The Writing Reader
Currently viewing the tag: "survival"
Send to Kindle
There’s a darkness lurking deep in the souls of us all. Our parents instill in us a modicum of civilized behavior and that usually keeps our baser instincts at bay. But sometimes that blackness seeps to the surface and a monster walks quietly among us. Because we are not attuned to evil, we don’t see it rise up until it strikes us down without warning. -H. Terrell Griffin, Blood Island: A Matt Royal Mystery
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about a person who becomes a monster.
Journaling Prompt: What is the darkness lurking inside of you? Does it ever come out?
Art Prompt: Evil Walks Among Us
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about functional psychopaths and how they can handle the situation if they have to deal with one at work.
Photo Credit: Ronny Robinson on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
People seeking shelter during tornadoes and cyclones are often called back, or delayed, by people doing normal activities, who refuse to believe the emergency is happening. These people are displaying what’s known as normalcy bias. About 70% of people in a disaster do it. Although movies show crowds screaming and panicking, most people move dazedly through normal activities in a crisis. This can be a good thing; researchers find that people who are in this state are docile and can be directed without chaos. They even tend to quiet and calm the 10-15% of people who freak out.
The downside of the bias is the fact that they tend to retard the progress of the 10-15% of people who act appropriately. The main source of delay masquerades as the need to get more data. Scientists call this “milling.” People will usually get about four opinions on what’s going on and what they should do before taking any action — even in an obvious crisis. People in emergency situations report calling out to others, asking, “What’s going on?” When someone tells them to evacuate, or to take shelter, they fail to comply and move on, asking other people the same question. -Esther Inglis-Arkell
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story using normalcy bias to create conflict.
Journaling Prompt: When do you tend to deny danger, whether it’s a tornado or something more abstract, like overdue bills? How do you act?
Art Prompt: Normalcy Bias
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about normalcy bias and how it reveals information about our ability to deny what is in front of us. Give your audience strategies to break through denial.
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
“Jonah was dead for a brief time before the paramedics brought him back to life.” -Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me
Fiction Writing Prompt: Use the first line of the week as the starting point or inspiration for a scene, story, poem, or haiku.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you felt like you were getting a second chance and what it meant to you.
Art Prompt: Risen from the dead
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write a piece with the theme of resurrection or second chances.
Photo Credit: ER24 EMS (Pty) Ltd. on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
Know your enemy if you want to defeat him. -Kate Elliott, Shadowgate
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, or poem about enemies.
Journaling Prompt: Imagine that one of your bad habits is your enemy. How much do you know about that bad habit? Is it enough to defeat it?
Art Prompt: Know your enemy.
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about how knowing your “enemy” can help your audience in their personal and professional lives.
Photo Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
“Tomorrow’s NASA space program will be different,” says Wallace Fowler of the University of Texas, a renowned expert in modeling and design of spacecraft, and planetary exploration systems. “Human space flight beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), beyond Earth’s natural radiation shields (the Van Allen belts), is dangerous.”
Currently, a human being outside the Van Allen belts could receive the NASA defined “lifetime dose” of galactic cosmic radiation within 200 days. If the Sun spews out a coronal jet of radiation in a solar storm in the direction of the spacecraft, a lethal dose can be received in a few hours. Mars does not have the equivalent of the shielding Van Allen belts, so a Mars base would also need shielding. Until we develop appropriate shielding, probably an intense magnetic field around the spacecraft, human travel, even to the moon, will likely be limited. -Daily Galaxy
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or scene about space travel beyond the Van Allen belts.
Journaling Prompt: If you could travel into outer space, what would you like to see?
Art Prompt: Space Travel
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the difficulties of space travel.
Photo Credit: x-ray delta one on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
Himalayan avalanches travel at horrifying speeds, upward of 125 miles per hour as they careen miles down the steep slopes of the world’s highest mountains. Even in a relatively small slide, the force and volume pack the snow and ice like cement. If climbers don’t die instantly from blunt trauma, they usually suffocate within minutes, unable to dig out of their crushing tomb. -Jennifer Jordan, Savage Summit
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about characters caught in an avalanche.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you felt life was as out of control as an avalanche.
Art Prompt: Avalanche!
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about avalanche safety measures that can be applied to more metaphorical avalanches in business.
Photo Credit: sgillies on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
“You are standing behind a very large stranger on a footbridge above the tracks. The only way to save the five people is to heave the stranger over. He will fall to a certain death. But his considerable girth will block the trolley, saving five lives. Should you push him?”
