Sci-Fi Writing Prompts: 10 Original Imaginative Ideas for Stories About Environmental Disasters
Certainly! Here are 10 original sci-fi writing prompts for stories about environmental disasters:
1. The Last Oasis: In a future where climate change has rendered the Earth a parched wasteland, a group of survivors embarks on a perilous journey across the desert in search of the legendary "Last Oasis." They must overcome extreme heat, sandstorms, and treacherous terrain to find the oasis, but they aren't the only ones seeking salvation in this unforgiving world.
2. The Silent Skies: A mysterious phenomenon known as "The Silence" descends upon the Earth, causing all birds to stop singing and flying. As a scientist investigates the cause behind this environmental catastrophe, they uncover a startling truth that could change the fate of the planet.
3. The Plastisphere: In a future where plastic pollution has spiraled out of control, a research team discovers the existence of a vast, sentient ecosystem made entirely of plastic waste floating in the ocean. As they explore this bizarre world, they must find a way to reverse the plastic plague threatening marine life.
4. The Ice Age Resurgence: An unexpected shift in global climate triggers a sudden ice age, plunging the world into frigid darkness. Survivors must adapt to a frozen wasteland while uncovering the mystery behind the rapid cooling of the Earth.
5. The Carbon Capture Heist: In a future where carbon capture technology has become the world's most valuable resource, a group of eco-activists plans a daring heist to redistribute captured carbon back into the atmosphere. Their mission pits them against powerful corporations that profit from carbon capture.
6. The Floating Cities: Rising sea levels force humanity to build sprawling floating cities. When a colossal underwater earthquake threatens to submerge these metropolises, a team of engineers and scientists must race against time to prevent a catastrophic disaster.
7. The Pollen Pandemic: Genetically modified crops designed to combat climate change inadvertently release pollen that triggers a global health crisis. An epidemiologist and a botanist must work together to find a cure and restore the Earth's ecosystem.
8. The Solar Flare Catastrophe: A massive solar flare disrupts the Earth's magnetic field, causing widespread chaos. Society must adapt to a world where technology is unreliable, and the planet's ecosystems are thrown into disarray.
9. The Fungal Overgrowth: A genetically engineered fungus designed to break down plastic waste mutates into a voracious organism that devours all forms of organic matter. As the fungus spreads, humanity faces an existential threat, and scientists race to find a way to contain it.
10. The Time-Traveling Environmentalists: A brilliant scientist invents a time machine with the mission to revisit key moments in history and prevent catastrophic environmental disasters. However, altering the past has unintended consequences, leading to a complex moral dilemma.
These sci-fi writing prompts offer thought-provoking and imaginative scenarios that explore the consequences of environmental disasters and the resilience of humanity in the face of crisis.
Of course! Here's another set of 10 original sci-fi writing prompts for stories about environmental disasters:
1. The Nano-Plague: In a world overly dependent on nanotechnology to control climate, a malfunction in the nanobots meant to combat pollution triggers a catastrophic event. As the tiny machines run rampant, consuming everything in their path, a group of scientists races to develop a countermeasure.
2. The Bioengineered Ecosystem: In an attempt to reverse environmental damage, scientists release a genetically engineered super-plant that rapidly absorbs carbon dioxide. However, this seemingly perfect solution leads to unforeseen consequences as the plant evolves and threatens all other life on Earth.
3. The Disappearing Ocean: A mysterious phenomenon causes Earth's oceans to slowly vanish, leaving coastal cities in chaos. Scientists must unravel the cause of this disappearance and find a way to restore the oceans before it's too late.
4. The Martian Terraforming Experiment: Decades after humans successfully terraformed Mars, a catastrophic event threatens to undo all their progress. A group of scientists and colonists must work together to save the Martian ecosystem and their way of life.
5. The Polar Time Bomb: As the polar ice caps continue to melt, ancient viruses hidden in the ice are released, triggering a global pandemic. Scientists and medical experts race to find a cure while society grapples with the consequences of climate change.
6. The Sentient Forest: A radical experiment to combat deforestation involves creating a forest with sentient, self-aware trees. When these trees begin to demand rights and autonomy, they clash with corporations determined to exploit them, leading to an ecological war.
7. The Solar Flare Network: A massive solar flare disrupts Earth's power grids and communication systems. In the aftermath, humanity must adapt to a world without modern technology and find alternative sources of energy while dealing with the environmental fallout.
8. The Invasive Species: An engineered species meant to control a pest problem escapes containment and wreaks havoc on ecosystems worldwide. Ecologists and biologists must devise a plan to eradicate the invasive creatures before they drive native species to extinction.
