Prompt Of The Week
July 7th 2010 12:57
Sorry that today's prompt is a day late. Today's prompt comes from something that happened to me earlier this week. First I'll give you the prompt and then the backstory:
Pick one of your best remembered dreams and turn it into a short story.
On Monday I had a dream... in this dream I watched a girl uncover her foster mother's-the queen's-darkest secret. Her and her best friend found a secret chamber deep within the bowels of the castle, and as they were looking at these secrets, the queen found them. They escaped down the river, just barely. The queen ordered that they were killed, and so their boat was smashed, and the two were separated.
My dream followed the young girl as she found her place in a society of misfits. She was trained to hunt, to skin an animal, to cook, to tend wounds, all things a princess would never learn ordinarily. And after a year passed, her friend found her again. Reunited, the two fell in love, and together they decided to take the castle, kill the queen, and make the kingdom a better place...
With the entire story I woke up. I wrote out an outline which covers the whole story, and from there I've been filling in the blanks. I've been working on naming the kingdom, the world, creating their religion, and designing their society. Deciding just how screwed up it is and what changes my two main characters-Marla and Logan, tentatively named-will be making to the society when-if-they take over at the end.
I've been inspired by dreams before, but I've never had a story come out of my dreams fully formed. Once I've finished filling in the blanks-family names, basic societal rules, political structures, a magic system, et cetera-then this novel is ready to go. I don't have a name for it yet (or most of the people in it) but I'm sure something will come to me soon.
As soon as I woke up I outlined the story, drew a map of the kingdom of Llyr, wrote up a few laws, and I just finished writing a creation myth. Mythology is probably my favourite part of world building, and the myths are just coming to me in this world. I don't remember the last time a story flowed so easily from my fingers, and I'm looking forward to when I'm done filling in the blanks sometime this week.
Have you ever been inspired by a dream?
Pick one of your best remembered dreams and turn it into a short story.
On Monday I had a dream... in this dream I watched a girl uncover her foster mother's-the queen's-darkest secret. Her and her best friend found a secret chamber deep within the bowels of the castle, and as they were looking at these secrets, the queen found them. They escaped down the river, just barely. The queen ordered that they were killed, and so their boat was smashed, and the two were separated.
My dream followed the young girl as she found her place in a society of misfits. She was trained to hunt, to skin an animal, to cook, to tend wounds, all things a princess would never learn ordinarily. And after a year passed, her friend found her again. Reunited, the two fell in love, and together they decided to take the castle, kill the queen, and make the kingdom a better place...
With the entire story I woke up. I wrote out an outline which covers the whole story, and from there I've been filling in the blanks. I've been working on naming the kingdom, the world, creating their religion, and designing their society. Deciding just how screwed up it is and what changes my two main characters-Marla and Logan, tentatively named-will be making to the society when-if-they take over at the end.
I've been inspired by dreams before, but I've never had a story come out of my dreams fully formed. Once I've finished filling in the blanks-family names, basic societal rules, political structures, a magic system, et cetera-then this novel is ready to go. I don't have a name for it yet (or most of the people in it) but I'm sure something will come to me soon.
As soon as I woke up I outlined the story, drew a map of the kingdom of Llyr, wrote up a few laws, and I just finished writing a creation myth. Mythology is probably my favourite part of world building, and the myths are just coming to me in this world. I don't remember the last time a story flowed so easily from my fingers, and I'm looking forward to when I'm done filling in the blanks sometime this week.
Have you ever been inspired by a dream?
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Comment by RedParrot
This one is going to be a challenge. All my remembered dreams are night terrors or "snapshots" ... no plot really ... just feelings or detailed sights.
I'm not really sure what to do with this one.
Having said that - if the actual dream state does not do much for me - the pre-sleep state certainly does. I suffer from inspiration just as I'm falling asleep. I figure more crap out in that no-man's-land state, come up with terrific plot twists and superb lines for characters. It's crazy. Also - I have several pens and books and paper at my bedside to get it all written down before I forget. If I am just *too* tired to write it out, my brain says in a loop "youwillforget youwillforget youwillforget" until I get up. Funny ... some of my scribble is indecipherable to anyone else but me. But when I click in ... it's all right there.
Perhaps I will try 500 words again with "dream" as the seed word and see where it takes me.
Hope you have a humidex-reduced day!
Cheers!
RP
Comment by Dianna G
I Wish This Was 42
Fictional Worlds
It is a challenging exercise for lots of people-but a challenge is a good thing every now and then.
Personally, all of my dreams have had story lines, but most of them haven't been very pleasant. Nor was this dream exactly what I would call pleasant, but it was interesting. For the first time in a dream I felt like I was just watching a story unfold.
I've never been so inspired by a dream-this is turning into a novel with a whole bunch of world building to do-but I'm glad I was. Who knows, maybe since you're thinking about it, one of your dreams will turn out to be an inspiration.
I hope you have a humidex-reduced day and night as well... I have to say I'm grateful not to live with my mother anymore, her place is like a sauna. Ours is nice and cool. I've never been so glad to live here.
~Dianna