Season 3

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Writing Prompt

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week

Write an encyclopedia article about a war that has five distinct causes. Identify and justify each of them.

Write a story about a flashback that is completely false…

Start with a device that vaporizes water, ala Batman Begins, and turn it into a believable super weapon which is not being used to destroy the world.

Write a story about a critic who is the hero.

Write a story in which Howard hates elephants and dramatically breaks one.

Combine “Horror” and “Western” and don’t make it look like either one.

Start with iconic Kirk, Spock and McCoy characters and make them your own characters. Spock cannot be an elf … or a rooster. Spock-a-doodle doo!

Your protagonist shows up at a convention, and in his pocket he has a …

… he has an entire universe in his pocket, and it’s not peacebonded.

Write a story that involves you Larping with Jerry Pournelle. Then cut the story down to half size.

Write a story about why Brandon and Dan are wearing identical explosives and blasting t-shirts.

Write a story about why Armando and Haggis are locked in room with many beautiful women whom they are trying to run away from.

Create some sort of fantasy or magical setting in which puppetry requires a fifth principle.

Go out and do some research, find a fascinating character that is nothing like you, go pick some topic that you don’t know about and then write a story.

Write about either a band called The Predestined Monkey, a predestined monkey, or a band of predestined monkeys.

The princess is trying to eat a pie, but someone is trying to stop her. Oh, and the fate of the world depends on the outcome.

Give us villainous heroes, romance and something that evokes terror.

Come up with a plot-driven story, and then try to make it good with boring characters.

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

A self-published book becomes a threat that will end the world…

Scenting the Dark by Mary Robinette Kowal

Insects have in someway evolved defenses against all of the poisons we use to kill them and many of the chemicals that would kill anything, because they have somehow evolved magic.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. If you think Eragon ripped off Star Wars and Star Wars ripped off Lord of the Rings, you need to listen to this book. In this book, Campbell goes through the mono-myth and disects it, explains it and talks about how mythology influses all of our culteral experiences.

“Sense & Sensibility & Terrorists”

Write a story in which Superman swoops into a room, kicks something, and then turns into Spider-Man.

Wheel of Time books, by Robert Jordan

Our superhero gained his superpowers by writing technical articles for Wired …

Wheel of Time books, by Robert Jordan

Kill one of your characters with a shovel.

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, read by Ethan Hawke

Take the most intense character tragedy you can image for your character and, whether or not it is appropriate, find humor in that tragedy.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.

You are writing a future military where the only people allowed in the military are homosexual, and you need a good explanation of why.

The Gathering Storm, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Michael Kramer & Kate Reading

Have an event occur, and then provide five different character perspectives on the event … none of which are completely accurate.

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy, narrated Tom Stechschulte. In Dan’s opinion McCarthy is “the best word for word writer working today.”

Write a true, classically-defined antihero in such a way that Howard will enjoy it.

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, narrated by Martin Jarvis

Write a delightful story about happy, cheerful anthropomorphic creatures who all die horribly.

Stationary Bike, by Steven King, narrated by Ron McLarty

Write a story (all by yourself) about a collaboration which goes horribly, horribly wrong.

For those who want to write a comic, but don’t have the drawing skill neccessary: write your comic and then draw it anyway.

Inferno, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, narrated by Tom Weiner

Dan is on a death panel and he’s going to pull the plug on your grandfather.

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