Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Shared Worlds prompt call!
This prompt call is:
Prompting closed at: 11:59 PM PST, Monday, June 23, 2014
Thank you everyone for coming by! I will continue to write prompt responses until every prompter has received at least one response, and will hopefully complete a response for every prompt. However, prompting is now closed.
Sponsoring is:
Sponsoring remained open until: 11:59 PM PST, Friday, July 4, 2014
Thank you to everyone who contributed!
Leave me prompts, and I'll write you snippets of fiction. Donate $10, and get 500-word flash fiction or complete scenes on a prompt response of your choice. These funded scenes will become part of the Shared Worlds canon.
I'm an author and editor of short fiction, with a number of professional publications, including appearances in various "Year's Best" compilations. You can read almost all of my short fiction for free online, and decide whether or not what I'm doing works for you.
You leave me a prompt. I'll try to write a snippet of fiction for you. These will just be me jotting down bits of the story as they occur to me, which is how I approach writing generally; what you get will probably be a bunch of illustrative lines without any real connecting bits. A taste of what I'd be doing with the story. (Check the link for an example of how that formatting looks.)
I will try to get to every prompt – or at least one prompt from every prompter – but cannot guarantee that I will.
Prompts can be whatever you feel like. "A girl-in-tower-guarded-by-dragon story from the dragon's perspective" could be an example, as could "something riffing off Sappho's You May Forget", or even just "a F/F/M poly triad fights crime". There's a Bingo card below with some prompts – this time, I generated the card using the "worldbuilding" and "end of the world" lists that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith worked up – but those are just jumping-off points, and should not be considered restrictive. Feel free to suggest anything.
(I reserve the right to refuse any prompts, though only expect to exercise this right if I've got too many prompts on my plate, or if I find prompts offensive. Additionally, you can't prompt for stuff in universes I've already written, unless they were written in this prompt call or are otherwise part of the Shared Worlds canon.)
If you donate $10 (USD) toward a prompt response I've already written (whether or not you were the one to prompt for it), you will get a minimum of 500 words (of new writing) of non-patchy fiction expanding on the response or continuing to flesh out its potential story. Could be a 5x drabble or flashfic, could be a complete scene in a potential short story. You may get more than 500 words – you may get substantially more, depending on how the mood strikes me and how engaged I am with the universe of the prompt response. But 500 words is the guaranteed minimum.
$10 for 500 words works out to 2¢/word. This is lower than I usually aim my fiction, but I'm hoping that it'll be an accessible price point for people, which in turn would help build up a canon of works in the Shared World universes.
For this prompt call, I'll release these flashfics/scenes into the Shared Worlds canon, which allows authors to write and sell derivative, transformative works (including fanfiction) based on the stories, so long as they release them under a similarly permissive license. My eventual hope is to create a body of works which can offer people the community benefits of a fandom while still nurturing and encouraging a culture of rewarding creative folk for their work.
This prompt call is:
Closed
Prompting closed at: 11:59 PM PST, Monday, June 23, 2014
Thank you everyone for coming by! I will continue to write prompt responses until every prompter has received at least one response, and will hopefully complete a response for every prompt. However, prompting is now closed.
Sponsoring is:
Closed
Sponsoring remained open until: 11:59 PM PST, Friday, July 4, 2014
Thank you to everyone who contributed!
Wait. What is this? Briefly, please.
Leave me prompts, and I'll write you snippets of fiction. Donate $10, and get 500-word flash fiction or complete scenes on a prompt response of your choice. These funded scenes will become part of the Shared Worlds canon.
Who are you, anyway? Why should we care what you're writing?
I'm an author and editor of short fiction, with a number of professional publications, including appearances in various "Year's Best" compilations. You can read almost all of my short fiction for free online, and decide whether or not what I'm doing works for you.
So tell me about prompting. How does that work?
You leave me a prompt. I'll try to write a snippet of fiction for you. These will just be me jotting down bits of the story as they occur to me, which is how I approach writing generally; what you get will probably be a bunch of illustrative lines without any real connecting bits. A taste of what I'd be doing with the story. (Check the link for an example of how that formatting looks.)
I will try to get to every prompt – or at least one prompt from every prompter – but cannot guarantee that I will.
Prompts can be whatever you feel like. "A girl-in-tower-guarded-by-dragon story from the dragon's perspective" could be an example, as could "something riffing off Sappho's You May Forget", or even just "a F/F/M poly triad fights crime". There's a Bingo card below with some prompts – this time, I generated the card using the "worldbuilding" and "end of the world" lists that
ysabetwordsmith worked up – but those are just jumping-off points, and should not be considered restrictive. Feel free to suggest anything.(I reserve the right to refuse any prompts, though only expect to exercise this right if I've got too many prompts on my plate, or if I find prompts offensive. Additionally, you can't prompt for stuff in universes I've already written, unless they were written in this prompt call or are otherwise part of the Shared Worlds canon.)
