Give me a short story idea

[Fox12]

So, I was listening to a Neil Gaiman interview the other day, as I'm want to do, when he mentioned that Harlan Ellison would play a game where he'd take story ideas while sitting in a book store, and write down whatever people gave him. Sometimes he'd just pull something out of a hat. This sounded like fun, and since I just finished my last story, I figured, hey, why not?

So, does anyone have any story ideas they'd like to throw out? Feel free to build off of someone elses ideas, or mention ideas you'd like to see explored. Also, if there are any other writers out there, feel free to share or take the ideas mentioned. Basically, it's a brainstorming thread for anyone interested. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Historical drama? Go crazy!

 

[Zontar]

Stop me if you've herd this one before: people go out into space and find ancient alien built space gate. While exploring the network of gates other speicies are contacted and the heroes find out the gates where built by a long gone advanced race which may or may not have had influence on the development of some or all of the aliens in the setting. Their technology is also used as the basis for modern ones, with innovation being in the form of getting closer to the original thing instead of making something new.

The twist is that the ancient aliens who built the gate network where humans, who are long gone and the whole story had been from the point of view of aliens millions of years from now.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

The story of a person who lives in crushing darkness, fighting the shadows of crimes past. His guilt only fuels his self-imposed limbo, to the point that it starts corrupting the world outside of his department, whose vision is only conceeded by a crack in his world.

Spoiler: Twist

The character is Christopher Walken and twist now you can't stop reading this tale in his voice.

 

[Fox12]

The story of a person who lives in crushing darkness, fighting the shadows of crimes past. His guilt only fuels his self-imposed limbo, to the point that it starts corrupting the world outside of his department, whose vision is only conceeded by a crack in his world.

Spoiler: Twist

The character is Christopher Walken and twist now you can't stop reading this tale in his voice.

So, basically it's Silent Hill 4 starring Christopher Walken?

...

It's genius!

*Grabs paper, submits it to major magazine, nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature*

 

[Asita]

Looking for writing prompts? There's a reddit for that. Topping the page as I post this:

"The mail room for a large government building receives an envelope of glitter. The staff recognizes it as a common prank and resumes work. Over the next week, they notice the glitter is not going away, and seems to be spreading. You are the first to recognize the worlds first nanobot attack."

"Videogames have been accepted as a form of literature. Write your bullshit essay about the literary importance of your favourite game."

"Two dads get into a dad-off"

"A particular set of twins have the ability to communicate with each other telepathically. One of them dies, but the other can still hear his/her thoughts."

and

"One day everyone notices the words "Human Update 1.1 progress 1%" in the corner of their eye."

 

[TakerFoxx]

A bunch of socialites are having party.

Outside, the world is ending.

Everybody at the party knows it, but nobody dares bring it up.

 

[Asita]

It's the zombie apocalypse! You're a zombie. (and that's all the direction you're getting for that prompt)

An aspiring poet is with writer's block afflicted. And only 'thin the bounds of verse shall this tale be depicted.

You awaken in an empty room with a small red lizard as your only company. The two of you are stuck in that room for a month. (Assume biological needs are met well enough that you won't starve to death over that time period)

 

[dangoball]

Something I've been meaning to write but haven't gotten around to it yet:

Two convicts are sitting in a cell. One tells the other he wanted to be in jail because he wanted to experience all aspects of life. To get there he became a murderer, always killing in a different way and describes the difference in how each way of ending a life felt and affected him.

 

[RedDeadFred]

A lobster is accidentally exposed to some experimental serum. It doesn't take effect until he is in a Red Lobster tank and a customer is picking him out. He suddenly gains immense strength and breaks free of his elastics. He eats all of the other lobsters in the tank and discovers that eating his own kind makes him more powerful.

The lobster grows bigger and more powerful and ends up going on a murderous rampage through New York City. The military chases him into the river where he finds his way to sea.

Flash forwards two years later. The military have not seen any sign of the lobster since his disappearance. However, fishermen have noted a strange decline in lobster population. No one really makes anything of this until a tilde wave is spotted near NYC. Under the giant wave, a red behemoth can be vaguely seen.

The lobster has returned!

 

[Saetha]

I actually could use some short story ideas. I have to turn in a short fiction essay in about a month, and I've already got an idea for it that I really like, but some other suggestions would be neat. Maybe I could end up combining the prompts...

