Lesson:Writer's Workshop Story Starter/Prompts

This page contains the Prompts for Lesson:Writer's Workshop Story Starter.

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Demise
They crawled over my office space like bugs and worms devouring every morsel of office document in their path. "Bloody Auditors" I thought, black bag men for the Tax Department. "Our hard earned tax dollars being put to good use" — exterminating small business start-ups — Corporate governance gone mad, intolerant of anything outside a multinational framework for the future of our society. A society of drone laborers, fueling the corporate machine, individual private enterprise a fabled myth, extinct, like free speech, self-determinism, individual liberty, and evenhanded justice. Alas, they have found my worn copy of deBono's "Soft Revolution." They look at me like some terrorist... The jackboots are coming.

Beginnings and Endings
The maestro took the stand and with a soft voice filled the hushed silence that waited with anticipation. His words as clear as the tinkle of a crystal clear stream in some early morning mountain air, words spoken with a quiet but firm resolve, that held us in awe and stunned confusion, "There is a time for beginnings and a time for endings, but who can say where one can be differentiated from the other, for all the time we have is... now!" The last word rang out like a shout as the first of a thousand micro-meteorites plowed through the sky and into the auditorium. Few, like me, survived. The apocalypse, foretold by a thousand generations, had finally come.

A Guru's Advice
"What you bring with you is what you will find!" swooned some wannabe guru as we trudged, huffing and puffing, struggling under the weight of our equipment, up the worn steps of another sacred hill so devoid of scenic hutzpah as to leave us devastatingly passionless about the landscape. Another guru wannabe, lets fly from some semi-hidden alcove dug into the side of the rockface, "The outer journey is but illusion, a manifestation of the inner journey, the only true journey. Look inside!" "Bloody useless advice," I muttered, "You can't photograph what's within!"

Tiffany Twisted
"...last thing I remember, I was running for the door. I couldn't find my way out... there seemed to be no way out! Suddenly, there were voices down the corridor... it was too dark to see. The smell of earth, damp from the rain was strong. The next thing I remember was opening my eyes to an early morning, pale sunrise..." "So, what do you want from me?" asked the dusky coated private eye. "Mr. Jones, I want you to find her. Wherever she is, just find her."

The Baiting Game
"Grim days lie ahead." He said as he put his empty stein on the table. George couldn't resist, "Where ya from, Catweazle?" "Do you know me boy! Do ya think ya're being funny?" retorted that shaggy, white-haired man with handlebar mustache and goatee beard. The game was on, and George took to it with relish, he loved baiting old folk, "Keep ya shirt on, Nostradamus! I was just being friendly."

Success
It is Saturday, a day pretty much the same as every other Saturday before it. On this day, the sun shines brightly in a clear blue sky. The gardens, a paradise to behold, are gently caressed by a cool, sea breeze. Fresh coffee in a clean cup rests on my outside table. I am immersed in all the trappings of success — environment, home, family, domestic staff, and pets... a living, breathing 'Hell on Earth!' there is no joy to be found in any of this, and nothing nourishes my soul.

The World of Bob
There is a place for everything and everything has it's place in the world of Bob. If you move something, put it back, exactly where it came from. Even a minor displacement can wreak havoc elsewhere. The world of Bob is the engine of the universe. The butterfly effect has real meaning here, it's not just a theory.

The Migrant
When I was a lad, a minimum serve of chips cost around forty cents and with a piece of flake (gummy shark in batter) the total was less than a buck. Within five years the price had doubled. I learned how price was tied to the market fluctuation, particularly the cost per ton of potatoes. In a period of ten years the owners of the local fish shop had changed from Anglo to Greek to Asian. Jimmy, the first Greek owner made the best hamburgers in the world. It was at this time I started to try and understand migration, and the way migrant families worked, hard, together, to make it in a new country, and make it they did. I never realized, or dreamed that one day I too would be some kind of migrant, expatriate, but first I had to transition from local itinerant worker to world traveler. This is my story.

