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, February 15th, starting at 3am PST, and will run all day.)
The Prompt
"What we need are earthquake inducing short stories, fantasy and science fiction that speaks to a generation with dwindling attention spans" - Brian Reindel, “In Defense of the Short Story”
As a middle school teacher, I work closely with that generation with dwindling attention spans. It’s unfair to sum up an entire generation with one feature, like their attention spans, of course. These students are so bright, creative, and passionate. There are vigorous readers, wishful readers, and reluctant readers. I often recommend short stories to families of students who are striving to exercise their reading muscles. Short stories can be a way to unlock a love of reading, capture a reader’s imagination, and whisk them off for a short journey into other worlds. They’re also a great way for authors to exercise their craft muscles.
Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to show, not tell. Write a scene in a speculative fiction world where the rules of magic, technology, or the society are revealed only through the character(s), what they do, not what they think or explain. This can be a brand new scene with new characters, or a scene from a work you have written or are writing right now.
That’s it. Simple, but challenging. Trust your reader to understand. They don’t need to be spoon fed the world you imagined. Instead, they will discover the wonderfully twisted rules of your world in the moment. So, if you find yourself explaining, stop, and replace the explanation with action.
Bonus: Stuck on how to get started? Perhaps a scene prompt can help. Your character reaches for a forbidden object they are not supposed to use. Whether they actually grab the object or stop themselves can reveal hierarchy, taboo, or social structure.
Happy writing!
Good Luck Promptlings!
If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to comment or send me (Reina Cruz) a DM.
The Ulvuks´attack
🔮- Fantasy
Crossing an endless, moonlit wasteland, the travelers fall into an invisible ambush. Paralyzed by shrieking creatures that steal from beneath their feet, they watch helplessly as their most precious object is taken.
After a rest that felt far too brief, they resumed their march. Tall walls, columns, crags, and overhangs multiplied into an endless succession of silhouettes and blurred colors. For hours there were no variations or landmarks in the landscape that might allow them to guess where they were. Only when the shadows began to lengthen and the second moon appeared timidly in the sky, mirroring the first, did Jarel stumble upon the memory of the tales about the astonishing lands of Yampé, which Cuenya had gifted with the light of two moons to compensate for the ferocity with which the sun scorched the day.
He struggled to recover from his memory some useful detail about the place (its inhabitants, geography, distances, reference points, or nearby settlements). He had the irritating and unsettling sensation that something important he needed to remember slipped away every time he was on the verge of recalling it, as if he had just awakened from a particularly vivid dream and the faces of its protagonists dissolved into wakefulness despite his efforts to hold on to them.
Livi stopped suddenly and dropped her pack to the ground, lifting her arms and face to bathe in the twin moonlight with a sigh of deep pleasure.
—How wonderful —she said, eyes closed and a gentle smile on her lips.
—They’re beautiful, aren’t they? —Ísamer agreed, raising his gaze.
—In the deep forests of Anant, where I live, we worship the moon, but we have only one —Livi said with a soft sadness—. No one fails to notice that moment when its light begins to filter through the branches and leaves, caressing every surface with its shimmering silver touch. Another forest awakens then, renewed with a stealthy energy that grows slowly, without pause, stretching until it reaches the last corner and even spreads to eggs and seeds.
She bent down to pick up her pack, and before she could touch it a hole opened directly beneath it, swallowed it, and closed again before her eyes.
—What in the hell was that? —she exclaimed, arching her eyebrows.
Grumbling, with a mixture of annoyance and curiosity, she lunged forward to dig at the sandy ground with Ísamer’s help. They soon dug a sizable pit, but they understood almost immediately that it was useless: the opening had sealed itself as if it had never existed. Sislo motioned for them to step back and, with an agile movement, drove his sword into the exact spot where the pack had been. The weapon sank almost to the hilt as though it had met no resistance. However, it would not budge a single inch when Sislo tried to pull it free. He grasped the hilt with both hands, planted his feet firmly, and pulled with increasing force. Nearly a minute passed before the blade began to rise almost imperceptibly. Then a second hole opened a few steps away, where Jarel had set down a boot he had been drinking from.
—Hey! —Jarel shouted, diving headlong to the ground.
The speed of his reaction allowed him to grab the leather strap just before the boot vanished completely. After a brief struggle, the tension slackened and the boot shot back up to the surface. Whatever had been pulling from the other side had released its hold.
