The SST AlterNet
Explore writing-prompt responses by character, arc, theme or available text.
Browse the collection below.
Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A breakthrough in quantum physics allows for communication with other universes. At first everything proceeds as planned, with regular transmissions sent and received of cultural and scientific data, then one by one each of the other worlds contacted all begin to end.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] It started a few months ago. It's not dyslexia and you're not crazy. Sometimes words rearrange themselves before your eyes into helpful messages. It might warn you of traffic, name a good restaurant, or tell you your partner is cheating. Just now your sudoku puzzle formed a phone number.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] "I'm sorry", the alien says. "Per official definition humans aren't earths dominant species. And since earths dominant species never developed spaceflight per galactic law earth is a primitive planet, with all that entails.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Being one of the top assassins in the industry few things if any surprise you. However as your latest target simply got up after being shot three times in the back of the head before remarking "Rude!" you have to admit you were a little caught off guard.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have just discovered that the Vampire role playing group that you've been a part of for the last year is in fact a group of real vampires.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Pop up blocker fails. "MIB's in your area." Close. "MIB's getting closer." Close. Knock on the door. "Run!"
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You've lived a normal average life, nothing too special. One day as you are on the way home from work. A person stops you, claiming to be from the future to kill you for murdering their family and destroying the world.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Exploiting the latest neuroscience techniques, an evil government plants false memories in the minds of its citizens.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have died, and then you find yourself standing over your body. You see that the Grim Reaper has come for you, and... no twist, he's just doing his job. You're disappointed in the normality of it all actually.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [SP] Your roommate is Death.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a supervillain in disguise, out shopping. You see a bunch of bullies tormenting a kid, and, on a whim, decide to intervene.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have the ability to change the reality and fate of events around you to a minor degree. You use this ability to "fight crime". One day when fighting a villain you cause a street light to fall atop your opponent, but he simply back step sand dodges it with a smug grin.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] During an office move, some of the staff found a secret room they'd never seen before. Upon closer inspection, they found a half-eaten cheeseburger, a still fizzing soda, but no sign of the occupant.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're a ghost haunting a house. You've been scaring people off your property for a few centuries now, but it's gotten boring, so you're going to switch it up a bit.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Husband, Wife, daughter. The wife gets in a car accident, there's head trauma. The wife starts to believe her husband has been replaced by an identical imposter.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] I sometimes teleport when I fall asleep, and lately it's been getting worse.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] It's Monday. Your weekend watching Netflix and doing nothing was exhausting. You step away to grab a coffee and when you come back, you find your two co-workers dead and a hooded figure asking your boss for your whereabouts.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are sitting at desk waiting for your next call. The phone rang and with a slight annoyance you answered, "Welcome to the Zombie Survival Hotline, How may I help you?"
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] After a life spent on the high seas, you fell in love and decided to settle down. Your partner is a great swimmer and singer with a mesmerizing voice. The two of you were inseparable. But one day you found a large, iridescent fish scale stuck in the laundry basked.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A werewolf a vampire and an alchemist walk into a bar.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a detective, investigating a series of seemingly unrelated crimes, when you hear another detective say that he can "find no rhyme or reason for this murder". Its then that you realize; the rhyme IS the reason. The perp HAD to "kill Phil".
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] April slid the phone back on to Alex's bedside table. She suspected an affair, but the messages she found were much, much worse. The shower stuttered into silence, she had to decide what to do now.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] And just like that, the entire world deposited their money into your bank account.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You live in a world where vampires rule and humans are either treated as lovers, pets, or food.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] 18th August, it comes each year. Bad poets can write without fear. Please have a go and write some words, it doesn't matter if they sound like turds. It's bad poetry day so do your worst, particularly if you're not well versed.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are the most evil villain and the Make-A-Wish foundation contacted you. One of the children wishes to be your henchman for a day.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You wake up from a coma, it's been 5 years and 1. Your family is dead but you inherited all of their money and 2. Your earth has discovered a multiverse.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Good news is that, after months of just barely surviving in a zombie apocalypse, you finally managed to get to a large and zombie-free human settlement. The bad news is that those in charge aren't actually human.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are an inter-dimensional alien traveler who has crash landed on Earth. You are currently sitting in a holding cell, listening to members of the Men in Black, Torchwood Institute, and SCP Foundation argue over jurisdiction.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You died and were sent to hell. Thing is, life in hell is better than your life on earth ever was.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Emerging from the sealed bunker where you and the other rebels finally overthrew the corrupt ruler, you find the outside world is not the apocalyptic wasteland you were led to believe. Instead the peace talks that averted a nuclear apocalypse have led to a nearly utopian society.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Your parents have both been divorced for a number of years but their reasons as to why never match up with what the other says. One night when you come home to your mom's earlier than you told her, you realize what she had been hiding from you, and most likely hid from your father.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You exist in a world where you can see a person's life scores and achievements by simply gazing over their head. One day while scrolling through the stats of your oldest friend you see something disturbing. Worlds Destroyed: 21.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A loanshark becomes increasingly concerned with the extreme lengths his/er client is going to so they can pay up on time.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have the ability to hop into Video Games, and hop out at will, and being able to bring stuff out from those worlds. You work with a group of heroes on a daily. One day, you gotta explain how and why you're stuck inside a Dating Sim.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are an immortal, but not the standard sort. Whenever you die you reawaken as your past self on the first day of high-school. This is your 999th repeated life and for the first time something is different.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're a necromancer that has been run out of every town you've ever settled in for being who you are. You wipe tears out of your eyes as you did a deep hole, finding solace in your work. Your shovel bangs against bones and you stop, tears suddenly forgotten. Dinosaur bones. Now they'll pay.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a secret government agent. You travel to a small town to document their way of life with pictures. When you try to identify them using your software, you find out that none of them actually exist.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The aliens knew exactly where to hit us. Then we realize they look exactly like us and even speak English. These aren't aliens...they're humans from the future, and they're invading present-day Earth. We don't know how or why.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are stuck in a timeloop reliving one day. This time everything went off scenario and you heard a door knock. You see a strange man with a suitcase who claims he can help you. His help though wasn't something you expected.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A supervillain and superhero fall in love... 10 years later, they're going through a divorce.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You and your supervillain nemesis both know each other's secret identities. You've set a truce when the costumes are off, though, your mutual and unaware friends keep trying to set the two of you up.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You wake to find yourself in hospital. As you start your recovery, you seem to have some strange abilities you didn't have before...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] They sigh as the coffee cup bites them when they touched it. This mimic infestation is really getting out of hand.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Can your phone give you superpowers? Ever wonder what it's like to have super strength? Lightning speed? How about the power of levitation? Or maybe you just want to open that stubborn jar? Lift the couch while the husband's at work? Look no further, cell phone users. There's an app for that.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Your job at the grocery store I completely average. Absolutely nothing happens. Really! It's not interesting, nor is it painful. Nothing weird ever happens, no strange customers, nothing. It's all completely average.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A mistake happened and you died before you were supposed to. To make it up to you you are offered to be reincarnated. On top of that you are offered otherwise unavailable options.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You take a time machine forward in time...but the tech level seems to be medieval. You assume that it's a mistake, but then get proved wrong.
Read the moment ↗