The Future
"Predictive forecasting of future change to society, as impacted upon by technological development is difficult at best..." droned the Professor, "...that we know with hindsight change can be swift and pervasive, is an accepted fact..." I shifted uneasily in my chair and fought to keep my eyes open, "...assimilation of change has not resulted in radical makeovers of the social setting, such as depicted in the works of Wells, 'Doc' Smith, Gibson, or even mine, for that matter." A forced giggle bubbled through the auditorium. "You're a blithering idiot..." I thought, not for the first time.

Found
Officer: "Sir! Take a look at this." Supervisor: "What's the problem?" Officer: "Well... that's just it, there isn't one... exactly... Sir... just this man there, who doesn't look right — act quite right." Supervisor: "What do you mean?" Officer: "Well Sir, it's just that he's not afraid Sir, not even just a little bit..." Supervisor: "OK. Run a facial scan, let's see what we've got." Officer: "I did Sir, he's a frequent flyer, but even FF's have a little fear of the security check, yet this guy... Infra-Red, Biometric, Racial, Religious, & Psycho-Stable screening all show this guy is green... super green... I think we've found him, Sir!" Supervisor: "Who?" Officer: "The Outlier... Sir..."

The Red Cowled Witch
You may not remember Rupert, he was the old wolf that lived in the forest. Good fella he was, used to protect these lands from marauding humans, well, up until that little, red cloak wearing, sorceress of a girl came along and enchanted some hapless hunter into killing him. Listen now to the tragic tale of the wolf and the red cowled witch.

Bbq's
"Bbq's are funny things," he said, "not the physical cooking item but the event itself — you never really know when you're gonna have a good one." The Tong Master of the day reclined in the camp chair, lifted a beer in a silent, reverential toast to the day, upended the can and suddenly began choking on the ring pull that he'd stuck into it earlier in the day. Blood everywhere and a few minutes later we were racing to the hospital. What a disaster!

The Tale
"Sit ya right down there and for a beer I'll tell ya a tale that'll turn ya hair white and leave ya sleepless for the rest of your days!" said an old, white-haired man at the Sailor's Inn. We'd been exploring the Reeperbahn district looking for a 'real' seaman's pub. What we found, will turn your hair white and leave you sleepless for the rest of your life.

The Hunt
Dust hung in the air like a superfine, dry mist. With each stepfall and turning, beams of light filtered through holes in the ceiling to take definition as near-solid, slowly-moving, columns of gold. This mosque had not been used in a long time, yet all the signs showed that our quarry had recently been here...footprints in the dust, the blood and feathers of a chicken beside a small, warm pile of ash in the corner... we were close, very close.

Max the Sheep
In a sun-drenched pool of light, breaking through the leafy canopy of a Uyghur courtyard, on a late spring morning, sat Max the Sheep. Now Max was no ordinary, everyday kind of sheep, he was a fat-tailed sheep. Max liked sitting in the sun at this time of year, sitting and ruminating over the morning's breakfast. Just then something changed, a shift seemed to ripple through the ground, from the direction of Luolan. It seemed to Max that the 'Smile of the Earth' was beginning to frown.

From out of nowhere
"There is nowhere you can go, that I can't find you!" yelled a short dark haired, Asian featured woman. I looked around. There was no-one else around. "Who? Me? Who are you and why would YOU want to find ME? What is this? Do you think this is a bust!"

Fast Lane
Rumors percolated through the back lot like day old grey water vapors. Martian Sqeezeeasy, orange of note, writer and dramatist had been segmented. Sergent Cucumber faced a vegetable paparazzi throng as agitated as tossed salad. He took a deep breath and prepared for the oncoming crush of the press.

Greenpeace
You may not remember your Uncle Vladimir — if ever there was a person at risk of being pounced on by a "Greenpeace Rescue Team" it was him; he was huge! especially on that day when he went down to that beach, just a little north of the Gold Coast, a place well known locally for nude bathing and whale sightings. He'd just finished swimming and was lying at the water's edge; there was a moderate swell and the waves were gently breaking over his body. Enjoying the sun and water, he'd just closed his eyes, when they came.

The Cadaver
"Six drops of the essence of terror, Five drops of sinister sauce..." As the opening theme for Milton the Monster blared out from the console, something not so cartoonish was taking place. Frankensteinian castles, exchanged for Corporate Glasshousing — white coats and Teslarian laboratories pushed aside for clean room environments and holographic computational systems. The pink and purple cadaver in the gene pool, not some stitched up bag of decayed flesh, but a Japanese nanotech robotic marvel: "The Android of the Fucia!"

