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] You knew you could see potential in that kid who bought that old beat up six string guitar. After all, it's not every day you see someone with stars in his eyes.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] We have no idea what it means, but we all noticed it. The sun flickered today.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] It's 2045, and cybernetic augmentation is the new normal. Everyone has at least one augment, whether it be something small like an eye or something large like their spine. Everyone, except you. You're the only pure human in a world of cyborgs.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Humanity have been uploading themselves fora few years now as a means to escape death, however their immortality might be short lived as a particularly strong solar flare seems to have corrupted some people's data.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] After the Earth suddenly exploded, the astronauts in the ISS have lived on the station for months. After all the food has run out, the group gets increasingly erratic.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a bystander who lives in a world where groups of people sometimes break out into song with choreographed dances. You don't know how or why this happens.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Explain what, how, and who made the Devil cry.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Some days even the devil sits back to admire my handiwork.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're from a family of time travelers. Your parents send you to school in the past. Because time is immutable, you know exactly how your classmates' lives will turn out.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have the ability to tell when people die based on the amount of color surrounding them. People with a long time left to live appear in full color, while people who are dying slowly fade to black and white. One day, all the color around you disappears in an instant.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The year is 2732 after waking up to your annoyingly loud alarm clock you turn on the TV and see the words "Universal Success: Scientist and Astronauts find a way to successfully enter black holes". You yawn, aware that they are about to be surprised as to what awaits them on the other side.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are inexplicably swapped with yourself from a parallel world. Things are mostly similar but for a few differences. Mainly, the fact that you are well liked and have a loving significant other. You desperately try to act like your otherworld self to keep these unexpected gifts.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're being transferred to a new school, but the school is very different from other schools you've been transferred to.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You live in an 80s television show, but you're not the main character. Every time an episode ends, it ends with a freezeframe to music. However, once the freeze frame ends, you wake up in your bed the next day - you're the only one who seems to notice this.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Your super power is you may choose for people to forget you exist as soon as they're not looking directly at you. Due to the specifics of how you live your life, this makes your day to day much easier and you keep it "on" as a default. Today you realise someone *does* remember you.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're attempting to summon a demon but have run out of salt for the summoning circle and decide to substitute it with sugar.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're not a good villain. Not because you don't have the ability to be a good villain, but because you put in so little effort into committing crime.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A giant meteorite is about to hit Earth. It suddenly disappears seconds before entering the atmosphere.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Between 1945 and 65, every Nation except the U.S. was destroyed. The government found a way to make people forget it happened and a way to simulate the existence of the outside world. You found all this out yesterday afternoon. Today you were told something more shocking.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You ran out of milk today so decided to grab some more, meanwhile your roommate is staring in horror as you casually tear open a hole in spacetime to grab a bottle of fresh milk.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Your super power has been listed as 'Death Ward'. Anytime something would kill you, you temporarily develop a super power that allows you to survive. Each time you gain a power it only lasts a few minutes, making you highly unpredictable but unfortunately unable to master any of your abilities.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] After your parents found an alien baby from ship, they decided to make them part of the family. You've always hated your extraterrestrial sibling, so you plan to expose him to the government so they can take him away.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a superhero who is in love with the villain. You're willing to do whatever it takes to be together; even if it means switching sides.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You live in an advanced society that has a working 'fast travel' teleportation system After saving up, you finally get a used module installed in your home. When you boot it up to personalize the teleportation points, you find a curiously-named destination pre-loaded with no description.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You decide to try out a new cafe. You get your latte and sit outside. A few minutes later, a hooded stranger sits down across from you. Startled, you look up, only to find your own face staring back at you.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] One night while you were hanging out with your friends in a bar, you met a mysterious fellow who said he'd make you immortal if you give him beer money. Thinking nothing of it, you drunkenly agree. You are now the last man on Earth. As you walk alone, you cross paths with the same man again.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Over millennia of existence you have earned many titles, Hellspawn, Cursed Wanderer, Wretched Abomination, Scourge of the Holy but most importantly to you Good Husband and Number 1 dad.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Someone is dying in an alleyway, you find them and scream for help, no one comes. You don't have a phone. You kneel down, and he pulls you closer to him, he whispers his death wish in your ear, terrified, you run away. Ten years later you have the opportunity to fulfill the wish.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] After running the best cafe in your small town, you've come to learn everyone's names, stories and faces. Then one night when all is quiet and you're cleaning up, the hooded figure of death comes in, and takes a seat..
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You always were able to see numbers above people's heads. Most of the time they're 0, sometimes they're 1 or even 2 or 3. Your new girlfriend has a number of 7 billion.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A constant war between magic-bearers and firearm-wielders is raging all across the globe for years. You, a small bar owner, is thankful that restaurants and bars are a neutral zone. You never knew why it was so, until one guest decided to break the truce.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] It started with Tupperware. Leftover food containers would just accumulate in your cupboard. Then you started seeing Tupperware you didn't recognize. Then buttons, socks, and receipts. Then larger things. There is a nexus of lost objects growing in your cupboard, and it's getting more powerful.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a young boy of a tribe of humanoid creatures in a video game. The main characters, who are considered the "good guys," are known to slaughter your people indiscriminately. One day, you find your entire family killed.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're a cop investigating a series of murders. However, none of your victims show up in the system. Plus a weird symbol is present at all the crime scenes.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are a superhero. One day, in the middle of fighting a supervillain, you ask them why they are doing this? Expecting them to respond with the usual spiel of "Revenge against society", or "fighting against the corrupt powers", you are instead stopped in your tracks by their reply.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] She was not like other girls. Mainly, that was because she was a necromancer.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Whenever anybody asks you a question, time stops until you figure out the correct or satisfying answer to said question. One day, someone asks you a question that you realize may take an eternity to answer.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You work as a bouncer at a club with the ability to see someone's age floating above their head. You're loved by your boss for keeping all the underaged kids out, but one night a man walks up with 1973 floating above his head. But he doesn't look a day over 20.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] "Oh, am I thinking out loud again? Sorry, I'm still getting used to this whole telepathy thing."
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] "Wanted: One babysitter. Regular hours, sundown to midnight. Fee is negotiable, paid in gold coins. Must be good with children. Must be willing to donate blood twice a week. Type O-negative preferred. Inquire at castle on hill."
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You've kept your superpowers a secret your whole life. Consequently, your captors have no idea they've made a grave mistake in attempting to traffic you.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Everything you break fixes itself within an hour. Everything you fix breaks itself within an hour. This has been going on for almost a year now.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You purchase a rice cooker online. However it was a lot more than just a rice cooker...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The year is 2030. The first astronauts have landed on Mars. They find a cave with a human skeleton and 4 words written on the wall.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You, a junior magic student, just challenged one of the greatest mages in the world to a duel. Despite this, you still feel confident. Why? Well, wizards don't usually have a plan if you just go up and start physically fighting them.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [CW] Write a poem or song that can be read both top to bottom or bottom to top & still makes complete sense. Bonus points if you can make it have opposite messages when read in a different way.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] For the entire history of the universe, there has been a fight against good and evil. Now there's a third contestant.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You wanted to go on a vacation, so you went with the top suggestion from Lonely Planet. LIttle did you know that it would actually take you to a lonely planet.
Read the moment ↗