Writing Prompts for December 15th, 2012

Hypothetical Essay:



I. People often say that fashion never dies; instead, it retires to Florida and only shows up like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Expendables 2--'Daddy's got to pay his alimony.'" Only in the case of fashion, it can be a return to an enlightened age (ergo, "steampunk") or a decent into madness (I'll let you figure this one out for yourselves)--or, to use the old geezers from Florida as a "creative metaphor", it returns on those rare occasions whenever the country needs someone to screw-up a national election.



If you could bring back any style from its perpetual retirement (or death), what style would you stand over like Dr. Frankenstein from the 1931 classic and cry, "It's alive! It's alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!" [Insert random lightning and thunderclap], and what style now existing would you cast into the eternal void beyond time in the scion of Van Helsing plunging eir wooden stake into the heart of one of Dracula's brood--praying that this shall be their final requiem?



II. If you could possess any superpower, what would you choose? Why?



III. Of all the possible worlds in which you could inhabit, why do you like the one you now call home? If you could change anything, what would you like to change?

Fictional Story

I. Tell this story: You walk into your local cellular telephone store on a particularly gloomy day after your phone was obliterated [insert creative licensing] and walk up to the counter. After looking at all the phones available and feeling dissatisfied, the salesperson offers you a special smart-phone for VIP customers. E claims that the phone is capable of performing one specific task of your choosing, besides all the normal things a smart-phone does, this phone will allow you to perform any operation you could imagine—from changing the weather to adjusting the sunset color scheme to muting that particular irksome manager from HR. The only caveat is that you must choose what special feature you’d like your phone to perform, and once chosen, that setting will become a permanent feature of the phone—also, you only get one “special feature”. There is no limit to what said feature will be (besides the imagination of the user), nor the number of times said feature can be used.

Tell a story where you (or one of your characters) utilizes this device where the “special feature” comes in handy. Tech Optional: The phone uses cartridges to perform impossible things. You get one cartridge for every “wish feature” once the feature is imprinted upon the card, it can no longer perform another task and is permanently that feature (the card, not the phone). How would “switching cards” be useful to your characters? What would you do in real life if you had such a device? What features would you want?

Non-Fiction Story/Getting Ideas:

I. People say, “Life is stranger than fiction.” Tell a story illustrating a time when your life was truly stranger than fiction and how it impacted your life (or the life of one of your characters).

Non-Fiction Essay:

I. With all the social tension in the air of late—China and India moving ever closer to war over the oil fields in the South China Sea (and America increasing troop and armaments in the area); the December 21^st being the end of the Mayan Calendar and people fearing an apocalypse; mass shootings happening within days of one another; the global recession and America’s Great Recession; fears over government invasion of privacy rights; outrage by preteen girls that Justin Bieber didn't win the Grammy Award, let alone even receive a nomination—what are your plans for a possible Zombie Apocalypse?