A Big Name
A drop of water, frozen in a moment of time, in it a teeming pool of microbial life. Another fraction of a second, frozen like a snapshot. The droplet has rotated. Now it is tinged with red, the red of blood that pollutes a watery splash that rises when an assassin’s victim falls in the rain. Its dark; and this victim had a name. A big name.

The Time Lords
“The keeping of stories is serious stuff,” said the Guild Master, not for the first time. Boergen just yawned, also not for the first time. “Stories, tales, legends, myths, these are the oral histories of our people, their beliefs, values and ideals.” A heavy book snapped closed, ominously close to Boergen’s ear. She came quickly to wakefulness with a start.

Breakdown
The Flats were hot, dry and dusty, the air shimmering in all directions with heat haze while small, dusty willy-willies danced back and forth along the side of the Princess Hwy. We'd broken down a kilometer and a half, or a bit more along the Maffra Road, from Kilmany — a ghostly speck of a town, devoid of all commercial venture. No water, in the middle of nowhere, the nearest soul a "cut lunch and water bottle" away. The heat can kill, still, even in 2007.

Replay
“…and he said, ‘There is but only one way! And George Bush is its messenger!’ with that he pushed a button, much like this one. A minute later he blew up! Just like that! Lucky for me, I’d walked far enough away, in time…” “Yes. Thank you for your time, some officers will be in…” For the second time in two days and explosion roared out, destroying government facilities, one minute after the push of a button, by a microbionuclear suicide, “Bushite,” bomber.

Cattle Class
The train left Chengdu at 5:56 PM. It's Spring Festival Eve and we're headed for Guangzhou. I leave the comfort of my "soft sleeper," shared with three others I don't know, nor can talk to and walk the corridors. The buffet car is almost deserted, the Hard Sleeper section — the usual crowd of six persons per bunk partition (open faced room). The Hard Seat area, what a shock! People everywhere, shoulder to shoulder, sitting at any available space on seats, bags, and each other. I partly force my way through to the end an meet a locked door. Beyond this portal, face after face, standing room only — "cattle class." I wait for the next stop. Have a smoke, out, and walk back along the platform.

Ecoflict
Global warming had taken its toll on the human population by the mid 2050’s. Weather extremes had raged for years in what became known as a, “Battle for the Planet” between star-crossed lovers, El Nino and La Nina. The collateral damage was horrific, whole races of people in 2nd and 3rd world countries decimated to the point of extinction, while 1st world countries, perpetrators of the effect, fought over near depleted resources, while struggling to protect their own: holding a “green card” became the difference, for many, between life and death.

Paperboy
Over night the rain had splashed down, leaving a damp, slippery wetness on every surface. A paperboy, over laden with the morning news, attending to each of his customer’s individual news needs, took a spill going around the corner. Buried under bike and paper, rapidly getting wetter from the sodden path, he shakes his head, mutters a curse and struggles towards his momentary resurrection, but, he’s stuck and cannot move. A street sweeper rounds the corner spraying more water before it. He cannot move.

Performance Art
Pods lie scattered over the floor. Pink casings intermingle with mangled purple petals and pale tipped stamens. Everywhere the sign of some unimaginable carnage and, in the middle of all this, she lies in serene state, a performance artist feigning death — pink frock coat over a purple skirt and pale trousers bleeding to white at the shoes. A sign to the side states: "I am the Fucia!"

The Homeland
“The terrain is difficult,” said the realtor blandly, “cliffs on most sides of a cul-de-sac cove, separated from the sea by a nasty and fickle set of heads: the gap is shallow and uncompromising, you can’t even get a biggish boat in there.” He continued with his litany of faults, but for my purpose, it was perfect, the homeland of my dreams.

The Garden
“Have you ever seen a garden, an old garden,” he asked, “one that’s been reclaimed by nature, but has yet to forget what it once was?” there were several shakes of heads but otherwise no-one broke the silence. He continued, “I have. It was a long time ago and far from here…”

Eyes
With a simple blink, they were gone; those florescent green, ‘glow in the dark’ eyes. They were the kind of eyes that seemed to hover, impassive, calculating, aware, unfearful of us or the darkness that enveloped us. Not for the first time did we, the hunters, feel we were being hunted, but by what?

