The Spark # 4

Winds shift. Worlds Stir. Write the magic.

Welcome Promptlings to 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, November 23th, starting at 3am PST, and will run all day.)

“Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven’t Read

- Books You Needn’t Read

- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading

- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written […]

- Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages […]

- Books You Want to Own So They’ll Be Handy Just in Case

- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer

- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves

- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified

- Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time to Re-read

- Books You’ve Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It’s Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”

― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

The Prompt

I’d like to come back the original Prompt Quest and bring us back to genre. Most (if not all) of us here are speculative writers. In some ways, I see speculative fiction as a catch all for the strange and supernatural. Science fiction, horror, fantasy. Epic Sci Fi, High Fantasy, Body Horror (one of the few genres that I choose to put down), Paranormal Thriller, Dystopian, Romantasy… We all could keep going, I’m sure.

This month’s genre specific prompts are brought to you by Reedsy. Reedsy provides weekly writing prompts (along with so many other great indie author resources. Set aside an hour, sit down and start clicking buttons. There’s a lot of cool stuff to go through).

Their weekly prompts are also a weekly contest. You can submit a story that is 1,000 words to 3,000 words long inspired by the provided prompt for a chance to $250. This prompt is for a contest due Nov. 14th:

Write a story where a small action from the past has had a huge effect on the future.

Happy writing!

Good Luck Promptlings!

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