Writing Challenges
This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends was from AC Young: Can a dragon fly underneath a rainbow?
It was a very visual prompt, which suggested giving it to Midjourney and see what an AI bot could do with it. However, I was surprised how hard it was to get it to give me a dragon in flight, as opposed to a dragonfly, a member of the order Odonata -- although I did get a very pretty one of a dragonfly under a rainbow:
And here's one of an actual dragon, although I couldn't get it flying under a rainbow:
Then I started playing with how it might fit into some of my ongoing projects. For instance, it could probably fit into the Big Messy Project, in the protagonist's flight through the Lands That Are Not of Men. In particular, it might be a good way to link the "disintegrating mountain" part with the Oz-like world where she encounters the elf on the motorcycle:
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Over the Rainbow
Ahead a rainbow stretched across the sky, bigger and brighter than any rainbow I'd ever seen. The more I looked at it, the more it looked like a physical object - yet somehow one made out of solidified light.
How could that be possible? the rational part of my mind wondered.
Even as I was pondering the implications, particularly in relation to the whole business of the Lands That Are Not of Men, a huge form came swooping out of the sky and flew under the arch of the rainbow. Was that the same dragon whose sudden appearance had led to my flight out of the house just beyond the Little Cottage of Lost Play?
As I reached the top of the hill, I could see that the land beyond the rainbow looked very different from the lands through which I'd just passed. Neat little houses that made me think of illustrations from a children's book of a magical world of little people, dotting a landscape of grass and trees of a green just a little too saturated, a road just a bit too bright yellow. Not exactly cartoonish, more like a fantasy movie--
Half-remembered music echoed in my mind, something about longing for a distant land of dreams and imagination. The sense of familiarity gave me the confidence to run toward it, hoping that it would be, if not safe, at least less perilous than the lands through which I'd passed since fleeing the Little Cottage of Lost Play.
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Or maybe it could be one of the games Digital Dreams is doing in Phoenix in Cyberspace -- which could tie it in with both last week's prompt and the business of Dragon Season being canceled, which I did way back in 2020 when Odd Prompts was just starting out.
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Dragon Season Promo
As Roger accompanied Toni into the Vestibule, he looked over at the gate leading into Wizard's Gem. Over it was a translucent hologram of a dragon swooping under a rainbow. It cycled about every five minutes, which gave him an opportunity to study the image.
Toni noticed his interest. "That's the new promotional graphic for Dragon Season. After last year's fiasco, they're really pushing it."
"I can see. Somebody's put a lot of attention into making the aerodynamics look plausible, even if an animal that big wouldn't be able to fly by flapping its wings."
Roger had expected Toni to be amused, but her expression darkened and she shot a quick look around the Vestibule. Instead of speaking aloud, she used the programmer's console to send him a direct message: >>Be careful talking about the physics of flight. Sure, you're an aeronautical engineer by training, but your cover identity as a freelance software engineer doesn't give you any reason to know a lot about the mechanics of flight. Besides, this is a fantasy game, and a lot of gamers don't like a lot of real-world science in their world-building. One of these days I'll have to tell you about the space game that flopped because there was too much real-world orbital mechanics in the spacecraft maneuvering.<<
Roger recalled her remarks about how the space opera game world had spaceships that flew at the speed of plot with unobtanium drives for just that reason. For all he knew, the dragons' lift might well come from magic, with their wings doing the maneuvering - why did it make him think of the "driver tubes" in an old series of stories he'd read when he was in his teens, back in Grand Rapids?
No time to worry about it, because there was work waiting for him and Toni in the Magic Garden storyscape.
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I'd been planning to have some kind of mention of various hotshot pilots flying under bridges, and stories Roger had heard about Alan Shepard pulling such a stunt, but there just wasn't time -- nor was there any time to do a bit about the various otome games Elaine likes to play in the Grissom timeline.
AC Young got my prompt -- You’re cleaning out a storage unit that’s been crammed full of boxes. As you get closer to the back, you open a box and look down into a hole that can’t possibly be there. -- and gave us an interesting discovery. It looks like something that could be expanded into a cool story or novel.
I did manage to get a story written for this week's Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge. My effort's another mundane story, and I might've put it into The Margins of Mundania -- but I might put it into another of my collections somewhere along the line.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
There will be a new word and picture prompt up at Indies Unlimited on Saturday. Until then, the polls will open tomorrow for voting on the Readers' Choice Award, and will close at 5PM on Thursday.
In the meantime, keep writing.
