Happy Friday, beloved readers! It’s hard to believe that it’s a little over two weeks until Christmas, huh? And Hanukkah already started last night! (Those are just the holidays that I know of.) It’s hard to believe how quickly the holidays are going by. Hopefully, even with all the hustle and bustle of this time of year, you are taking some time for your writing. Whether you already are or you need some inspiration to help you get started again, here is a writing prompt that will (hopefully) get your writing gears going.
For this prompt, I want to do something to go along with the increasing darkness of winter and to complement my “All Summer in a Day” writing prompt. I’m calling this one the “Eternal Night” writing prompt.
Imagine that, one day, the sun suddenly goes dark, and all electricity goes out. The sun has not died out, but for whatever reason, all light has disappeared from our planet but for the stars and fire. What do you think would happen to humankind? How would we handle being stuck in such a dark, primitive state? Would we panic? Turn on each other? We would come together and try to survive in this brand new world? Or we would just die out, as T.S. Eliot once said, not with a bang, but with a whimper?
Like with the “All Summer in a Day” writing prompt, I want you to spend about five minutes thinking over this scenario and jotting down your notes for it. Then turn it into a short story, piece of microfiction, or a poem. It can be whatever you want–horror, science fiction, fantasy, apocalyptic fiction, whatever fits the notes that you came up with. The only limits are your imagination!
This writing prompt will stretch your imagination. You might even be tempted to go beyond what would happen to humanity to explain why the light went away, which would probably take far more than the five minutes allotted to the note-taking in this exercise. Great! If you feel so compelled, bend the rules of this exercise and let this exercise take you where it will! Remember, these writing prompts are just to get you started writing. There are no strict rules to them, so if you need to be flexible to follow your imagination and creativity, so be it.
Let me know how this exercise turns out for you in the comments below.
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