A year of writing prompts: 5 September

How to use these prompts

PINK power armour?
Who might wear this?
What might their powers be?
What might their mission be?

Prompts

1. It's Be Late for Something Day. Your character is late for something - perhaps intentionally or perhaps due to circumstances beyond their control.
2. On Freddie Mercury's birthday, write a story based on a Queen song.
3. "Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion." Arthur Koestler
4. Around this time, the Great Bathtub Race is held in Nome, Alaska. Teams race along the street pushing one member in a bath. Each bath must have 10 gallons of water remaining in it at the end. Write a story about an unusual race.
5. The term "hippie" was first used in 1965. Write a story featuring a hippie or hippies.

Character Names

Boris, Victor, Claudia, Percy, Justina, Regina, Trey, Dorothy, Harry, Harriet

Character Traits

• Practical and down to earth rather than imaginative.
• Tend not to believe in anything they cannot experience with their bodily senses.
• Skilled in crafts. Work well at projects requiring painstaking detail. It's possible they will enter a profession of this nature handed down by their forefathers.
• Other possible careers are science, business, theatre.
• They work hard and have an eye for detail - they will get the paperwork done.
• Not very ambitious. Content to follow the path others have followed before and to play the social role that others want.
• Talkative.
• Portly build, although they do take care of their bodies.
• Kind hearted but proud. Honest and just.
• Not materialistic - content to hold on to what they have and live a quiet life. Hence they are not always paid enough for the work they do, and others can reap the benefits of their hard work.
• Work well alone and may even be reclusive.
• Take pride in what they do. Prefer to have some work to do rather than be idle.
• Love to travel and have a particular interest in the culture and philosophies of the Orient. They may travel as companions to or servants of, the upper classes.
• Their families will always help them, and they will always help their families.
• Danger of mutilations and wounds, possibly even losing a limb.
• There may be a skeleton in their closet, perhaps some mystery around their origins.

Possible Themes

Roots, heritage, ancestors, inheritance.

Forced labour.

Self-promotion.

Filling in gaps.

Objects

A family tree; a pickaxe; a cow; a torn document with a black seal; a fine horse.