Goodfellas
“A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month!” said Glenda, attacking with unusual vigor and playfulness; “A hit and a kick for being so quick!” countered Miranda, lashing out with her left foot and failing to connect. The two girls giggled, and walked towards the teahouse.

Little Johnny
Steel confetti lie over the ground. In one corner, to the left of an industrial stamping machine, lay a pair of overalls. A horrific pair, stuffed full to stretching seam with the mangled corpse of Little Johnny. Inspector Huzitt turned, puked, wiped her mouth, and grimaced.

Hard Rain
Three days of hard rain, acid rain, could not wash away that blood soaked image etched into the sandstone causeway; that mangled mash that was once a human being; a human being that carried a consciousness, of which all that is left is this electronic imprint… in e-space… me.

Raiders
“They’re coming!” cried the old man as he staggered into the village. “Run, run! They’re coming, raiders from over the sea!” And so it was they came, raiders, corporate mercenaries, devourers of private enterprise, true believers in a “flat earth, level playing field and harmonized taxation codes...” resource greedy, rapacious and hungry… we didn’t stand a chance!

Wang 'Eight Eggs'
The Chinese New Year had once again, come and gone: a hungry Nian, again chased off by a combination of lights and loud noises. Wang ‘Eight Eggs’ sat in a satisfied happiness, his full belly bulging slightly over his belt, as he leaned back from the table.

Murder!
It was the middle of the rest period, quiet time, the mid-day naptime; the time when the whole city’s official machinery takes a break from its soulless, mind-numbingly goalless endeavors. She shot her, with a 4” pipe gun, and a white rodent as the projectile. “Happy New Year, you Rat!” screeched the Horoscope Serial Killer.

Oral History
There was a time once, when cliffs rose high above the crashing waves; gulls and harriers and eagles soared over the water and swooped the sand; fish were in abundance for the catching; and fresh, spring water filled the well… but that was long ago, before the time of my grandfather’s grandfather…Hear well now, a tale of the death of the world!

Paradise Lost
Still are the pools of Huafa in the morning. Narry a ripple, even as the reflections of security guards pass over them. I sit and watch as the day unfolds and people go about their morning routines of exercise and social walks. The cats chew grass. I drink coffee. Just another bloody day in a paradise with a rotten heart.

A Paragraph
A paragraph is a writing device that organizes one's writing by way of several elements. It contains as a minimum three sentences, that work together to establish one idea. With proper use, at an advanced level, the paragraph can also influence how a reader responds to the idea. The sentences in a paragraph are usually called Topic, Exposition and Linking sentences.

The frog
A long time ago there lived a frog. His home was deep in the forest, under a rock, on the edge of a crystal clear, pond of mountain spring water. There were lilly-pads and lots and lots of froggy food. Everything a frog could want, except he was alone and very, very lonely.

Reef Sign
The currents flowed strong through the ancient channels, ancient even in ancient days past. Natural? Man-made? No-one knew. The island realigning itself with the lunar calendar. The island, a small remnant of a larger, buried temple complex. A fragmentary glimpse of the once “Great Hall of Hermes.”

A Rush Job for Teagan
A phone rings. It’s the middle of the night. Footsteps recede in the stairwell. The phone stops for a moment and begins its insistent peel again. No-one answers. Teagan Wanabe, in a deep chesty voice says, “I think we’re too late. We’ve gotta get those codes, before the launch!”

Sentient
Batwing-eared faces stare down from the wall, the way they have for thousand of generations. Criers in the street call the believers to prayer, and buyers to the hawkers. But the energy is wrong, something has changed in Temple Street. A flicker of color shimmers across the eyes of the ancient, watching faces. Something awakens.

Drought
It was the eight hundred and fifty second day of the drought. The bush fires had all exhausted their natural fuel. Water that once stood in vast, deep lakes, now no longer even ran through artesian streams. It was “The drought we had to have,” or so the Prime Minister said. All the coal beds were burning beyond any hope of control in the ground. The hydro-electric systems defunct and monolithically useless. It was just as well we gone nuclear.