Jarel straightened up just as five more openings burst open in the ground, spewing into the air five strange creatures, like fish leaping out of water. They resembled small rodents with blunt snouts, scaly skin, tiny horns on their heads, and long, tightly curled tails. They hung suspended in the air for a few seconds, releasing in unison a shrill, piercing, deafening screech that left the travelers paralyzed, and then dove back into the ground. The sword was halfway out of the earth, but no matter how hard Sislo tried, he could not move a single muscle. Around him, the others were just as motionless.
The paralyzing effect of the sound emitted by the Ulvuks was so powerful it could petrify anyone who heard it, especially when several of them cried out at once. It lasted no more than a few minutes, but that was enough. They were slippery, cunning, and swift creatures that attacked in groups anyone who dared pass through their territories. First they immobilized the victim, then they set about looting them, stripping away anything they considered useful, interesting, or eye-catching. Mandhara realized with concern that he could not even move his tongue or lips to articulate a spell. When, moments later, many new holes opened in the ground and more than twenty Ulvuks burst forth, he understood in anguish that they were at the creatures’ mercy. The rodents swarmed over them, rummaging through their clothes and gear, searching here and there, trying to seize whatever caught their attention.
Khas, pale as the moon, felt she was on the verge of fainting again. The repulsive sensation of the horrible little creatures’ paws moving through her clothes and hair prevented her from thinking clearly. She felt deeply exposed and vulnerable. She noticed her heart racing in her chest, cold sweat covering her palms and running down her back. She did not believe she could endure much longer. She forced herself to calm her mind and summoned all her willpower to control her breathing. She tried to focus on the medallion resting against her skin and felt a warmth slowly spreading, canceling out all other sensations. She repeated her incantation silently, felt the air around her and within her, wrapping her, passing through her, flowing, and she spoke to it. The markings on her body began to spin upon themselves. A gust of hurricane-force wind swept through the valley and struck without warning, hurling the Ulvuks several meters away.
Most of the vermin fled beneath the surface with their meager loot. However, the three most stubborn and greedy returned to the attack. They still had at least a good minute to exploit before their prey recovered mobility, and they did not intend to waste it. One of them climbed up Sislo’s leg to his pack. It rummaged frantically inside and soon seized the case containing the map. The second blast summoned by Khas nearly knocked it down again, but it cleverly took refuge inside the pack. It clutched the case tightly and, to the travelers’ horror, leapt toward one of the holes.
Suddenly Jarel remembered what had been eluding him: it was said that Ulvuks were the most accomplished thieves in Álgerien, that no one could withstand their ambushes, and that once they stole something from you, it was impossible to recover it. A crushing sadness washed over him. The mission had failed in the most unexpected and implausible way; without the map they had no chance. They had betrayed the trust and the last hope of hundreds of peoples. An even sharper stab of guilt pierced him as he imagined the disbelief and dejection on the faces of Coen and Nárfal. How would they explain to the two great Yuru masters that they had lost the map so quickly and in such a foolish manner, after all the effort the two elders had orchestrated to set this quest in motion?
The frightened screech of the Ulvuk took him by surprise, interrupting his thoughts. From the hole it had entered, a jet of hot air suddenly erupted under pressure, like a kind of geyser, blasting the rodent several meters into the air. On Khas’s skin, the markings spun faster. When the creature hit the ground it was dying, an arrow having pierced it straight through. The case slipped from its paws and rolled to Mandhara’s feet. One of the remaining Ulvuks darted toward it in the blink of an eye, but before it reached it a second arrow shaved off its whiskers, forcing it to reconsider, and it fled in terror. A pair of figures approached at a gallop, and the mage wondered whether the next arrow would be meant for him or one of his companions.
—You missed —Nod said with a grin—. Incredible. Just a few days without practice and look how rusty you’ve become.
—It’s this damned sand-filled wind —Áradan retorted, squinting. He rode with his bow drawn and another arrow ready to fly, holding himself steady solely by clamping his legs tightly around Boro’s back.
https://mialeph.substack.com/p/nivadean-chapter-1
Ironically I was writing a scene only earlier today in which the two characters, Unofficial Katy and the Galactic AI, are arguing about 'clunky exposition' in sci-fi (the genre is sci-fi humour - they are always indulging in banter). The scene needs a little work and it's not completed yet but following your prompt, this has encouraged me to finish it and share it. So bear with me on that one...