I had this one idea that I couldn't really do anything with: virtual reality technology has progressed to the point that it's indistinguishable from actual reality. A woman living in a VR simulation "unplugs" when her father dies so that she can see to his funeral, only to find that earth's virtually abandoned since everyone's moving into the VR world. The only other character in the story is a caretaker at her father's former VR facility who has to stay unplugged so he can tend to those who sleep. I wanted to toy with the idea of an apocalypse that was slow and very much preventable, but happened anyway because no one cared to stop it.

A bunch of socialites are having party.

Outside, the world is ending.

Everybody at the party knows it, but nobody dares bring it up.

"A particular set of twins have the ability to communicate with each other telepathically. One of them dies, but the other can still hear his/her thoughts."

and

"One day everyone notices the words "Human Update 1.1 progress 1%" in the corner of their eye."

Ooooh, those all sound delightfully terrifying. Although the first one reminds me a bit of Masque of the Red Death.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I once read about these escaped convicts here in Australia who fled from jail and ran out of food so they started eating each other.

It ended up with three of them trying to stay awake as long as they could because if one guy fell asleep the other two would eat him. Then the last two just attacked each other.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Hm. How about... there's a girl. Who can see between worlds. A twisted landscape a dark reflection of our own... populated by denizens that are monstrous allegories of the nature and the minds of places and people reflected in that other world.

She eventually runs across a dark human reflection who offers to train her how to reach out across the veil and affect both worlds in simult. She spends her life learning to be a pseudo psychopomp, appeasing the twisted representations from stepping over, and making sure there is a balance between the dark reflection of the inhuman-human reflection represented in the visage of flesh-side Earth.

A story of gothic horror and madness. The slow removal of being able to tell the difference between both states... the two melting into eachother. Removing her from the accepted 'reality' of our world by the majority of humans. Eventually becoming a denizen of that dark plane herself, a twisted being that just like the spirit who trained her, her dark reflection, so is she fated to seek out and be the dark reflection of the next human psychopomp to replace her.

How's that?

 

[FalloutJack]

Laughing Fools Management - The insane and the sane have swapped places in the world. What happens? Like...what happens with some deep and possibly hilarious, if often disturbing, details? Does it resolve? Is it chaos, going to be chaos, or eventually stops being chaos? Do the sane break out and try to take over? Do they succeed? What is this world headed for?

 

[Breakdown]

You could take the classic "you're the last person on Earth, and you hear a knock on your door" premise and go from there.

I have to write a short story in a month or so and I'm thinking of writing a Lovecraft style horror in a really dull mundane setting, like maybe the "The Thing in the Post Office" or "The Evil under the Garden Centre".

 

[Username Redacted]

I'll go with the tale of my last Skyrim character. A dark elf political refugee decides to pay her way through college (of Winterhold) by becoming a contract killer (Dark Brotherhood). It's basically 'Scarface' meets 'The Professional' with a little bit of 'Animal House' for good measure.

 

[Pinkamena]

A person "wakes up", unable to feel his/her body, or sense anything. He has no sight, hearing, sense of touch, smell, or taste. Nada. Strangely, the person cannot seem to remember much about what's happened. As the person is alone with his/her thoughts, a voice in the persons head suddenly appears, becoming the only means of communication. The voice is reluctant to answer questions to begin with, but gradually the person realizes he's actually an AI running on a supercomputer, and the "voice" he/she has been hearing is scientists communicating with him/her in the program terminal. Cue existential horror.

 

[sageoftruth]

Once upon a time, a princess from a desert kingdom and a prince from a jungle kingdom became enamored with each other. Just as the wedding was getting started, the prince's father used the wedding as a front to launch an unforeseen invasion to conquer the desert.

Many lives were lost and the princess barely escaped with her own life. In exchange for all of the possessions she was carrying, a merchant escorted her to a monastery, where he was certain she would be safe.

Years passed. Her desire for revenge had instilled her with a drive that enabled her to surpass all others and become a deadly martial artist.

Every day she challenged herself to become stronger, when eventually she heard that the prince, was headed to a nearby kingdom for diplomatic purposes.

It was time to stage her ambush. When faced with him once again, she will encounter truths that challenge her black and white perception of his betrayal. She will wrestle with her hatred and be forced to decide, is revenge really what is best for her people, and are her people really her people anymore, now that the prince rules over them?