Kasimir and the Rogue
The skimmer beat its gossamer thin wings at polka time, as it flitted down the tunnels in search of ‘worm-sign’. Kasimir, brooding at the controls as the General Secretary’s words echoed in his mind, “Mars Colony can ill-afford another terra-forming catastrophy! The rogue worm must go!”

The Monk of St. Clair
In a darkness only broken by the periodic swaying, to and fro, of a head-mounted light, he wrote. He wrote as if demons or madmen were chasing him, as if his very life depended upon it, this monk of St. Clair; or so it seemed in the video surveillance footage that caught his furtive efforts, moments before the quake hit. Destroying everything in its path, except that room.

Water
Water. Flowing forth from fountain faucets. Bringer of life. A medium for sustenance and aesthetics, irrigation and cooling. It flows. Everywhere. It was in water the found her, an earth goddess corpse.

Clover
Clover covered everything like a moss gone mad, but it wasn’t clover like you'd find on the fair green isle, nor like the pastoral "red" and "white" common to the sun burnt land, no! This was "Four-Leaf" clover, big! Leaves the size of tractor tires. Clover never grew like this, anywhere on that once blue-green ball of rubble that sat, "third rock from the sun."

Going Bush
"Lying in the dark is an easy thing to do, especially if you are by yourself," said the Ranger, "and around here there's no-one for miles; the only trouble is staying alive, or safe, 'til dawn." Someone chuckled in the dark, mirthlessly.

Why?
"It’s colder than Winter..." sang out a voice from a dusty radio, lying in the corner, on its side. Beside it lay knick-knacks and collectables, memorabilia from a forgotten childhood — cars, lead soldiers, half-chewed plastic ones, pictures and newspaper clippings... "Why?" thought Dougal, "Why paper clippings?"

Screams
Screams. Screams in the dark and squeals of laughter. For days and days now, with relentless abandonment, an anarchy of celebration eddying through the town with each change of form of merriment. Christmas and New Year was never so frightful, when I was young.

One minute
10:55AM. Half drunk cups of coffee compete for prominence amongst the breakfast detritus, lying on the table. Sunlight streams in, not for the first time to engage in shadow-play again amidst this unchanged scene. A body, once ripe and bloated lies prune-like in a shroud of dust. 10:56AM. The first knock on the door in six months.

The Mouse Detective from Bologna Beach
Slashes of color riot in a whirlwind of dance and movement as she sashays from table to table, her dress the object of everyone’s attention — even Monsieur Michail's, the mouse detective from Bologna Beach.

Bob the what?
The corridor was rapidly filling with flames as Bob ran at forefront of the conflagration, arms clutching the precious files to his chest while pieces of synthetic ceiling burst into black smoke and fell spraying hot, glowing plastic shrapnel all over. He fell, not for the first time, "The books!" screamed Bob the Accountant, as he woke with a start.

The Psychominer
There are places, deep hidden recesses within the mind, that even seasoned dream-searchers and psycho-miners don't go: not out of fear and terror, but out of sheer bewilderment and inability to comprehend — yet this is where Toth had found herself; inadvertently, and with no perceivable way out.

Diarama
At two AM in the morning, all was silent until that shot rang out. Like all such great shots that change the history of a people, a nation, a world, this was no exception. Several hours later, they found him lying in his own blood, in the small lane off Main Street… the Taxidermist was dead.

King Billy Bites Back
Dark clouds roamed overhead as night settled down like a lid on a steaming pot, while the people of the village, agitated back and forth from house to inn to shop, simmering with the latest news — King Billy of Ballarat was still alive!

As Luck Would Have It
It was the day after the day after that day when my world was shot to shit. Three days later! Two if you don't count that day, and to think when I'd woken up then, I thought it was going to be my lucky day.

Rising Fortunes
It is with known acceptance that most people do not handle change well, be it change via success or change via adversity. The upheaval and distress of adverse change is well documented, even down to the vagaries of change caused by minor misfortunes. Here we will not focus on such change, but on the change that comes as a result of New Money becoming Old Money, and collapsing back into New.

