10 Short Story Prompts!

     Hi there! It’s Friday (again), and if you haven’t noticed by now that means it’s time for another post at Inkling Corner! I must admit I was rather at a loss for what to write about today—I’m working on some poems but didn’t want to upload any unfinished work—and so decided to offer up some writing prompts! 

    Coming up with good, interesting, and not-cliché ideas for your writing can be a challenge sometimes (I’m looking at you, writer’s block). I’m certainly no exception to this, but sometimes taking a fresh look at things can help quite a bit. So here are ten short story prompts that will hopefully inspire and aid you in your work. Some are a bit vague and could really mean anything, and others are specific plots. I hope it helps!

1. She hates the colour green. To some it means life, but to her, it means the end. 

2. “I am a fool,” he mumbles, and almost believes it.

3. The moment she steps foot in the snow and feels the taste of the snowflakes on her tongue, she knows she’s home.

4. The first thing he sees when the darkness leaves his eyes is her smile.

5. The Old Forest is the most terrifying thing he’s ever seen—a snaggle of dead branches and overgrown thickets. But he plunges in, because he knows he has to save his brother.

6. I am a fool. I am going to die, and I am a fool.

7. She lowers the weapon slowly. “I couldn’t become a murderer. Not even to kill one.”

8. I’ve never been particularly fond of dying. Unfortunately I seem to have gotten into a strange habit of nearly doing so every other day. Like, for example, right now. Dangling halfway off a two-hundred-foot cliff, surrounded on both sides by people who want to kill me isn’t my idea of enjoyable. Yet here I am.

9. The unspoken rules are ingrained in the minds of all. Religion is forbidden. Love is out of the question. And most of all, never question the will of the Council.

10. They think they know everything about me. They think that they can control my every thought, word, and action. They think they can govern me. But they are wrong.

There you are! Ten short-story prompts. I hope it helps!

Namarië,

Astrya

Quote of the Month! | January Edition

 Greetings, all, and welcome to a new tradition at Inkling Corner! I’m excited to introduce the Quote of the Month, where every month I’ll be posting a new quote that inspired, touched, or influenced me in any way. 

I’ll be doing a quote from a different genre each month, usually going between fiction, theology, and history. 

I’d love it if you could share your opinions in the comments, and also offer suggestions for next month! 

This month’s is from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, which is a “Christian apologetic novel” (description from online, not me) which was dedicated to Lewis’ great friend J.R.R. Tolkien and written in a satirical style.

The plot and characters are very fictional, but Lewis expertly uses them to address Christian theological issues. Lewis and Tolkien are, incidentally, two of my favourite authors and you’ll be seeing a lot of them in the near future. (The stories I posted last week are based on Tolkien’s work, actually).

 

But that is the cursed thing; the gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realised what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’, but ‘So it was you all the time.’ All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now recovered.

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 31

This quote, while spoken in the book by the demon Screwtape, is in fact quite poignant and very true (at least in my humble estimation). We have always known, somehow, that God is there, but when we finally “see Him face to face” we realise that it was Him in our lives all along. We might not choose to recognise Him, or if we do we might not see Him there, but He is. “And that is an encouraging thought”.  

Thanks for joining me for this month’s edition of Quote of the Month! I hope you enjoyed my mini-essay, and if you did, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

The LORD be with you!

_______

Quotation #1–C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Quotation #2–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

(Didn’t I tell you you’d hear more from these astounding writers?)

Thanks for reading!

Greetings! (And a poem)

 Salvete, omnes (that’s Latin for “hello, everyone” if you weren’t sure) and welcome to Inkling Corner! Thanks so much for being here. I’m Astrya—aspiring writer, avid reader, and violinist. This blog will mainly focus on stories and poems I’ve written, with the occasional book review. I’m so happy you decided to join me!

I’ve already posted three short stories, each set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s wonderful world of Middle-Earth, and I hope you enjoy them. In addition, here’s a short poem for your enjoyment before we bid farewell. 

Brother

I see him lying there

Motionless and crimson-stained

The ice is cracked everywhere

Only half my heart remains

I fall to my knees in silence

A scream echoes through the air

Too late I realise it’s mine

Farewell, my brother, I murmur there

I forgive you. 

I see him lying there

Arrows piercing his heart

He meets my eyes in a final stare

We’re forever apart

Till we meet again

In a land where sorrow flees

And there is no pain

I fall on my knees

Not his captain nor his king

But his brother who loved him

Farewell, my brother, I softly sing

I’ll keep my promise to you.

I see him lying there

Here at the end of all things

Embers flying through his hair

Dare we have hope? For hope eternal springs

That evil is gone

The thunderous sound of pain

So this is the end of our song

Echoes through my ears again

I glance at my brother through weary eyes

He gave me hope where I had none

The clouds cover the darkened skies

Farewell, my brother, it’s now done 

We’ve finally won.

Note: maybe it isn’t specific enough to tell, but either way I wanted to highlight the sibling relationships (though they be not by blood) in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, as they are often taken for granted or (tragically) over-romanticised. The first stanza is Bilbo and Thorin, the second is Aragorn and Boromir, and the last is Frodo and Sam. I hope this little poem inspires sorrow, yes, but also longing, hope, and a bittersweet acknowledgement that there is pain in this life, but in the next we sit eternally in the presence of God. 

For Tolkien, friendship was one of the most important relationships in life and I’d like to follow in that tradition. I hope you enjoy this poem. Thanks be to God!

Thanks be to God, indeed. Well, farewell for now, and I’ll see you later!

__

Namarië,

Astrya