Another Writing Prompt Site

[sapphire]

Found this cool-looking website through LinkedIn: Reedsy.
Haven't looked through the whole thing yet, since it's about 4 a.m. and I really should be going to bed now (though it looks like it's mostly resources for self publishing), but the writing prompts section is pretty cool. A few I particularly like:
"You have the ability to stop time. You've been doing it for years. One of the times you notice a man with an interesting necklace. Just as you approach to take it off - the man smiles."
"Humans reach the boundaries of the universe. All it is is a barbed wired fence with a sign saying 'Test Area, Keep Out'"
"Nuclear Weapons don't actually exist. You are to brief the president-elect on this fact."

[A Mask Among Many]

Dang... I like those, but I feel the first two are really similar to popular books already: Molly Moon and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

You may not have heard of the first one, but it's really interesting, and the ability to stop time doesn't appear until the second or third book.

[sapphire]

Huh, I guess the second one is pretty similar to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I hadn't thought of that. Though you could pretty easily make it an entirely different scenario.
I haven't read Molly Moon, but now I feel like I really should. I'll have to add it to my list.

[A Mask Among Many]

It's kind of a younger-teens series, but the writing gets better as the series progresses. (From what I can remember. )

[sapphire]

Children's and younger teen stuff can be amazing. Just depends on the writer, as always.
I will probably forget to read those, in all honesty, but if I do remember next time I'm at a bookstore or library, I'll have to pick one up.

[Endovia]

I remember reading Molly Moon! I don't remember much about the story, but it was cute. A girl that can do a type of hypnosis and her dog.

This is great! Bookmarking this site. I've found prompts to be really helpful to get started writing something. These prompts are gnarly.

“A ghost and a zombie meet. They're from the same person.”
“You wake up one day to find yourself thousands of years in the future, but you vividly remember dying.”
“A man forgets to water his potted plant for a whole week. This negligence starts a long chain reaction that leads up to World War III.”

[sapphire]

Hahaha. Love the last one. I mean, it's terrible, but also awesome.
The first one really blew my mind. Imagine you're a ghost, and you see your undead body just wandering around. How weird would that be?

[Endovia]

Dude, so weird. I feel like I would try to be like Peter Pan and stitch my soul back to my body and try to come back to life.

[sapphire]

It does bring up the question - if you were both a ghost and a zombie, could you reunite and be alive again? Or at least sort of alive? Would you be just a more sentient zombie, still slowly rotting away? Also, if both had separate consciousness at that point, would it kill one of "you" to reunite? So many questions, so little time.

[Endovia]

Theoretically, I would think that you could, but practically I don't think you'd be able to, which makes me think that there must be something else to life besides putting a soul and a body together. Maybe there's some connection that when it is cut can't be reconnected. I'm interested to see what "sort of alive" would be. It's weird to think of middle ground between life and death, but I guess that's the supernatural. Whoa, there'd be two of you, killing a part of you, yet you're already dead. This is crazy stuff.

[Zoom]

"Nuclear Weapons don't actually exist. You are to brief the president-elect on this fact."

Dang, that's so good!

Kind of cute, in a sad way, too - like no country has nuclear weapons, they were just saying they were because all the other countries said they did.

Or, other countries DO have them, but (I'm assuming America - actually, let's say Canada, for kicks, and because I'm a maple-syrup-blooded patriot) we don't - probably the MOST IMPORTANT SECRET in national security - so the president is in on it, of course, but who are you, that you've been trusted with this?


Endovia - "Whoa, there'd be two of you, killing a part of you, yet you're already dead." - so cool - you're "dead" in the medical, logical sense, but you're still..."Alive"? somehow? Like if it exists and it can do things sort-of on its own (I mean humans are technically programmed with billions of years of evolution) that makes me wonder if even rudimentary AI's could be considered alive? Like have you ever watched a housefly go about its day? Super simple programming - and we consider houseflies alive.

[Endovia]

Dun, dun, dun... This kind of conspiracy that isn't just a theory makes me think of House of Cards. I haven't seen the new season yet, but it's interesting to see manipulation and the control of information.

Yeah, it depends on how you define alive. That housefly point is great. I never thought of it like that. For biology, there's a list of characteristics for living things, I don't remember all of them, but one point that was interesting was that living things reproduce. Reproduction was the point that viruses failed on. A virus can't reproduce on its own, it needs a host. So one way an AI could be alive is if it was able to reproduce itself without a host, or human help.
Have you seen the movie Her? It's about AIs and they even create AIs of dead people by inserting data from what the person did while they were alive.

[Zoom]

I've been meaning to check out House of Cards!! It's now on my list haha, that sounds bomb

I was thinking about what form AI 'life' might take earlier, actually - biological life is basically codes of four nucleotides arranged in certain orders, encased in 'hardware' that goes about organizing the codes and keeping the whole unit running. By that definition, AIs aren't alive until they can move bodies and repair and create those bodies. But there's this thing in astrobiology about how we can't scan the local universe for ALL life - we can just look for signs that are reminiscent of life we already know of. There's an argument to be made, therefore, that even the rudimentary AIs we have now are alive - on the same level as houseflies, maybe, but in a radically new way. The future is SO COOL I can't stand it sometimes...if we don't all end up dead.

[Endovia]

That comparison to looking for life in astrobiology is brilliant. I agree that there could be other types of life. But I still think there’s something with reproduction. If the other life form that isn’t carbon based, wouldn’t they still have to reproduce in some way?
Do you think viruses are alive? If viruses are alive, even though they can’t reproduce on their own, then maybe zombies and ghosts could be considered alive. I think it depends on what rules we’re following for how zombies are made.