Prompts for the New Year

Happy New Year everyone! I hope these prompts help you have a creative and inspired first week of 2017 <3

1) It was supposed to be a fresh start - new year, new me! The witch wasn’t supposed to take that bloody literally and trap me in this form unable to tell anyone who I really am.  

2) He had never kissed anyone on the strike of twelve on New Year. Fireworks bursting on the horizon, the smell of smoke on the air, colour everywhere. It would have probably been more romantic if it wasn’t CPR.

3) “Once every month you will receive a task,” the voice crackled distorted and garbled on the other end of the line. “Complete the task and I will grant you a wish. Fail to do so, and someone you love will die. Do you understand?”

4) “Ladies and gentleman, in a mysterious turn of events it seems that time has gone backwards. I am - I am afraid it’s a little unprecedented on how we should report this development. The entire city seems to have returned to 1926. There is no news yet on whether this is a world-wide phenomenon.”

5) Each year on New Year’s Eve, The Lottery began. An individual can only bring three items from whatever they have gathered in their previous life into the next. The rest is down to the luck of the draw and the favour of the Constellation Court. 

6) They sat behind the clock face of Big Ben, swigging lukewarm white wine in silence as the sky exploded. The creatures had finally come.

Every urban fantasy/comic book character who complains about how they wish they could go back to their normal life of being ugly and bullied and uninteresting because now they can teleport or levitate truly does not deserve the powers they were given

Socially bankrupt teen who only wears zip-up hoodies in navy, gray, or maroon, discovering he can crack the earth with his mind: “OhhHHhh nOoOoo, wHaT abOUt pROm wiTH aliSOn”

Clearly there are two major problems with this ongoing cliche and two easy solutions:

I’d rather see what happens to the minority kid living in oppression suddenly gifted strange powers than another whiny loser. Or see someone given abilities that are frustratingly contrast to their ideas or personality: introverts given flashy powers, hyperactive characters given powers that require stillness of the body and mind, a character out for blood given a very non-violent power and learns how to point it toward violence anyway, a pacifist character granted a very volatile ability who manages to use it in a creative non-violent way.

source

This is how I used to teach a couple of students how to create vehicles or weird creatures when they had trouble coming up with ideas

The vividly visualized sci-fi artwork of Josan Gonzalez.

Imagine telepathic aliens.  Imagine aliens who have no concept of language, who maybe didn’t figure out writing or math until they were figuring out electronics, who still struggle with the entire idea of symbolic thinking, and then they find us.  And they’re going “I can see the technology and cities, and it all looks made for and by these bipeds, but where is the sapience and WHAT IS ALL THIS EFFING HOOTY MOUTH NOISE?!” until someone wonders if the hooty mouth noise has meaning in it.

Imagine aliens going “OMG they’re communicating by noise” and “OMG they’re using code naturally” and “OMG they’re using open-ended productive recursive code how is that POSSIBLE” and “OMG writing” and “OMG they have THOUSANDS of codes”, and it’s all paraoxysms of academic delight and then someone discovers metaphor, and someone discovers encryption, and someone discovers slang and l33t and txting and emoji, and this entire telepathic species has its minds completely blown and the one who went “what if the hooty noise has meaning” wins the alien Nobel.

*hooty mouth noise of approval*

How the sky from Earth would appear if it had rings like Saturn. 

[Click for more interesting science facts and gifs]

Art by Matthieu Rebuffat

Okay but consider this: mermaids in space

Space mermaids? As in: alien mermaids that live in the vacuum of space and swim between the stars? A setting that uses the analogy of deep space as the open ocean but keeps all the sea monsters? DO WANT!!

Luring astronauts into black holes with a song that carries across the void where no one can hear you scream

This post turned real fast

Good definition of science fiction: “No, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s internally consistent in the lack of sense it’s making.”

fuzzy space elf

also available with fabulous wintercoat

I love how alien looking these Andalites are, like they are clearly something not from Earth!

A short story is like a chess game: The opening is a huge part of whether you win or lose. The first sentence of a short story doesn’t just “hook” readers, it also sets the tone and launches the plot. So here are the seven major types of short story openings, and how to pick one.

If a catastrophe caused the Internet to crash, there are 7 people in the world who have keycards that can reboot the system when all 7 keys are used together. Source

It’s getting to the point where technology is indistinguishable from magic. "Oh, no, the MASSIVE INTANGIBLE LIBRARY OF INFORMATION which allows humans all over the planet to communicate and share information has ceased functioning! Call upon the seven sages whom hold the artifacts which will repair it!"

Dude its even better than that, they have to journey to a certain location in america to combine their codes into the Master Code which can revive the internet.

Colossus in the Mist by Jakub Rozalzki  (tumblr)

she came from venus - for female scientists, space explorers, aliens, droids and other badass sci-fi ladies (x)