Canto-nized
"Forever Autumn!" that's what it said, scrawled across the lower right corner of a sun-faded portrait, of the most alluring Canto-Pop Queen ever to grace the airways between Hong Kong and the Zhuhai SEZ. Few realized that she was nothing more than an A.I. construct. Even fewer knew that she was no longer even that, or that she was now well and truly, dead!

Sunrise
Hanging heavy in the morning light, the sun like a dull, red ball, as big as a lunar cheese wheel, slowly rose into the sky. Somewhere in this shimmering mass of air, between Hill's End and "The Morning's Glory" at Trentham Falls, a bunyip stirred.

Gumshoe
The promise of rain, lying in fat droplets on a teak-stained boardwalk, harassed by a fickle wind, waiting like some shadow-shrouded sidewalk-swallow for an opportunity to approach. I pulled up the collar of my trench coat, against the moist kisses of the wind, and walked on.

Not The Brightest Kid
Clouds raged! Across the sky, encroached bolts and sheets of lightning. Each thunderclap, announcing post-haste that War, had broken out! Between Air and Water, using Fire and Dust as media to wage their conflict. George stood under the only tree on the high, barren, promontory and watched: he wasn't the brightest kid on the block — he liked to talk of dragons. In years to follow, some would call him a Saint.

Three Days Out
Three days out on a long, straight road, seemingly going to nowhere, we found it, a low, long eroded and slowly sinking ridge, once previously known only to Lockhart — fortune and glory…and gold!

End Over
Shadowed shapes loom out of the flat, pale twilight of pre-dawn. A car, hops madly from patch to patch of ground-loving mist, rushing, lights off, towards some destination. The last fateful day of Earth had just begun.

A Clawful Affair
Throughout the far flung reaches of the tidal pool, floating on eddy currents, spiraling against the flow, bits of news touched rock and shell and fish alike — the "Crab" was dead!

Was Life
In the last years of the twentieth century, the rains fell — little did we realize the seeds of humanity's destruction lay dormant in each drop that fell. Once it was, that water was life! But now, mid-way into the first century of the new millennium, death stalks even the smallest drop.

All in Good Time
"Wind blows, fire burns, rain falls, and all that is on Earth settles to nothing more than a handful of dust!" The guardian rasped out the ancient litany, last of her kind, ready for the passing over... it was her time, but she would have to wait; another millennia to be exact!

No One Wants
Like a faded blue tuft, solitary in a fields of green, it lay there defying all attempts to identify it from a distance: singularly ugly, abandoned by accident, by choice — the hat that no one wants...

Assasin
In the extreme small hours of the final day of occupation, he stood silent and contemplating at the semi-open door of their room, waiting, watching, listening to the concert of breathing issuing from man, woman and child. The ghost, smiled, and descended upon his victims; in decreasing order of size.

Sentinel
Days come and go, drifting by like clouds of imagination, too distant to grasp and remember, too similar, one to the other to stand out clearly. Still. Lying as silent as the earth. He lay wide eyed and still. Alive. Waiting.

The Wastes
Vast waste lands, stretched out beneath my feet, like a day's old beached whale finally free of the pestering of a Greenpeace Rescue Team. The glistening of the sun’s reflection, almost too painful for the eye. Petroglyphs dance! Petroglyphs unannounced in any guidebook seem to move with such liveliness as to almost free themselves from their tombs of ancient rock.

The Wind
There’s a rocking chair on the terrazzo, sage-green, grey and black, with regularly intermittent splotches of rust dotting its frame. it rocks by unseen hands — the hands of the wind, caressing it into each stroke of forward and back, a wind both gentle and fickle. There is something about it, this wind.

Peak Season
It’s the peak season. Small blue grey butterflies flit in the grass. The weather is noticeably cooler. More and more frequently, the winds pick their way the leaves and branches of anything green. Even the cats need attention — lots of it. Fair time has come to the Pearl River Delta: Canton Fair, Hong Kong, Dongguang and Zhongshan, all vying for the attention of buyers, and all during the same wee... It’s Peak Season!

Sounds
Midday. The air hums and shrieks with sounds: sounds of cars and trucks hurtling by; sounds of pruners hacking at the dead leaves of tall palms, browned off with decay; and the sounds of two cats seeking affection.