Okay, and what do I get if I pay you? And why $10?
If you donate $10 (USD) toward a prompt response I've already written (whether or not you were the one to prompt for it), you will get a minimum of 500 words (of new writing) of non-patchy fiction expanding on the response or continuing to flesh out its potential story. Could be a 5x drabble or flashfic, could be a complete scene in a potential short story. You may get more than 500 words – you may get substantially more, depending on how the mood strikes me and how engaged I am with the universe of the prompt response. But 500 words is the guaranteed minimum.
$10 for 500 words works out to 2¢/word. This is lower than I usually aim my fiction, but I'm hoping that it'll be an accessible price point for people, which in turn would help build up a canon of works in the Shared World universes.
For this prompt call, I'll release these flashfics/scenes into the Shared Worlds canon, which allows authors to write and sell derivative, transformative works (including fanfiction) based on the stories, so long as they release them under a similarly permissive license. My eventual hope is to create a body of works which can offer people the community benefits of a fandom while still nurturing and encouraging a culture of rewarding creative folk for their work.
| Gamma Ray Burst | Dominant species | Magic |
| Local cuisine | Overpopulation | Extreme weather |
| Honors & insults | Sex / gender dynamics | Divine intervention |
Prompt idea
Date: 2014-06-22 01:53 am (UTC)From:Extreme winter snows bury everyone in a cave system. Every year.
Date: 2014-06-22 09:30 am (UTC)From:The new man paused in the mouth of the cave, red-faced and covered in mud, and Jakob started laughing. Later he'd gather with the other old hands and count out the root cellars again, bemoan the fact that it'd be another long winter without the last squash, the late berries, and the hardy winter greens that grew in the sheltered valley. Wish they'd sent someone up sooner, before they had been mired by the early storms.
But it would be one of many such winters. The forage here, as with forage everywhere, was temperamental.
"Come on," Jakob said, waving him in by the light of the tallow lamps. Fewer hung in the cave entrance now than had even ten days ago; as the winter wore on, the whole settlement's eyes would adjust to the dark. Lights would be faint and far-between, through the deep cold.
>
He was a big man, with those broad ox shoulders that southerners tended to have, and Jakob could see the pride in him. He was a man who would rather be swinging an axe and building his own lodge than following a man like Jakob down into the cave pools.
But he had come from so far south that he knew the storms but not the deep freeze or the torrents of snow that would bury them. And if he had come so far, passing so many other settlements, it meant that the crime for which he'd been excommunicated made him unfit to live in most groups who bothered to ask.
Under these skies, with winter approaching, excommunication meant death. This place was his last refuge from death, and that was why the man lowered his eyes and made himself subservient. It was also why Jakob didn't fear him, whatever he had done.
>
Down this deep, the air was always chill but never frigid, and the water was always icy-cold though it never turned to ice. Jakob set his lamp aside, letting his eyes track over the water.
"There," he said, waving his hand toward a steaming pile on the other bank. "Whatever scraps of food we have, they go there. As it rots, it warms; insects the children have been gathering can live there, quite happily, as though it was summer. We pluck them off at a certain stage of growth, and use them to set lines." He gestured over a few of the water paths, some deceptively deep. "The fish who swim here are blind. Their flesh tastes like mud – like you're eating the cave. But there'll come a time in the long cold where you'll weep at the thought of eating dried meat in stew. Then, these fish will be the sweetest things you'll ever taste."
The man crouched by the edge of the water.
Jakob regarded him for a moment. "I can teach you to watch the lines," he said. "It takes a certain sort. You have to be very quiet, and very patient, and not let your eyes sleep."
The man put his palm down against the surface of the water, then drew it back up, shook it off. "How do you live like this?"
Jakob raised his eyebrow. Of course he knew that other settlements lived differently, but these deep caves and the long, buried winter were in his blood. But that was not an answer to satisfy a man tossed out from his home.
"Because it is better than dying in the cold," he said.
>
Re: Extreme winter snows bury everyone in a cave system. Every year.
Date: 2014-06-22 02:37 pm (UTC)From:And there's so much potential for expansion here, so much hinted at but not /said/.
Thank you, thank you for posting this!
Re: Extreme winter snows bury everyone in a cave system. Every year.
Date: 2014-06-23 06:55 pm (UTC)From:I love the intense terroir of this entry. It's a setting that would be worth exploring further. I really like caves.
Re: Extreme winter snows bury everyone in a cave system. Every year.
Date: 2014-06-30 09:30 pm (UTC)From:(Nope.)
But it's still an awesome story!