According to Dutton (citing the Harvard psychologist Joshua Greene, who observed psychopaths and normal people dealing with this dilemma), the variation of the trolley problem involves a “personal moral dilemma” that “hammers on the door of the brain’s emotion center, known as the amygdala.” While this dilemma makes normal people “circumspect and jittery,” and 90 percent refuse to push the stranger off the bridge, Dutton writes that psychopaths, “without batting an eye, are perfectly happy to chuck the fat guy over the side, if that’s how the cookie crumbles.” …
The lesson here is not a completely dark one. “I think every society needs particular individuals to do its dirty work for it,” Dutton quotes the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar as saying. We need doctors who won’t pass out at the sight of blood, for instance. We also need leaders who aren’t afraid to make tough decisions: “If you know where the buttons are and don’t feel the heat when you push them, then chances are you’re going to hit the jackpot,” Dutton writes. Let’s return to the trolley problem again. If utilitarianism is the goal — creating the greatest happiness for the greatest number — there is bound to be some ruthless psychopathy involved in achieving it. “Some group or cause,” Dutton writes, “has to bite the bullet for the greater good.” -Daniel Honan
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story where a psychopath has to be the agent of the good.
Journaling Prompt: How do you make difficult choices?
Art Prompt: Dirty Work
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the psychology of difficult decisions.
Photo Credit: Earl-Wilkerson on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house. -A Calendar of Scottish Saints by Michael Barrett
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about heroic women facing danger.
Journaling Prompt: What sacrifice would you be willing to make to protect something important to you?
Art Prompt: Courageous Sacrifice
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write a story about an ordinary person who made a courageous sacrifice in the face of a great challenge.
Photo Credit: dragon caiman on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
A singular fatality occurred on Wednesday night at a public house in Soho, London. Some men were in the billiard-room when one of them attempted to get a billiard-ball into his mouth. This feat he had previously accomplished and had successfully removed the ball. This time, however, he failed to extract it, and it became fixed in his throat. A cab was immediately fetched, but while being removed to the hospital the unfortunate fellow expired. -Yorkshire Evening Post, November 3rd, 1893
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a scene where a character dies in an improbable manner.
Journaling Prompt: What is the craziest accident you’ve ever had?
Art Prompt: Biting off more than you can chew
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a Darwin award-winning incident.
Photo Credit: anomalous4 on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to Kindle
As a class, gunfighters did not conform to the stereotyped image of the motion picures. Generations of Western fans have seen them portrayed as cowboys, gamblers and occasionally in the guise of a frontier scout complete with buckskins. But the cowboy image dominates. From the earliest appearance of the Western film in 1903, the dress and manner of the gunfighter has been reflected in the image of the cowboy. The huge sombrero, neckerchief, double or single gunbelt, knee high boots (worn with pants tucked in or pulled down over them), and jingling spurs, all served to create a false image of the man behind the gun. In reality, most gunfighters dressed normally according to the current fashions of the time, and would probably be missed in a crowd. Only when they openly carried pistols would they command much attention. In fact, the editor of the Kansas City, Mo. Journal on 15 November 1881 made a point of describing the ‘man-killer’ or ‘civilizer’ that today we call the gunfighter:
The gentleman who has ‘killed his man’ is by no means a rara avis … He is met daily on Main street, and is the busiest of the busy throng. He may be seen on change, and in the congregations of the most aristocratic churches. He resides on ‘Quality hill’, or perhaps on the East Side . . . This ubiquitous individual may be seen almost anywhere. He may be found behind the bar in a Main street saloon; he may be seen by an admiring audience doing the pedestal clog at a variety theatre; his special forte may be driving a cab, or he may be behind the rosewood counters of a bank … He is usually quiet in demeanor, sober … [and] … he may take a drink occasionally, but seldom gets drunk … He is quiet — fatally quiet.. . Your gentleman who has dropped his man is, therefore, no uncommon individual. . . -Joseph G. Rosa, Age of the Gunfighter: Men and Weapons on the Frontier, 1840-1900
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or poem about a gunfighter.
Journaling Prompt: Which is scarier to you and why: the type of gunfighter you see in the movies or one that blends in with ordinary people.
Art Prompt: Gunfighter
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a famous gunfighter’s life story.
Photo Credit: Cain and Todd Benson on Flickr
Send to KindleWelcome to the Writing Reader
I believe that the most important thing about writing is to HAVE FUN! You can worry about things like commas, point of view, tenses, etc., later. Right now, just start writing!
If you respond to one of the prompts on your blog, be sure to come back here and put the link in the comment section for that prompt. Share your brilliance!
The Writing Reader Facebook Group
The Writing Reader on PinterestLink to the Writing Reader
