Every day, news happens. Sometimes it’s sad news, sometimes it’s feel-good happy news. There are different variations on a theme and, as in the case of the 2012 U.S. elections, multiple people like to add their two cents in on a story that everyone has read (or seen) a million versions of. Given how easily accessible this is, it’s a wonder more people don’t take a prompt from some of these stories to create a brand new fiction.
Today, we’re going to use a real life incident as inspiration for our next story. A story about Google purchasing an ISP sent the various news companies into a twitter as documented in this CNN story. The upshot is that it looks like someone put out a fake press release in order to manipulate the financial market.
Da Prompt: Take this story into the future and write about the people doing the hoax, the people who reacted to it, and the consequences of the hoax (both good and bad). It can be space opera, post-apocalyptic, alien empire, or whatever you want. You cannot use the real names of the people or companies involved in the news story, nor a thinly veiled version of the story. You have to strip the tale down to the bare bones and write something completely new.
Minimum Wordcount: 5000
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Writers are frequently asked the question “Where do you get your ideas?” The question is a hard one to answer because we all find our inspiration in different places. Some people need to be given prompts, little snippets of ideas to spark their imaginations.
With that in mind, I am posting Writing Prompt Wednesdays. The goal is to inspire writers with exercises meant to train their skills and fire up the creative juices. There are rules. Most prompts will have associated word counts or style instructions. These are not meant to restrict the writer, but give the writer a chance to explore different ways of writing.
If you are an author in search of that one juicy idea, I hope these posts help. If you have ideas for writing prompts, please let me know.
Da Rules:
1) Anything goes so long as you stick to the spirit of the prompt.
2) I ask that if you do publish something based on one of my prompts, that you post the good news (and the link) in the comments of the prompt that inspired your success. You want other people to help you celebrate, right?
