1. The clouds seal off the sky, a grim undulating wall of gray that thwarts her attempts to chart their course. By the fifth day she can only answer ‘at sea’ when the prince asks where they are.

2. Superstition holds that cats walk closest to the spirit world, but even here, where the barriers are thinnest, superstition is all that they can claim. Mice, on the other hand…

3. It’s easier not to try– and the days turn to weeks turn to months and it isn’t until some well-meaning coworker murmurs condolences that he realizes a year has passed.

4. They’d tried creating magical companion animals once, as a way of expanding their mana pools. Melding human and animal into a coherent whole… Their students’ students still whisper tales of the disastrous results centuries later.

5. The downside to waking from cryogenic slumber into a futuristic world is that no one knows how anything works. Kate glared unhappily at her current handler who was honestly confused as to why her charge kept asking such strange questions. If a hovercar worked, why did it matter how?

1. In theory it should have hit her when she actually left, but she found herself staring at the suitcase, half packed with memories, and facing the full brunt of her decision.

2. Night rolls in, a stark line of shadow where the world shade blocks the sun.

3. “Have you ever noticed how nothing ever turns out how you expect?”

“Well yeah, but that’s life, right?”

“No, no it’s not.” Henry gave Evan a long look. “When I said nothing, I meant it literally. I can’t think of a single thing you’ve done that’s turned out the way you intended it to.”

“But it’s worked out in the end.”

“That’s not the point, no matter how bad your luck something should have gone right.” Henry frowned, “There’s something not right about you, but damned if I can figure it out.”

4. Another day gone, another shift ended, and all she can think about is how she’s going to make it to the pawnshop in time to get back her grandmother’s bracelet.

5. There’s something about losing your dreams that makes you stubborn– broken, empty, but full of fire against a world that’s turned from environment to antagonist. So she won’t die, not yet, not here, because then the planet wins. Seven generations of traveler blood won’t be denied the stars for long…

These story prompts are released into the wild per Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License, so sayth their author Martha McMahon Bechtel.

Technotari Tags: Writing Prompts

1. He has a whole universe in which he can be alone… only it’s not what he wants, anymore.

2. One of the drawbacks to living in a haunted house is fighting with over which color to paint the kitchen. Susan wasted a month stubbornly repainting it blue before giving up.

3. The only rule is ‘Keep Moving.’ There used to be others, she counted them off in her head when things got too real to bear, but they’d left them in the boot tracks and bodies behind them.

4. Her city had no violent crime, and it came without capes and masks and secret identities. Because there are heroes and there are anti-heroes, and then there are psychotic sociopaths with just enough control to accurately weed the out the black from shades of grey.

5. If the universe played fair, a day with a three hour traffic jam really should have more than a broken vending machine to balance. Still, three Snickers bars for a dollar wasn’t the worst way to finish out a shift. Now if only the rest of the evening went as well…

These story prompts are released into the wild per Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License, so sayth their author Martha McMahon Bechtel.

Technotari Tags: Writing Prompts

1. Having something isn’t the same thing as keeping something, which is a truth she would rather not have learned.

2. The sky is raining blood. Deep copper tears of rust run down buildings older than the oldest child, and pools of ruddy liquid gather in the pavement cracks.

3. Down in the depths of the forest there is no light, just a wide leafy ceiling broken by glimmers of green.

4. Everyone goes mad sooner or later, it’s sort of a coming of age party for the recently hermit-ized.

5. Going the distance normally involved doing things that were either a) hard or b) dangerous, and at the moment she wasn’t really in the mood for either.

These story prompts are released into the wild per Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License, so sayth their author Martha McMahon Bechtel.

Technotari Tags: Writing Prompts