Writing Prompts for Sci-Fi and Horror

Hile, writers all!

Remember last week when I told you about my friend and fellow indie Tony Healey’s call for sci-fi and horror short stories? Remember? REMEMBER?

If you don’t remember, I hope you’ll click on the link and peruse and ponder Tony’s invitation. This thing is gonna be a blast, and I can’t wait to see how it all comes together!

What? Oh, yeah. I’ve told Tony to count me in. Yes, I know I keep talking about blah blah writing time is limited blah. (Tell me if you get that reference; I’d love to hobnob.) But I’m thinking a deadline (October) might spur me on to finishing my WIP and getting a fairly decent short story together.

I’m thinking I’ll do a Grace and Jack story. Those two are always up for some sci-fi, and Grace pretty much put the spec in specfic. So we’ll see what I can cook up.

In the meantime, Tony has graciously provided a fabulous list of sci-fi and horror writing prompts. I think they’re all helpful — each one triggered in me a hey-I-can-do-something-with-this. But of course I do have some faves. Here are a few of them:

From Tony Healey’s “Some Writing Prompts”:

What is your favourite SF movie? How would you have made that movie even better?

What is the most effective Horror novel you’ve ever read?

Why did it work, and where did it fall down? How would YOU have tackled it?

What scares you? What keeps you awake at night? [Courtney’s note: I especially like this one, as I take it to mean more than the typical monster-under-bed, spiders, creepy-crawlies stuff. I take more as, you lie awake in the night wondering about the potential horrible death of your spouse or your kid and how you would handle that. Throw in something supernatural, and there’s a huge potential for horror there — more of a psychological nature than the creepies, which I think is infinitely scarier.]

Take the worst SF or Horror movie you have EVER seen. …How would you have made it…(to quote Court) CRAMAZING? [Also: Hey, I got quoted!]

Read 2 SF stories. Do the same for Horror. What did you like? What didn’t you like? How did they approach their subject matter?

A few things to think about.

A few things to think about, indeed! Click through to read the rest of the prompts and get to thinkin! And then get those fingers writin’ or typin’. There’s a specfic anthology to make!