Winter on the Distant Planet
Write about a planet where the seasons last for decades and its inhabitants have adapted in unique ways. Your protagonist arrives from Earth right as the longest winter recorded is about to begin. Explore how they survive, the relationships they form, and the secrets the ice-bound landscape conceals.
Suggested length: A short story: 1,500 to 5,000 words, or flash fiction under 1,000
Start the clock
Pick a sprint, press start and keep going until it stops. Momentum beats polish on a first draft.
Make it yours
Three ways to take this prompt somewhere nobody else will.
- Choose one ordinary object and show how this world changed it.
- Start in the middle of the strangest moment, and explain nothing for a page.
- Write it as a document from the world: a letter, a field report, a warning sign.
Writing science fiction
Change one thing about the world. Follow it all the way.
Science fiction asks what happens to people when science, technology or contact with something new changes the rules. The spaceships are optional; the question is the point. The best of it says as much about today as it does about the future.
What readers expect
- An idea that drives the plot
- Technology or science with consequences
- Futures, other worlds or alternate presents
- Big questions about being human
A tip before you start
Show how your big change reshapes ordinary life: what people eat, fear and joke about. Scenery alone isn't world-building.
More Space Exploration prompts
- The AI and the Living PlanetWrite from the perspective of an AI tasked with preparing an uninhabitable planet for the arrival of human colonists. As the AI begins to develop…
- The Captain's Last FuelWrite about a first-generation starship captain grappling with the decision to either use the remaining fuel to explore a potentially habitable…
- Coffee at the Edge of SpaceIn a future where space travel is as common as taking a bus, your main character operates a quaint interstellar coffee shop. One day, an enigmatic…
- The Hidden Star MapIn a universe where space travel is accessible but still hazardous, your character, a young, ambitious cartographer, discovers a hidden coordinate in…
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