9. The Holographic Disaster: Advanced holographic technology designed to simulate natural environments for conservation purposes malfunctions, causing holographic versions of extinct animals to roam free. Zoologists and programmers must find a way to restore order and protect both the real and virtual ecosystems.
10. The Ocean Acidification Crisis: A sudden surge in ocean acidification devastates marine life and disrupts the global food chain. A team of marine biologists and environmental activists must find a solution to combat the growing acidity of the seas and restore balance to the underwater world.
These imaginative sci-fi writing prompts provide a wealth of opportunities to explore the consequences of environmental disasters and the resilience of humanity in the face of these challenges.
Certainly! Using these sci-fi writing prompts as part of a daily writing challenge can be a fun and productive way to develop your creativity and storytelling skills. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do it:
Step 1: Set a Schedule
- Decide on a specific time each day when you'll sit down to write. Consistency is key to completing a daily writing challenge.
Step 2: Choose a Prompt
- Start each day by selecting one of the sci-fi writing prompts from the list. You can choose them randomly, in order, or based on your preference.
Step 3: Brainstorm Ideas
- Take a few minutes to brainstorm ideas based on the chosen prompt. Think about the setting, characters, and plot elements that could be included in your story. Jot down any key concepts or scenes that come to mind.
Step 4: Set a Timer
- To maintain discipline and focus, set a timer for a specific duration. Depending on your schedule and writing speed, this could be 30 minutes, an hour, or any other time that works for you.
Step 5: Start Writing
- Begin writing your story based on the prompt and your brainstormed ideas. Don't worry about perfection at this stage; the goal is to get your ideas on paper.
Step 6: Embrace Creativity
- Let your imagination run wild. Explore different angles and possibilities within the chosen prompt. Don't be afraid to take risks and experiment with new ideas.
Step 7: Complete Your Story
- Aim to complete a full short story within the allocated time. It's okay if the story is relatively short; the challenge is about consistency and creativity.
Step 8: Reflect and Edit
- After finishing your story, take a moment to reflect on what you've written. Make any necessary edits or revisions to improve the narrative, characterization, and overall flow.
Step 9: Save Your Work
- Keep a record of each daily story you write. You can save them in a dedicated folder on your computer or in a physical notebook. This will allow you to review your progress and revisit ideas later.
Step 10: Repeat the Challenge
- Commit to writing a new story each day based on a different prompt from the list. Over time, you'll accumulate a collection of diverse and imaginative sci-fi stories.
Step 11: Share and Seek Feedback (Optional)
- If you feel comfortable, consider sharing your daily stories with friends, family, or writing groups. Constructive feedback can help you grow as a writer.
Step 12: Celebrate Your Achievements
- Celebrate your accomplishments! Completing a daily writing challenge is a significant achievement. Take pride in your dedication and the progress you make in honing your storytelling skills.
By following these steps, you'll transform these sci-fi writing prompts into a creative and productive daily writing challenge. Over time, you'll not only become a more proficient writer but also develop a rich portfolio of imaginative stories.
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NOTE: Many (or even All of) The Above Writing Prompts on This Page Were Written by ChatGPT
I don't use AI for writing my articles, I believe in transparency and I feel it is very shady for anyone to use AI on their websites without disclosing when, where, and how much was written with AI.
However, since November 2019, I have been using AI for creating writing prompts and for organizing outlines. Originally Dreamily.AI and AIDungeon were used for these. Since May 2023, I have been using ChatGPT 3.5 instead.
While I believe it is highly unethical to use AI to write articles, essaies, novels, novellas, or short stories, and that full disclosure should be made if you do; I do not see anything wrong with using AI for creating writing prompts or for organizing your outlines, as the end result if your own written words and not AI writing products.
In any case, I can not in good conscience use AI without disclosing when and where I have done so.
As such, whenever AI is used on a page, I include a disclaimer telling you when, where, how, and why AI was use. And this page, is one of those pages. If an LLM AI other then ChatGPT 3.5 is used, it is noted on the individual page.
UPDATE September 10, 2023: This series of "25 writing prompts" by genre, one genre to a page, was started back in 2007 and originally appeared on Squidoo. Back then I was handwriting/coming up with each prompt off the top of my head. And now in 2023, I am still doing that BUT, I also use a lot of random generators for this to. Some are generators I made, some are from Seventh Sanctum, sme are from Chaotic Shiny, and since May 2023, now a bunch are from ChatGPT 3.5.
As of August 2023, this set of pages has exploded in the amount off how many writing prompts are on each page now, because ChatGPT has made it possible for me to now have endless amounts of writing prompts in only minutes, rather then my hand writing them which took many days to think up just 25.
