History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: August 2023 Writing Prompts!

| July 28, 2023

It’s nearly August (where does the time go?), so it’s time for the August 2023 writing prompts! August is “Smaugust” in the art world, which is a dragon-related challenge. The words in the first column come from @fariis_art‘s Smaugust list for this year. If you want to add another factor to your prompts, keep in […]

Fun for Friday: Spam as Prompts?

| July 14, 2023

If you’d like a prompt that could lead to some seriously ridiculous stories, think about using some of your spam emails (or snail mail) as a source of inspiration. Here’s just a few ideas you might take from your spam! Imagine the spam email being received by someone who is not a modern human. Have […]

Fun for Friday: Utopian Story Ideas

| July 7, 2023

If you’re looking for some ideas to write a utopian story, check out these prompts! There are some based on text and others based on images, and they’re a fun mix of potential ideas!  

Fun for Friday: July 2023 Prompts!

| June 30, 2023

July begins tomorrow, which means today is the perfect day to post my July 2023 prompts! This month’s prompts are mostly randomly generated, but the first column comes from the Kick in the Creatives July art challenge (with minor modifications). This month’s art challenge there is also to draw upside down, so you might think […]

Fun for Friday: Unusual Writing Prompts

| June 16, 2023

If you’re looking for unusual writing prompts to take your writing a different direction, check out this list of twenty prompts! There are a lot of fun and unique prompts on the list, especially when you apply a speculative fiction lens to them!  

Fun for Friday: Instagram Writing Prompts!

| June 2, 2023

This week, I’ve got another three writing prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about a loan that is worth more than face value. Write a piece about building on the moon. Write a piece that takes place during a lunch break. Follow the DefCon One Instagram for writing prompts roughly every other […]

Fun for Friday: June 2023 Writing Prompts

| May 26, 2023

It’s almost a week until June begins, but with the way May ends, this is the time for the June writing prompts! This month, I’ve set the WayBack Machine to several old lists of prompts. Column 1 comes from a 2016 6-word writing challenge. Column 2 comes from 2020 writing prompts. And column 3 comes […]

More DefCon One Writing Prompts

| April 21, 2023

This week, I’ve got another three writing prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about what lies beyond the stars. Write a piece about what goes on in the clouds. Write a piece about nature infiltrating a place where it shouldn’t be. Follow the DefCon One Instagram for writing prompts roughly every […]

Fun for Friday: Writing Prompts to Break Out of Writer’s Block

| April 7, 2023

If you’re feeling devoid of ideas, check out the suggestions here for some writing prompts that might help you break out of writer’s block. The prompts are generally designed for non-speculative stories, but it’s easy to insert a speculative element into them, if you like!  

Fun for Friday: April 2023 Writing Prompts

| March 31, 2023

It’s almost April, so time for the April writing prompts! This month, I did all random prompts. The first column is nouns, and the second column is verbs, except because English is how it is, some of those words can be either nouns or verbs. The third column is much more random, pulled from lists […]