Marlena Harris
June 23rd, 2020
Wondering what comes after life or if something comes after life is not something new. There are many different beliefs on that and what you believe on the afterlife can affect what you do in the here and now.
I enjoy stories in the fantasy genre and nothing says fantasy more than things that start with the prefix super-, supernatural, superpowers, superheroes, supervillains. The list goes on. Of course all of those things just mean that what they are is far above normal and not obtainable by natural means. It doesn’t actually mean those things aren’t possible.
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Fantasy, Original Prompts, Relationships, Writing Prompts
Marlena Harris
June 21st, 2020
Sometimes things don’t go our way. Nothing says that more than the bad consequences that follow bad decisions and bad events. If your characters have everything going there way, it’s easy to wonder why. Hopefully it’s because you have a plan that will catch the attention of your readers.
For my own characters, it seems that I let them go through a lot of painful things to pull them out stronger on the other end. This prompt is based on the back story for one of my characters. When I was trying to come up with whump prompts, her story, which is definitely an angsty situation as well, came to mind. I wish only the best for her in the future, but everything is not always going to be perfect and she comes from a hard place.
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Original Prompts, Relationships, Whump Prompts, Writing Prompts
Marlena Harris
June 20th, 2020
As with some of my prompts this one was inspired by an aspect of something I watched. There is a lot more to the story than just what I made into the prompt and I tried to make it as generic as possible, because it is the idea I find interesting and I’m not interested in replicating the story, merely in the idea of a different take on a similar idea.
You may have noticed that I like fantasy. Part of that is because it is a departure from reality and something that can take us away from our problems, at least for a little while. Part of that is because there are things that are not possible in reality that can happen in fantasies and that idea is very interesting to me.
What drew me to the story this prompt is based on was not the potential romance between these two characters, especially given that I’m still not even sure what I think of it given what I know about their past. Instead it was the rest of the relationship between these two characters, an unaging warrior who has no confidence in himself and the daughter of his best friend whom he was tricked into killing who has no one herself, but still manages to help him find himself, again.
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Fantasy, Original Prompts, Relationships, Romance, Writing Prompts
Marlena Harris
June 16th, 2020
Time is a funny thing. It’s one thing that is impossible to get back once it’s gone. It doesn’t get longer or shorter no matter what you do or who you are. And although it’s the same for everyone, no one seems to experience it the same. Time flies. Days drag on. It’s an interesting thing.
Ten years can pass by so quickly that it’s almost as if you blinked and don’t know where the time went. I sometimes find myself wonder how on earth my siblings are all grown up and weirder still their kids are growing up pretty fast, too. Pretty soon I’ll be watching my niece graduated high school, not that she’s even started yet, but it’s really not that far off when you think about it. Next month it’ll have been ten year since I lost my grandma.
On the other hand, there are times when time just seems to go on forever. It’s easy at five-years-old to have no concept of how much time ten years is, because you have never experienced that passage of time. It’s twice your entire life.
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Original Prompts, Relationships, Writing Prompts
Marlena Harris
June 15th, 2020
This prompt is another one that is based off of something that I have already written. I list it as a character prompt, because my focus is on the siblings and their reactions more than on the actual magic world the youngest, or at least younger, finds.
In the case of my own characters this is based off of the older two are both men and the youngest is a woman. This is a siblings dynamic I have used more than once, both times I can think of with magical worlds involved. In both cases, they were fanfics of other people’s work, one much more developed than the other. As with all my original characters, I adore them and am more than a little biased about them. I know them well and I am always glad to have them in my stories.
If you choose to use this prompt, what you do with this idea is up to you, but I’d like to give you a little of an idea what I have done with the characters it is based off of.
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Character Bank, Fantasy, Original Prompts, Relationships, Siblings
Marlena Harris
June 5th, 2020
As with some of my other prompts, I don’t have a specific inspiration for this. It was an attempt to create an angst prompt that didn’t really go the way I wanted it to. In addition it’s hard to say if this is really a character bank or a writing prompt, but I decided to go with character bank, since that focuses on the character more than the story.
Depending a lot on your genre, I think this is a character that you could put into a book and while her story is probably going to be relevant to the plot in someway, it doesn’t have to be, because every character has their own story about them and not all of them are the main story. It could be interesting to have a character with this kind of backstory and not make her the main character. In fact given that she has always taken a back seat to her sister, it might be exactly the way to show case that point.
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Character Bank, Mystery, Original Prompts, Relationships
Marlena Harris
June 3rd, 2020
If you are anything like me, you love books. You probably have read a ton of them and maybe have hundreds or even thousands of them either in physical form on electronic. At some point in your life, owning your own library or book story or at least having a room dedicated solely to books has probably at least crossed your mind.
The room in the picture looks like a place I would love to see in person. To me it looks absolutely incredible and I wouldn’t be surprised if you think the same.
Today’s prompt is based off that idea, of an incredible library, thought it doesn’t necessarily have to be all that great. There really isn’t any other conscious influence on it. I like books, so I let two characters talk about them and give you a dialogue prompt.
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Dialogue Prompts, Original Prompts
Marlena Harris
June 1st, 2020
This month all of the prompts that come out will be ones I came up with to share with you. This first one is based off a pair of sisters in one of my stories. I made the prompt based off their relationship, but of course you can switch it around to suit your characters if your wish to use it.
Before I continue, I’d like to include some definitions for the terms in the title. The definitions listed below are from Wordnik.
street smart
ADJECTIVE
▪ having the shrewd resourcefulness needed to survive in an urban environment
book smart
ADJECTIVE
▪ having knowledge obtained by reading and studying, rather than by practical experience.
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Character Bank, Original Prompts, Relationships, Siblings
Marlena Harris
April 9th, 2020
When creating governments it is important to know what kind of government or governments you wish to create. You need to know the functions of those governments and how they interact with each other if you have multiple nations at work in your story.
Every type of government is going to interact differently with every other type of government if just a little. If you have a lot of nations in close proximity to each other or your story takes place on a border, it’s likely that you will be trying to juggle more than one nation and potentially more than one type of government, so knowing what they are is a good start.
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Conworlding, Crafting Governments, Inkwell Ideas, J. S. Morin, Live Science, Mocomi Kids, The Quad, Worldbuilding, Worldbuilding Spotlight
Marlena Harris
April 2nd, 2020
There is a lot that goes into worldbuilding. When you are creating a fully fictional place, that list gets even longer. So much influences the lives of your characters that might not be an obvious part of them. One of those things is government, or in some cases a lack thereof, so our first Worldbuilding Spotlight will be on the topic of fictional governments.
When dealing with creating a government, you have to consider what kind of government it is, how long that government has been in control, how people become part of the government, what percentage of the people have control over the government, whether the government has good intentions or bad ones, and so much more. You will also probably want to deal with how that government deals with other governments and how much they pay attention to what the common citizen of the place they are governing is doing.
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Conworlding, Crafting Governments, Worldbuilding, Worldbuilding Spotlight
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