguise? Was it all an honest mistake that ended up being a joke--and maybe a hilarious story to relate to their friends? *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Partners: Who is your character’s partner? Or perhaps who are your character’s partners? Romantic partner(s) aside, who are some of your character’s other allies? They can be friends, business relations, co-workers, or even partners in crime. How loyal are they to your character and vice-versa? Not every partner would follow your character everywhere. Some might be reliable only so long as the money (or whatever they get out of the arrangement) lasts. Your character might feel the same about them too! Curve Ball--as writers we plan our character’s encounters. This week, throw them into something new. Something they didn't expect. Something they never saw coming. Who panics? Who takes it in stride? Who stumbles but runs with it?

Week of March 31, 2023 FixFic Free Space: Previous prompts didn’t hit the mark? Here it is, the chance to change any canon thing you want. Fill in those plot holes, rewrite the ending that fell flat, add characters, combine characters, complete the arcs of ones who faded away. Big fix, little fix, any fix. Fiction is a sandbox; build what you want. *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Hero Worship: Who does your character think of when they hear the word "hero"? Is it a specific person? A type of person, or a person in a specific occupation? Have they ever met their hero(es)? Who sees your character as a hero--no matter how venal they really are? How do they show it, and how does your character deal with it? What Goes Around Comes Around: If the Golden Rule is “treat others how you wish to be treated” then this is what happens when you don't. Cheaters will be cheated, liars lied to, and bullies bullied. Write about a time when your character's behavior came back to haunt them, or when they had an opportunity to visit retribution on someone who wronged them.

Week of March 24, 2023 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. *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Work for It: A broad theme in fiction is that our characters want something and then do what they have to in order to get it. They earned their reward, worked for it, therefore they deserve what they have. Villains and antagonists also “earn” their defeats: they opposed our heroes and get what they deserve. But...did they? Friendship, love, forgiveness--these are freely given or not at all. Social positions have elements of both. Consider this week what your character gained by actually working for it and what they feel they deserve--whether they do or not. Networking: What’s your character’s preferred way to make connections, gather information, or acquire favors? Do they go to or host parties? Use whatever social media exists in their world? Talk to friends? Take out advertisements? Hang around where they think the kind of person they need is likely to show? How subtle are they? Do they make friendly overtures first or bypass the social niceties? Do they get aggressive when they don’t get their way? How does that manifest: throwing punches or throwing shade? Why do they choose their approach? Are they consistent or do they change depending on the situation and what they need?

Week of March 17, 2023 OTP/NOTP: What non-canon pair ought to be together? What canon pair shouldn't exist? How they get together/break up is all up to you. They don’t have to be your OTP/NOTP, just interesting relationships to change. Romance doesn’t have to be the center, but rearranging those canon relationships has ripple effects on the rest of the cast and the plot. Apply to platonic relationships too! *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: Difficult Conversations: Granted, any conversation can be difficult, but what’s a topic your character really doesn’t want to discuss? A change in relationship with a significant other? A temporary separation for a dangerous mission? A part of their past they want to keep hidden, or would rather not bring up? Maybe it's a long-running sore subject that never gets resolved. An argument that reaches cease-fire status whenever it comes up, but never peace? It could be a health issue, the death of a friend or family member, an unexpected child, an unpleasant marriage. Or maybe a disagreement over redecorating. Again. Your character’s in for a difficult conversation this week. Don’t Stop Believing: Countless writers guides council you to include the moment when your character considers quitting. For some stories, it’s the centerpiece, if not the center. Somehow, they go on. Complete the quest, finish the journey, save the world, make a difference. This week, write about your character facing such a moment, and not giving up. Finding the strength to go on.

Week of March 10, 2023 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). *Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust, share it anyway! *This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you. This week’s featured previous prompts are: You Made It: What situation did your character face and make it out alive? A battle, a terrifying mission, a trip back home to visit family? They faced the situation and came out the other side. Not necessarily unscathed--perhaps they have new scars or trauma or lost a companion--but your character made it. What happened, where are they now, and what happens next? Do they get a breather between situations or are they heading right back out into the fray? Or is this it, the end of their adventure, time for a well-deserved rest? Threats: Usually violent or of harm, threats are the stick to a promise’s carrot. Does your character threaten others? Been threatened? Legal action or social embarrassment is potentially as threatening as the more-obvious beat down. Are the threats empty, hoping to force compliance without intending on follow through? Or were they promises of the hostile kind, where your character or their enemy merely states what will happen?