Story Prompts | February 2024
by Switch-Lit
Every month, Switch-Lit releases new story prompts to help launch your next collaborative fiction journey. You can find them on the Switch-Lit “Prompts” page, or revisit our full archive of prompts here on Substack.
This month’s theme: Running
In the animal kingdom, antelopes and cheetahs are built for speed. Ants and elephants are built for power. What about humans? Our bodies are phenomenally built for running long distances, slow and steady, like Aesop’s fabled tortoise.
Do we not also uniquely invent and manifest such fictions? Through language, the act of running suddenly becomes more than a physical and solitary one, but an abstract figment ready for your imagination. On your mark. Get set. Go.
Prompt 1
“We’re running out of time and garbage bags,” she shot back.
by Switch-Lit
Prompt 2
She was born on the first day of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and would live up to her name.
by Switch-Lit
Prompt 3
They sat by the running stream in silence until one of them, brushing a hand over a bed of wet moss and tiny mushroom caps, suddenly asked, "Truth or dare?"
by Switch-Lit
Prompt 4
Enter the stream of consciousness of a long-distance runner on a most unusual run.
by Switch-Lit
Prompt 5
It was some real supernatural shit. It ran in the family.
by Switch-Lit