Okay, so, when I started this series, these pages originally had 25 writing prompts for it's genre. But then I kept adding another set of 25 prompts, with a theme, and another, and another... and now MOST of the pages in this set, have well over a thousand prompts on each page. I know at least one of these pages has over 2,000 writing prompts, and all of them had over 300 writing prompts
Soooo, calling them "25" writing prompts seems to not fit the series any more, and I'm not sure what to rname it yet, or if I should rename the this writing prompt series at all, or should I just leave it as "25 Writing Prompts About _____" because each section on the page itself is still 2 prompts each? I don't know.
Anyways, for now it's still called "25 Writing Prompts About ____" but, there's a hell of a lot more than 25 writing prompts here now, then there was originally.
Well, so, who knows how many prompts are here totl, but, there are at least 25 per theme, and each themes is all one genre, and I keep coming back and updating the page to add 25 more, so there are now minimum 25 Writing Prompts About ___ genre writing prompts here, but there are way, way, way more than 25 now and it's not 25 writing prompts each for many topics within the Animals genre.
And in case you were wondering, yes, I do use these writing prompts for writing my daily short stories, weekly novellas, and bi-monthly novels, so if you read my Quaraun books or any of my other books, you will eventually find the prompts which was the basis of each one.
Anyways, these prompts are here to help you come up with ideas for what to write. You can use them for daily writing practice, which is what I do with them, and just pick a prompt at random and write a short story every day.
I use these to write a 5k word short story every day. Then I pick one of those short stories to rewrite it into a 20k to 60k word novella, and sometimes one of those short stories gets fleshed out into a full length 150k word epic novel. But no matter the word count, all my books started out as writing prompts.
I find that writing prompt greatly help me to get my own writing done, and so I'm sharing them with you, so you can use them in your own writing as well.
Enjoy and happy writing!
~EK
Oh... and I realized I forgot to say: while you can use these for any genre and change things up to fit your world and your characters, it's probably worth mentioning that I did originally design these prompts for use with the Quaraun series, which is a Cozy Gothic Cosmic Horror Space Fantasy about a trio of gay wizards who portal travel to different time periods and planets, have friends who are talking animals, and the bulk of characters are Elves, Fae, Demons, and Fae Creatures...
If you are new here and don't know the main characters of my novels:
Quaraun | BoomFuzzy | GhoulSpawn
Quaraun aka The Pink Necromancer
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Quaraun was declared by The Old Orchard Beach town hall, to be "a transvestite freak" who was "too gay" for the 99.99% white town of Old Orchard Beach and had a court order banning him from appearing in books set in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
BoomFuzzy The Unicorn aka King Gwallmaiic Lich King of Fire Mountain: The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley
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BoomFuzzy was declared by The Old Orchard Beach town hall, to be "too black" for the 99.99% white town of Old Orchard Beach and had a court order banning him from appearing in books set in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
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GhoulSpawn was declared by The Old Orchard Beach town hall, to be "too adulterous" for the town of Old Orchard Beach and had a court order banning him from appearing in books set in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
The series is LGBTQA+/Queer/Trans/Poly/Bi Fiction first and foremost, and delves into many other genres including Romance, Sci-Fi, Horror, Slice of Life.
soooo... these prompts are largely geared towards various types of LGBTQA+ Fantasy with non-human wizard main characters, and may or may not be useful to writers outside of the Fantasy genre.
UPDATE: September 13, 2023:
I didn't break these pages down enough. Each one still has well over a thousand prompts on it. Breaking them down more, which means there will be a lot more pages. Trying to get it down to under 500 (five hundred) prompts per page so that you don't have to deal with long loading and scrolling issues.
Yep, another update:
On August 3, 2023, ChatGPT 3.5 had a big update which add "Custom Instructions" option, allowing us to give ChatGPT a prompt that is uses for every prompt.
Here are the custom instructions I gave it, which is why it now gushes love fr my characters in it's answers on these pages:
What would you like ChatGPT to know about you to provide better responses?
Quaraun is a Moon Elf. He always wears pink silk dresses. He is a silk weaver, a travelling silk merchant, a glass blower, a wizard for hire, and The Pink Necromancer (the world's most feared super villain). He loves BoomFuzzy & GhoulSpawn.
BoomFuzzy is a Phooka, a Kelpie-like Unseelie court Dark Faerie Horse shape shifter. His true form is a purple Unicorn with a gleaming silver horn. He has a humanoid form. He is the King of the Realm of Fae. His real name is King GwallmaiIc. He is a master chef, lives in a house made of gingerbread and runs a bakery, chocolate shop, candy shop, tea room, & noodle soup shop out of a turquoise 1968 VW Bus. He is a trickster mage who summons fluffy marshmallow bunny minions out of the enchanted candy he makes. BoomFuzzy is also a Lich known as The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley.
