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I found this door knocker in a random picture hunt at SXC.HU, and I thought it made a very interesting picture for a story prompt.

What door might this be? Who lives here? Or what? What if the knocker could come alive? Would it ask a riddle to open the door? What if you got the riddle wrong?

What would happen if someone knocked on that door? Would it open into a magical home? A house of horrors? Another dimension?

Tonight is the winter solstice, dark will now slowly give way to light. That is going to be our prompt. Darkness to light.

Maybe create a character that starts out dark and slowly redeems themselves until they are the hero of the story?

Show what would happen to a character that has spent a long time in darkness and stumbles out into the light.

How would it change a character to dye their dark hair a light color?

What does the kid see under the bed when they shine their new flashlight into the darkness?

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. Write something that has to do with the winter solstice or with its equivalent on your world if you have your own writing world.

Do the people of your world have any special observances of the winter solstice? Does it have a special name that is derived from some kind of legend? Is it merely another ordinary day to the people of your world? Perhaps it is a day when all but the priesthood hide indoors while the priests spend the night walking the streets to chase away the demons and chant in the new year?

How does your lead character feel about the winter solstice? Is it of any significance to them? What about the antagonist of your story? Why would it have some significance for either one of them?

The Solstice is nearly upon us, the longest night of the year. That might not seem like much unless you live way up in the Northern Hemisphere like I do, but trust me – getting a bit more daylight each day is a big event when you have less than five and a half hours of daylight a day.

Not too far north of us the sun is not even rising at this time of year. Barrow, Alaska has not even seen the sun since mid November, and they won’t see it again until around January 20th. Right now there is just kind of a twilight effect in Barrow that lasts about three hours. Can you say vampire heaven?

Take the basic idea of the longest night of the year and see what the muses come up with. Mine were exceptionally prolific on the subject:

A night when vampires come out for a once a year feeding frenzy before they go back to hibernation for another elven months. Muses here whisper that maybe that is what Dec 21, 2012 is all about… the night that has the longest night in hundreds of years and the vampires will wake to feed as they did in the middle ages.

A primitive tribe that has slowly migrated to a far northern region. They have huddled together for warmth and watched the sky as it got darker and darker for over a month. With no understanding that they have traveled to the planet’s northern hemisphere, and with the sun hidden day after day, how would they react to the thought that they will soon have no light at all on their world?

Is the land on the world your hero has traveled to all locked in the northern hemisphere in one giant continent that never sees the sun? How would the people of such a world have evolved? Would they have ships that travel to see the sun, maybe scientific vessels that explore the daylight side of the world? Perhaps there is a religion centered around priests that take pilgrimages out on boats to be with the great God on the other side of the planet? What would happen if one of those priests was to return? What  might he have to tell of his adventures on the sunlit side of the planet?

Today, well, last night since as of my writing this it is technically Saturday, I was down at the local store when I realized I had lost my gloves. Oh no! It is a very nice hat, scarf, glove set that me and mom had for years and years. I had the hat, and the scarf, but I had not seen the gloves since I got into the car with them at the house.

I called the store, no luck, no one had turned the gloves in yet, but I don’t expect them to. This is a nicer set of ladies gloves from far enough back that they actually keep the hands warm. I’m sure that if they fell out of the car when I got out of it, or fell out of the cart somewhere in the store, that whoever found them turned them into a Christmas present. ::sigh:: I want my gloves.

Anyway, this brings me to today’s writing prompt, brought to you by my lost gloves and the favorite children’s rhyme The Three Little Kittens. Write something about lost gloves or mittens.

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