puzzleprompts | Puzzle Reveal ~ April 2020

Power Hour: Flight

Creature Feature: Hymenoptera

Sports and Recc: Cycling

Geology Rocks: Hill and/or Valley

Mother Nature: Thunderstorm

Sense and Sensibilities:
Sight: lightning
Sound: deafening
Smell: clean
Taste: sweet
Touch: stinging
Emotion: awe

Thanks for checking out this monthly art and writing challenge. Puzzle Prompts is meant to give you the building blocks of a story when you need some inspiration, no matter your genre or creative outlet.

The Way This Works:
I give you some prompts. You use as many prompts as you can to create a story, essay, poem, work of art, or even gaming campaign. Prompts are organized into categories you can use for setting, action, conflict/crisis, who, what, when, where, why, and how of a story.

Each category prompt is meant to have multiple variations in order to be useful for any artist or writer - be they into fantasy, paranormal romance, science fiction, space opera, historical fiction, steampunk, urban fantasy, non-fiction, and poetic writing.

Everyone is welcome to share their fic to our AO3 Archive for 2020.

The power of flight could be a natural ability, or come from technology, super powers, or magic. Check out the various ways Marvel Comics has used flight, the hundreds of DC Comics characters with flight capabilities, some magical flight examples from other fandoms, and the science fiction trope that was once real life - the jet pack.

The order Hymenoptera includes ants, bees, sawflies, and wasps. Their natural characteristics like complex social orders, polymorphic caste systems, and arrhenotoky/thelytoky (forms of parthenogenesis - the ability for females to reproduce without mates) lend to many interesting SFF interpretations.

Some hymenoptera reproduce as brood parasites. The wasp Microgastrinae larvae burst from the chests of caterpillars to inspire Ridley Scott’s Xenomorphs. For more examples of how Hymenoptera are used in fiction, TV Tropes Wicked Wasps is a good place to start.

Your main character could be someone using a bicycle as transportation during an apocalypse, an eccentric Londoner who invents a fanciful tricycle during the Victorian era, or an ant-like alien in a motorcycle gang. Your evil wizard’s stronghold might crown the top of an enormous ant hill, made by his magically mutated ant army.

Your love interests could be competitors in a space ship race between planets, where one of the course hazards is a swarm of space wasps. Or the scary danger in your children’s book might be the thunderstorm keeping a lost bee from getting home to its family. Maybe the storm was created by the bored and lonely old wasp witch that lives in what’s called the Gloomy Vale.

Sense and Sensibilities is a reminder to make your story come alive using the senses and emotions of the POV character.

Puzzle Prompts is meant to inspire. To tickle your muse and get you exercising those little grey cells. Maybe even try out something new in your writing. Above all, have fun!

For more inspiration, check out The Art Room and our Music Monday posts.

Happy Creating, Everyone!