CFC Secret Santa writing prompts

[jackelgull]

I have an idea for having a secret santa writing challenge for CFC. Everybody who's interested, please pm me a handmade prompt. It should be short, no more than one or two sentences

for example: Write a story in which you combine two things that don't normally go together, like a Winnie the Pooh and Lord of the Rings crossover.

I will then post these prompts up here without the contributor's name attached to them, and the people who pmed me will post in this thread which prompt they want. I trust that no one will pick their own prompt, since that defeats the point of this whole challenge. Then on January 4, everybody will reveal what they have written for their prompt, and take ownership of which prompt is theirs

Optional: Review the story that was written for your prompt.

Let me illustrate how this will work. Poster A B and C send me a prompt. I post their prompts in this post. Poster chooses a prompt besides his own and the others do the same. On Jan 4 all will reveal their stories they've written for their prompt. Poster A may review the story written for his story and the others will do the same.

Any questions? Anyone interested in trying this out?

1st prompt: Write a short story that supposes God is real (supposing you don't actually believe in God yourself) and that God can actually be sued in court by regular people for various offenses (can be serious things like floods and earthquakes to silly things like their favorite sports team lost after they prayed for it to win). Write a story depicting God getting sued.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Sounds cool. So a "prompt" is a short pitch for a story? I'd suggest that we give those prompts a common theme and "two things that don't normally go together" sounds great to me as that theme.

 

[jackelgull]

A prompt is not necessarily a story idea. It's a kind of restriction on the writer as to what they can write. Some prompts are "use x word", and some are "Begin with x line" etc. They help focus a writer's energies in a productive way. And I'm hoping those interested will pm me their own, since I'm hoping to have this be a secret santa type of deal.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This is an activity common on writing forums, and quite a lot of the fanfic on fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own are stories people have written for such challenges. It's more specific than Iron Pen, but can still take some interesting turns.

The last time I took part in an activity like this was in one of my high school English classes, over 30 years ago.

 

[caketastydelish]

jackelgull already knows this, but I will participate. Also: What is the date everyone doing this well get handed their script?