Have you ever read or written a story around one word? I don’t mean as a theme, but literally using the same word multiple times in the story. Sometimes this technique can be used ironically when a word has more than one meaning or it can just be done for fun. I can’t think of…
Tag: muse
Muse on Monday – March 10, 2025
Story Prompt: March 10, 2025 You move into a new house with a locked closet. You can’t find the key to it. One night you see light coming from under the door. There are a number of reasons for this, but be creative. If you have a story like this you want to share or…
Muse on Monday – March 3, 2025
It’s a common trope in fiction: two strangers arrive/wake up/find themselves trapped together somewhere. They might be the last people on Earth, but they could also be stuck on a desert island (like The Blue Lagoon) or a spaceship (e.g. Passengers). And so on. The point is that there are two people suddenly pushed into…
Muse on Monday – February 24, 2025
I’m leaving on a fairly extensive trip to Asia today, so that got me thinking about travel. When you take a long trip, no matter how much preparation you do, it always feels like you are missing something. Of course, sometimes you have to leave unprepared. Refugees are in that situation, where you just take…
Muse on Monday – February 17, 2025
Of the five senses, the most used for description is sight. However, it’s very rare to only have sight to work with. One place where this happens is on security camera footage. There is no dialogue so we have to guess from body language and actions what is happening. Sometimes it’s obvious (a guy is…
Muse on Monday – February 10, 2025
People love symmetry because it feels right having things match up. You have a superhero, but also a supervillain. You start your story on a bus and end it on a bus. You have two main characters, one very rich and one very poor. There are lots of ways to have symmetry or mirror elements…
Muse on Monday – February 3, 2025
As Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates: it can get dark and it might get nuts, but it’s usually pretty sweet.” Okay, fine. What he actually said was: “you never know what you’re going to get” meaning there’s a lot of randomness to life. In writing, there is less randomness than…
Muse on Monday – January 27, 2025
Have you ever read a story where the fate of the world rests on what the characters do? Probably, since that’s a lot of stories. This is what is called a high-stakes story and the reason they are so common is that the higher the stakes, the more we are invested in it all turning…
Muse on Monday – January 20, 2025
I wrote a story once about a vertical city. The rich people lived at the higher levels and it got poorer as it went down. Sort of like the Snowpiercer train stood on its end, or the silo from the Silo series. What would it really be like if a city got stood on end?…
Muse on Monday – January 13, 2025
Happy Monday! I hope you had a good weekend. This week’s prompt is a super-specific one. There are enough blanks you can fill in to make it your own, but it sends the story in a specific direction. Story Prompt: January 13, 2025 It is your birthday and you are stuck in your apartment. The…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 