Whether writing or art, the object is to catch the attention, and hold it, for as long as is necessary. Prompts, same point, only in this case they are intended to be a catalyst for more thought. So then is some writing and art meant to spark more in the brain of the viewer and reader. In a way, the prompts do to the creative what the creative means to do to their consumer. Which is the wrong word, as neither reading nor regarding art consume it and leave nothing behind. Audience, then. We work for an audience, performative and provoking.
| Playwright | Play | Actor |
| AC Young | The colonists insisted on taking wallabies and kangaroos with them to their new planet. | Leigh Kimmel |
| Padre | He didn’t understand the rules of the game he was watching. | Cedar Sanderson |
| Leigh Kimmel | The lights were on, and it looked like it should be charging — but the indicator never went up. | AC Young |
| nother Mike | The skeletons at the bus stop were friendly… | nother Mike |
| Cedar Sanderson | There is no failure, only… | Padre |
In a world of ever-more scattered thoughts and intentions, catching the attention, snagging the imagination of a soul in passing grows more difficult. With that in mind…
| Spare | It was a cruel trick, sneaking a bomb into the base by feeding it to the Commandant’s pet cat. |
| Spare | Welcome to the Paranormal Olympics! |
| Spare | get rid of the screaming candles before the wedding service |
| Spare | Potted plants or planted pots? Which do you prefer? |
| Spare | She had a golden snake in her purse… |
| Spare | All you need to do is clear the land mines and this land can be yours! |
Craft your hooks carefully and post them in the comments. Be they spare or challenged, make them catch the eye and haunt the mind long after the view has changed.
More Odds Than Ends 
This week Leigh Kimmel and I swapped prompts. I received: The lights were on, and it looked like it should be charging — but the indicator never went up.
Options: Faster-than-light issues, or time travel issues. I went with the latter.
—
Alexander took one final look around. The experiment was ready to go. The recording systems were in place, and were all plugged in so the machine’s power supply could recharge all the batteries.
It was time. All the chrono-sensors were in place, and the chrono-shields were up to protect the surrounding area from the experiment’s effects.
Alexander turned on the machine. Over the next few minutes its various subsystems span up and the chrono-adjuster gradually came up to full power.
The chrono-adjuster had already been set. Alexander pressed one final button, the experiment started, and the chrono-adjuster began its work.
Alexander observed the effects. Not that he needed to, for the recording systems were doing that for him. But he wished to witness the very first time-trip.
Looking around, he spotted something unexpected. The recording systems were supposed to be recharging from the power source that powered the experiment. They had been doing so, but now the power indicators were stationary, unmoving. Alexander hadn’t done anything, everything was still plugged in, so they should still be charging, but they weren’t.
Unless… This was the very first time-trip – unless someone else had attempted one and had failed to return – and so there were no data yet on how time travel messed with electronics.
Perhaps it was related to the time signal. The machinery needed to keep track of the local time so that Alexander knew when he was. The time signal had been set to local time. This might be the problem.
Local time was currently running backwards at pace. This might be confusing the recording equipment’s systems, making it unable to process the changes in the battery’s charge.
For the next experiment it might be a good idea to keep track of home time as well as local time, and use the former for the time signal.
With the ringing of a bell, the experiment arrived at the destination time. Suddenly all the power indicators on the recording equipment shot upwards from 45% to 86%, and started climbing from there.
Alexander checked all of the recording equipment. They were recording everything that they were supposed to.
Only one task still remained – to get back home safely. The chrono-sensors were still working. The chrono-shields were still in place. But the chrono-adjuster had been drained of almost all its power, and needed to be recharged from the main power supply before he could return.
It took half an hour for the chrono-adjuster to recharge. During all this time Alexander didn’t dare lower the chrono-shields and head outside to explore the past. Without lowering the chrono-shields it wouldn’t be safe for him to leave the experiment, but if he couldn’t raise them again he would never be able to go back home.
Finally all was ready. Alexander double- and then triple-checked the return time on the chrono-adjuster. Then he pressed the button to start the return trip.
It looked as if whatever had affected the electronics on the outbound leg was also affecting them on this leg.
Then the bell rang once more. A quick check of the local time confirmed that Alexander had made it back exactly one minute after he had left. He dropped the chrono-shields and turned everything off safely.
Alexander left the experiment behind and walked to the experiment’s secondary control and observation centre. There he was greeted with a round of applause, before the hard work of analysing the data from this experiment, and improving the system for the next experiment, began.
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[…] having to sit on the sofa in the living room. If you want more prompting fun, mosey on over to More Odds Than Ends and see what the others have come up […]
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Managed to work something up with a spare.
https://ornerydragon.com/2023/10/09/the-dryads-garden/
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Oh, no, it’s a boomerang prompt! Nother Mike laid out…
The skeletons at the bus stop were friendly…
[drat. The skeletons in the closet, skeletons at the natural history museum, skeletons, skeletons, everywhere! Hum… the foot bone connected to the… no, no, no… ]
Harry wondered about this new neighborhood. But when he went to catch the bus, the skeletons at the bus stop were friendly. Too friendly, really, because each and every one of them wanted to tell him about how they came out of the closet.
As he walked up, one of the crowd pushed forward, bare white arm bones outstretched to shake his hand.
“Hey, you’re new around here. They call me bony George, but we’re all bony here!”
Bony George’s skull and jaw flapped as he laughed, along with several other skeletons behind him.
“Hey, I bet you’re wondering what we’re doing out here. Well, a while back, I was in the closet, when my grandson tripped on the steps and cut his knee. Nobody was horne to help, so… I came out of the closet to help him. Then I decided not to go back! So I came over here. and stuck around with my friends.”
He waved at the crowd behind him, and several of them nodded and stepped forward.
Every one of them had a different story about how they came out of the closet, and they droned on and on, their leg bones clattering, phalanges tapping here and there, jawbones dropping… it was a festival of bones!
Harry just hoped the bus would come soon.
[urk… short, but maybe…]
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And mine is now up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1417221.html. Not as much as I wanted, but we’re on the road again and that’s time-consuming.
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This week, Cedar prompted me with, “There is no failure, only…”
The entrance to the cavern loomed in front of Galbreth. It sat there in the side of the mountain valley, halfway up the slope from the stream that laughed its way down to join the river in the grasslands below. Patches of grass intermixed with grey boulders and rocks gave way to stunted trees further uphill, under a pleasant blue summer sky. It was a beautiful place and perfect for taking your lady for a quiet, delightful meal in the open air.
It was also an extremely dangerous place, as it was the entrance to the Caverns of Dun Gwynneth, one of the most notorious dungeons in the realm. Someone, generations before, had carved the natural stone entrance to resemble the gapping maw of a demon and, no matter how often the Brotherhood of the Sun sent knights and other adventurers in to clear it out, more evil creatures were drawn to its depths and months later it would be a challenge for another group. There was no failure, there was no success, only an endless cycle of evil welling up in this location. No one had ever figured out why. It was just the way it was.
Galbreth looked over at his party. He trusted them. Mostly. He was doing this because the gods had called him to it. The others? Their motivations were all across the map.
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