It was a very visual prompt, which suggested giving it to Midjourney and see what an AI bot could do with it. However, I was surprised how hard it was to get it to give me a dragon in flight, as opposed to a dragonfly, a member of the order Odonata -- although I did get a very pretty one of a dragonfly under a rainbow:
And here's one of an actual dragon, although I couldn't get it flying under a rainbow:
Then I started playing with how it might fit into some of my ongoing projects. For instance, it could probably fit into the Big Messy Project, in the protagonist's flight through the Lands That Are Not of Men. In particular, it might be a good way to link the "disintegrating mountain" part with the Oz-like world where she encounters the elf on the motorcycle:
==========================================================================================
Over the Rainbow
Ahead a rainbow stretched across the sky, bigger and brighter than any rainbow I'd ever seen. The more I looked at it, the more it looked like a physical object - yet somehow one made out of solidified light.
How could that be possible? the rational part of my mind wondered.
Even as I was pondering the implications, particularly in relation to the whole business of the Lands That Are Not of Men, a huge form came swooping out of the sky and flew under the arch of the rainbow. Was that the same dragon whose sudden appearance had led to my flight out of the house just beyond the Little Cottage of Lost Play?
As I reached the top of the hill, I could see that the land beyond the rainbow looked very different from the lands through which I'd just passed. Neat little houses that made me think of illustrations from a children's book of a magical world of little people, dotting a landscape of grass and trees of a green just a little too saturated, a road just a bit too bright yellow. Not exactly cartoonish, more like a fantasy movie--
Half-remembered music echoed in my mind, something about longing for a distant land of dreams and imagination. The sense of familiarity gave me the confidence to run toward it, hoping that it would be, if not safe, at least less perilous than the lands through which I'd passed since fleeing the Little Cottage of Lost Play.
==========================================================================================
Or maybe it could be one of the games Digital Dreams is doing in Phoenix in Cyberspace -- which could tie it in with both last week's prompt and the business of Dragon Season being canceled, which I did way back in 2020 when Odd Prompts was just starting out.
==========================================================================================
Dragon Season Promo
As Roger accompanied Toni into the Vestibule, he looked over at the gate leading into Wizard's Gem. Over it was a translucent hologram of a dragon swooping under a rainbow. It cycled about every five minutes, which gave him an opportunity to study the image.
Toni noticed his interest. "That's the new promotional graphic for Dragon Season. After last year's fiasco, they're really pushing it."
"I can see. Somebody's put a lot of attention into making the aerodynamics look plausible, even if an animal that big wouldn't be able to fly by flapping its wings."
Roger had expected Toni to be amused, but her expression darkened and she shot a quick look around the Vestibule. Instead of speaking aloud, she used the programmer's console to send him a direct message: >>Be careful talking about the physics of flight. Sure, you're an aeronautical engineer by training, but your cover identity as a freelance software engineer doesn't give you any reason to know a lot about the mechanics of flight. Besides, this is a fantasy game, and a lot of gamers don't like a lot of real-world science in their world-building. One of these days I'll have to tell you about the space game that flopped because there was too much real-world orbital mechanics in the spacecraft maneuvering.<<
Roger recalled her remarks about how the space opera game world had spaceships that flew at the speed of plot with unobtanium drives for just that reason. For all he knew, the dragons' lift might well come from magic, with their wings doing the maneuvering - why did it make him think of the "driver tubes" in an old series of stories he'd read when he was in his teens, back in Grand Rapids?
No time to worry about it, because there was work waiting for him and Toni in the Magic Garden storyscape.
===========================================================================================
I'd been planning to have some kind of mention of various hotshot pilots flying under bridges, and stories Roger had heard about Alan Shepard pulling such a stunt, but there just wasn't time -- nor was there any time to do a bit about the various otome games Elaine likes to play in the Grissom timeline.
AC Young got my prompt -- You’re cleaning out a storage unit that’s been crammed full of boxes. As you get closer to the back, you open a box and look down into a hole that can’t possibly be there. -- and gave us an interesting discovery. It looks like something that could be expanded into a cool story or novel.
I did manage to get a story written for this week's Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge. My effort's another mundane story, and I might've put it into The Margins of Mundania -- but I might put it into another of my collections somewhere along the line.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
There will be a new word and picture prompt up at Indies Unlimited on Saturday. Until then, the polls will open tomorrow for voting on the Readers' Choice Award, and will close at 5PM on Thursday.
In the meantime, keep writing.