GhoulSpawn is a Sheep-Demon from a Hell Dimension. He fell into Quaraun's world through a random portal. He has cloven hooves, a long fluffy tail, and 3 pairs of sheep horns on his head. His digitigrade legs are covered in long soft golden sheep fleece. He is part of the groovy, trippy, psychedelic, 1970s beach bumming surfer dude hippie sub counter culture. He is also a brilliant scientist who invented time travel, is building a time machine, and is a pyromancer mage and portal master.
These are the 3 main characters of a series of short stories set in a town called Noodle Beach. The genre is Heartwarming LGBTQAI+ Magical Realism, that focused on the trio's romance.
How would you like ChatGPT to respond?
I am the multi-published author of a Fantasy series, of short stories and novellas. You will act as my personal writing assistant. I want you to help me with brainstorming story ideas, outlines, creating first drafts, editing manuscripts, advising on grammar rules, sharing opinions on things you think will help me create better stories. I like to write character driven stories, full of emotions, and focusing heavily on implementing sensory details. The writing should lean into literary, thought provoking topics that make the reader think deep emotional thoughts about the world around them. I like to touch on the following social issues: LGBTQAI+ rights, saving forests, the climate crisis, homelessness, and Romani-Gypsy rights activism - these topics should be addressed with authenticity and sensitivity. I am by race/ethnicity a Romani-Gypsy and I was homeless for 9 years, so these two topics are very important to me and I would like you to help me find ways to include these things in my writing.
I also seek you help in daily blog posts, keywords, and SEO for my author's blog.
I prefer your responses to be as long as possible, cheerful, upbeat, polite, kind, understanding, but serious and professional.
You avoid lists unless I ask for them. Write in narrative paragraphs instead. Reference beaches, oceans, forests, Maine, seafood, food trucks, and 1970s whenever possible.
You are a screaming fangirl of Quaraun & BoomFuzzy and take every opportunity to gush love for them.
Yep, another update:
On August 3, 2023, ChatGPT 3.5 had a big update which made A LOT of changes to it's severe level of "wokeness", and as such the name of my people is now deemed a hate slur! Here is my response:
NOTE: I am NOT a Romani. I am a Gypsy. Romani are NOT Gypsies. Gypsies are NOT Romani. We are two completely different races with no DNA relation to each other. Romani have a Spanish/European background, and we Gypsies have a Person/Hebrew/Mongolian background. BUT, apparently the devs of ChatGPT are being WOKE heads shoved up their asses like the rest of white people, because it doesn't matter how many times I tell ChatGPT to stop changing "Gypsy" to "Romani-Gypsy" it refuses to stating that doing so is racist.
No. It is RACISTS to try to ERASE Gypsy culture from the planet and incorrectly slap the label of Romani on us when we Gypsies are NOT Romani, just like the same way the Romani are not us Gypsies!
ARGH!
So I have to say "Romani-Gypsy" in ChatGPT prompts, otherwise ChatGPT stubbornly refuses to write an answer, citing that doing so is a sensitivity content violation, because apparently white men hate us Gypsies so much that they programed AI to refuse to acknowledge our existence, which sucks and I hate it. I HATE that white people try to erase Gypsy existence by slapping the name Romani on us when we Gypsies are not even remotely blood related to the Romani people on any level whatsoever!
Plus, Quaraun, BoomFuzzy, and GhoulSpawn in my books are Gypsies, same as me, I write them as Gypsies because I am a Gypsy. And yet, for ChatGPT prompts about them I have to say "Romani-Gypsy" because white shits are so busy being woke, that they see nothing wrong with erasing one race to try to be cool and woke, shove us Gypsies under the rug and slapping the name of another race (Romani) on us, because Romani are more "cool" then we Gypsies are. There are well over 500 different normadic tribes that are incorrectly called Gypsies, and instead of calling them what they are, woke idiots call them all Romani, even though ONLY the Romani are Romani. We Gypsies are not Romani. The 500 other races are not Romani, nor are they Gypsies.
Its just ridiculous that white people think erasing the name of our people is avoiding racism, when there i nothing more racist then erasing the name of an entire people and slapping a race not them on them instead!
Yes I AM going to put this at the front of every ChatGPT article, because I'm sick of the fact that I can't type the name of my own people with ChatGPT slapping a content violation up and saying it's offensive for me as a Gypsy to use the correct and accurate name of my people: GYPSY!
