Week 4! That means a month, a whole month of prompts when we get to the end of this week. Wow. The participation has been amazing. But we can make it better! Please, if you are having fun, share the wealth. Challenge friends, or family, to take part. Remember, there’s no minimum wordcount. It can be poetry, an essay, fiction, or just musing on the odd prompt. If writing is coming slowly, a prompt can poke the brain until the muse gets inspired.
But that’s next week. This week, the prompts are…
| Jennie Posthumus | There’s a tapping on your window. You look out and find a raven sitting on the sill holding a bloody knife. | Kat Ross |
| nother Mike | At the coin laundry, you had just put your clothes in the washer and sat down when one of the big dryer doors opened and a voice called out… | Fiona Grey |
| Kat Ross | A truck driver going down a state highway late at night sees an obviously distressed woman walking along the side of the road carrying a child. She refuses all offers to help. When the driver looks back she is standing on the side of a bridge, looking down at the river and the child is no longer in sight. | nother Mike |
| Cedar Sanderson | The hula dancer on the dashboard came to life, and the nearby volcano rumbled | B. Durbin |
| Fiona Grey | Trying to make it there before time runs out | Cedar Sanderson |
| B. Durbin | You discover a cavern or mine beneath your house when one of the basement walls degrades. | Jennie Posthumus |
| Brena Bock | The strangest thing happened at the hairdresser (or barber). | Brena Bock |
| Leigh Kimmel | (see fractal picture below) | Leigh Kimmel |
And if you want to play along, but forgot to send in a prompt to oddprompts@gmail.com (do it now, before you forget again!) then you can always pick from the Spare Prompts list.
| Spare Prompt | Dragons are real, and there’s now one curled up at your front door like a stray cat demanding a home. |
| Spare Prompt | The stray cat you found and nursed back to help? It’s actually a vampire who now has fallen in love with you… and refuses to leave. |
| Spare Prompt | The plane crash was a year ago. Everyone died. But then you get a letter postmarked this week from your (friend, spouse, parent… your choice) who was on the flight… |
| Spare Prompt | 1) A dragon begins terrorizing the neighborhood and a minion delivers a message: a sacrifice is demanded. That’s it. Just “a sacrifice”. What (or who, depending on your mood) do you sacrifice to appease the dragon? |
| Spare Prompt | 2) You move into your new home and your new neighbor knocks on the door with a dish and bottle of high-end wine. Attractive, friendly… everything you could dream of… until you realize… |
| Spare Prompt | 3) Helping to clean out your beloved gramma’s attic after she has passed, you come across a chest, buried in the furthest corner and under a surprising amount of junk. You open it to discover something that changes your life and perception. |
Once you have written your prompt, publish it on your blog, online journal, anywhere you like. Don’t forget to link to your prompter, and your promptee. If you haven’t got an online home, feel free to use the comments under this post. Finally, last but certainly not least, comment on the other writer’s work. Leave kind feedback, and you’ll get some back yourself.
Ironically, the header image is also a fractal – all of the post headers are – created by Cedar Sanderson. You could even choose a header image as your prompt. Have fun!
More Odds Than Ends 
Taking the basic theme of “dragon” from the spare prompts. Also trying out a new form.
Under the shadow of great black wings
The township shivers in fear each night
Waking from nightmares into terrible things
Face to the carpet, praying for light
The township shivers in fear each night
Stars occluded by a cruciform blot
Dreading the moment when the dark grows bright
Furnace breath and the stench of rot
Stars occluded by a cruciform blot
Eyes that dare not scan the skies
Will I arise at dawn or not
Will this night be disturbed by my cries
Eyes that dare not scan the skies
Hearts that quail at thunder’s shout
Head down beneath the death that flies
Nowhere to run and no way out
Hearts that quail at thunder’s shout
No one dances, no one sings
Gray lives wracked with doubt
Under the shadow of great black wings
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Abab bcbc cdcd dede eaea? Kind of a braided verse? And then you’ve reused the second line of each verse in the next verse? And the first line and the last line also mirror? Whew, that’s intricate!
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Thank you. There’s a name for this form, I’m sure, but I’m darned if I can remember it.
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It’s not a sestina, which has six verses, but it seems related.
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That is wonderful. And, yeah, extremely intricate. I can see the town and the townspeople every night.
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My prompt was:
A truck driver going down a state highway late at night sees an obviously distressed woman walking along the side of the road carrying a child. She refuses all offers to help. When the driver looks back she is standing on the side of a bridge, looking down at the river and the child is no longer in sight.
And here’s what I came up with…
https://mbarker.dreamwidth.org/230781.html
Comments welcomed!
‘nother Mike
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Great! That was not what I expected.
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Oh, nice, great way of making it perfectly reasonable!
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[…] forgot to send in a prompt to More Odds than Ends this week. But, one of the nice things is that there are always spare prompts. The one I picked […]
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I forgot to send in a prompt so I used “Dragons are real, and there’s now one curled up at your front door like a stray cat demanding a home.”
https://profornery.wordpress.com/2020/01/24/stray-dragons/
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Jacuzzi dragon. 🙂 Great description on the poor little critter.
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[…] weekend. Read Strays and Whodunnit? if you’re so inclined, but this week’s official Odd Prompt challenge was from nother […]
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[…] Another round of story prompts at Odd Prompts. […]
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Been a rough week, but knowing I had a prompt to work on gave me something to looking forward to. Went a bit darkside, tales from the crypt, this time.
https://undomesticatedfeline.wordpress.com/2020/01/25/odd-prompts-week-4/
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The birds, the birds… that old Hitchcock flavor!
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Long week at the day job meant stories built up in my head, and spilled out when I should have been working on Ye Old Evil Thesis this weekend. Seemed like every spare prompt sparked more ideas than the one from nother Mike I was supposed to be pondering, but in the end, Laundromat wound up the one I was happiest with. Comments welcome!
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Seems like a nice trade, snacks for laundry done in half an hour. *grin*
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Bet you can’t eat just one! Nice! I wondered what was lurking in the dryer…
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Weaponized corn…love it!
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This (Dragons are real, and there’s now one curled up at your front door like a stray cat demanding a home) sounded so much like something that actually happened back in 2004 that I could not resist. 😀
https://undomesticatedfeline.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/odd-prompts-week-4-part-two/
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Mine is now up at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/688258.html.
I don’t know how I got my own prompt, but figuring out how to work it into a story was interesting. I thought about an aurora on the habitable moon of a gas giant with a strong magnetosphere, but I ended up going with my background in (library and) information science. Getting “Phoenix Dreams” ready to go live as a standalone e-book provided the rest.
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Whoops, sorry about that. This is called too many fingers in the soup sometimes spills things, I’m afraid. We’re still getting the process behind the curtains worked out (you remember the piece from the Wizard of Oz, pay no attention to the man behind the curtains!). I’m afraid this time, I missed shuffling the names…
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[…] 4 of Odd Prompts, and mine was “The hula dancer on the dashboard came to life, and the nearby volcano […]
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It took me a while, because I started out with nonfiction. You pushed my geology button, Cedar! But that got a bit boring, so I had to commit poetry. Eh. I was distracted by finishing of the Chernow biography of Grant. Yes, I recommend it. But keep in mind that I’m usually a book-a-day habit, if not three a day, and this book took me a week. Is dense.
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I made it in just under the wire. https://www.cedarwrites.com/2020/01/28/jacks-quest-odd-prompts/
I’m definitely going to string all of them I can together – which might be a challenge in itself! Just having fun with the retelling of the Sword and the Knights.
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