The Spark # 2

Story Fuel for the Ficitonally Unhinged

Welcome Promptlings to the re-invisioned Prompt Quest: The Spark! It’s time to be weird, fantastical, daring, and deploy your creativity. Imagine monstrous beasts, conniving ghosts, and characters with mysterious motives who may also control weapons of wonder. All of this wondrous speculation originates from your imagination. The task is yours. This is The Spark!

The Rules

The rules are simple. You will be presented with a prompt. It could be a required first line, a task that will challenge your craft, elements required in your story, or a genre specific prompt. You will have two weeks to write a short story under the rules of the prompt. We’ll host a Gathering to celebrate what’s been accomplished and highlight your stories at the end of two weeks. You can share them on this thread, as well as The Pitch at the end of the month. This is an opportunity to find writers you admire, befriend, and learn from.

When sharing your creation, give us the title of your piece, genre in the form an emoji (see below), a brief teaser, and a link to your work. While most of the work will be posted on Substack, you are welcome to share work that fits the prompt that has been shared elsewhere (Wattpad, Simily, Amazon, etc.), but we do ask that the piece be available to readers for free. The Spark is an opportunity to grow in your craft and share your work with other speculative fiction writers.

Genre Emoji Index

👽- Science Fiction

🔮- Fantasy

💀- Horror

🔥- Dystopian

🍫- Magical Realism (Like Water for Chocolate, get it??)

👀- Weird Fiction

(The Gathering discussion thread will take place on Sunday, September 21st, starting at 3am PST, and will run all day.)

The Prompt

“The game continues with the rush against the secret. Onward! Onward! And I will not look back lest I be caught!” - Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to write a scene. This can be a brand new scene with new characters, or a scene from a work you have written or are writing right now. These two characters are to have a conversation. One character has a secret. The other is searching for the truth.

That’s it. Dialogue is so powerful and so challenging. You don’t write dialogue in the way that people typically speak (no “ums” and “likes”), but it still needs to read naturally. There is a balance to it. What can you do with dialogue using this prompt? What are the characters not saying that the reader can understand?

Bonus: Stuck on how to get started? Perhaps a scene prompt can help. Your two characters are talking at a local eatery. This can be a restaurant in a universe far beyond the reaches of our current technology, an ancient marketplace, or a local diner staffed by specters and monsters. The two characters haven’t seen each other for some time. They’re both desperate and will do anything to keep their secret/find the truth.

Happy writing!

Good Luck Promptlings!

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to comment or send me (Reina Cruz) a DM.