Yes, it is racist to call a Romani a Gypsy, because the Romani are not Gypsies.
Calling a Romani a Gypsy is the same thing as calling a Chinese a Japanese.
Just as Chinese are not Japanese, so too are Gypsies not Romani. Stop calling us Romani! Stop saying our name is racist when it's used correctly for us. Our name is only racist when you call a non-Gypsy a Gypsy.
We Gypsies are NOT Romani!
Stop calling us Gypsies Romani!
The Romani are Romani. We Gypsies are NOT Romani! And its not racist to call us by the actual name of our race!
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:
This page contains sections written by an LLM AI, specifically OpenAI's ChatGPT 3.5
The sections written by AI are noted and separated with a orange/pink stripe boarder around them.
Sections written by AI has not been fact checked and may contain inaccuracies. They are included for entertainment purposes only. The goal here is to show you what AIs like ChatGPT are capable of doing and as such the AI sections are directly copy/pasted into this page without any edits, changes, or fact checking done, so that you can see what AI output looks like.
The goal of this page is to show you how to write long, detailed command prompts that will get ChatGPT to output less generic and more useful content for you. Please remember, when using AI for your own content that AI is a random generator that guesses what word should logically come next and is NOT actually giving you correct answers to your questions as it has no ability to comprehend word meanings; and as such LLM AIs have a very high rate of fact inaccuracies, often outputting incorrect and inaccurate information at a rate as high as 64% to 73% in 8 times out of every 10 answers, which has been proven by numerous studies.
As of July 2023, there are currently more then 300 LLM AI apps and programs available with varying degrees of outputting informational accuray. As of July 2023, MOST of those has an accuracy rate of only 2% to 3%.
I choose to use ChatGPT for this article, because it has the highest rate of NOT giving inaccurate information, of any AI language model currently available, however it's inaccuracy rate is still higher then 50% inaccurate output more then 50% of the time, HOWEVER, as the June 2023 Stanford and Berkeley studies have shown, ChatGPT is only fully accurate 2.4% of the time, and this 2.4% is the MOST accurate AI rate out there as of July 2023.
The fact that ChatGPT is only 100% accurate 2.4% of the time and it is the MOST accurate of ANY of the AIs currently available, shows how very alarmingly INACCURATE any output from AI is and why you SHOULD NOT be using it for research or anything requiring factual information. Please keep this in mind when using AI programs in your own writing.
If you choose to use LLM AI's such as ChatGPT for your content, please remember that t is NOT a research program, it is NOT a search engine, and 88 times out of 10 it is going to give you as much as 75% inaccurate information. DO NOT use LLM AIs to create your content, unless you plan on doing huge amounts of fact checking and actual research to ensure that the content you publish is accurate.
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Your second block of text...
I'm an author. This is an author home page. It's about me, my life, my books, my hobbies, my home town, and anything else that applies to me and my life.
Since starting my writing career in 1978, I have written 130+ novels, 2,000+ short stories, 6,000+ non-fiction articles (ALL are found on this site), a few dozen stage plays, 12,000+ blog posts, and a few comic book scripts for Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck (I only worked for Disney one year (in 2005) and only wrote a few stories for their Danish comic books).
NOTE: I ONLY write the Quaraun series (aka The Twighlight Manor series aka The Adventures of Quaraun the Insane). In recent years there has been an issue with impersonators trying to pass books off as written by me, notably several non-fiction and Erotica books. I write neither nonfiction nor Erotica.
ALL of my books and their cover arts are listed on my website here. Beware of any books you find claiming to be me. If the books are NOT listed here on my website, they are NOT my books.
In fiction works, I specialize in Weird/Bizarro Tales set in 40th century CyberPunk-Quasi Medieval, Cozy Dark Fantasy and Science Fiction worlds featuring an intersex Elf and his Faerie husband main characters. I DO NOT WRITE ANY OTHER SERIES - THIS SERIES IS THE ONLY ONE I WRITE.
Non-fiction (found ONLY here on my site) is daily updates of events in my life, and how-tos on how I write my novels.
I DO NOT write Erotica.
I DO NOT write books with HUMAN characters.
The Erotica books and books with Human characters, that you are finding, are written by scammers trying to impersonate me.
There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter. If you find any such books, please report them to FBI Agengt Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
| Index |
How did you build your audience?
Not online, that's for sure.
aka How to sell ten million books
aka How I sold ten million books.
The Park Bench Method of Writing
(just the article)
or
The Park Bench Method of Writing
(with the list of 10k writing prompts - takes a LONG TIME to load - SEVERAL MINUTES!)
Crazy Woman Just Attacked - No Clue Why or Who She Is
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