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PROMPT: The countdown clock for Christmas is ticking. Santa’s elves begin working their magic on the assembly lines, but the line comes to a screeching halt when rumors leak that one elf is going to get let go that day.
GOAL: 750 words or fewer.
SOURCE: Writers Digest Writing Prompts

Rough Draft – no revision

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Over the sound of low voices and hammering, the even sound of the giant clock’s hands was a constant reminder that time continued to move, with slow determination, toward the biggest day of the year. Christmas Eve was only one more day away and the North Pole workshop was at its busiest. Magic aided manual labor as the elves worked to finish the toys that would go to all of the good little boys and girls of the world.

Dolls were sewn, dressed and given curly locks on one long series of tables. Sticks received hobby horse heads and wheels on another table. Elves on one end of the room built airplanes that were flown on test flights to the other end of the room where they were painted and placed into boxes.

It was a chaotic mass of assembly lines creating sleds and wagons, tops and jump ropes. Toy soldiers lined up beside dancing dolls. Teddy Bears leaned against Jack In the Box toys. Scissors snipped bows to perfect dove tail points, pens scritched out names taken from Santa’s ‘Good little Girls and Boys’ lists.

And then the whisper was heard.

“One elf is going to get let go today.”

The room fell to silence, the attention of all on the two elves that stood at the top of the stair. Time were tough, even far to the north, but none had ever thought such troubles would ever reach Santa’s workshop. Letters from little boys and girls asked Santa for a job for their mommy or daddy, it was well known that so many were unemployed in the real world. But there, at Santa’s workshop? How could any elf be let go when there was so much work to be done for all of the good little boys and girls of the world?

The floor of the workshop was silent. And then a whisper could be heard, and more whispers and more. How could it be? So near Christmas Eve? How could one of their own be let go? The elves worked hard, toy making was all that they knew. How could any one of them be without a job? Why?

Santa needed to be asked about this. The elves would strike before they let one of their family go. They had made toys, one generation after another, for hundreds of years. It simply was not fair for Santa to let one of them go. They were not even paid!

The whispers and angry murmurs were soon overheard in Santa’s office and the not-too jolly old elf came out to see what the commotion was about. Why had the work stopped? It was Christmas eve!

Rather than work the elves all turned, scowls and fists and angry scorn. They moved as a mass, a mob filled with elves, shouting and yelling each one wanted heard. Santa was pushed back, his hand out in front, surprised at the anger from such happy elves.

“Oh no,” he laughed, unable to stand up, collapsed in a chair he fought for breath. “I’m not firing an elf this night, there are so many children, I need some help. One of you will get to go with me on the sleigh tonight!”

Seat your protagonist, or one of their friends, in front of the computer. Now… what would happen if they somehow caught a computer virus?

We all see the warnings every day about your computer catching a virus, what would happen if it caught something that could be passed to a human?

This is not a easy prompt, so I’ll give you a few ideas on how that might work: Maybe it is a new kind of interactive computer for gamers that is supposed to release scent sensations, but something bad got into the scent diffuser unit. Perhaps the computer monitor went into rapid flickers that planted a hypnotic suggestion in the mind of the person viewing it. Maybe it is some kind of magical disease in a techno magic world.

Blame today’s prompt on too much listening to the radio news. Take your favorite protagonist and put them somewhere they can hear or see the news.

Maybe they are stuck in traffic listening to the radio, perhaps they are listening to a radio at work, maybe they are in a store and the news is playing on a display television, or they are home, or visiting a friend, maybe they just picket up the morning newspaper and unfolded it to see what the day’s headline is. Or go technological even and have them check the news online.

Whatever method they go about it, they are having a relatively normal boring day when they overhear a news report – about them.

What might the news have to say about your protagonist? Did they expect it to be on? Were they implicated in a crime, did they commit the crime? Have they been reported missing, or dead? Were they in the background on a news piece and are in witness protection? Did they grow the biggest cabbage at the local state fair?

Don’t pick what you want, let your protagonist just casually realize the news piece is about them, and see what they have to say about why they are on the evening news.

Ever watch a scary movie and want to scream at the idiot that hears a sound in the dark creepy basement so has to go down, with a faulty flashlight, to see what made the sound?

Well, here is your chance to explain just why an otherwise sane non-suicidal character might do such a thing when their buddies have been dropping like flies at the Raid factory.

Write out a scene where your protagonist goes into the basement to investigate a sound. Your story must have:

* a faulty flashlight that won’t stay lit
* characters that have disappeared over the past few hours/days
* creaky step on the basement stair
* a logical reason the protagonist went into the basement

I’m back, and recent experience brings you today’s writing prompt.

Family Drama
Your protagonist is sitting at home, average day, life is at a nice peaceful calm for the moment and everything seems to actually be going okay when one of their siblings shows up for a visit. It seems to be uneventful, but as the guest is leaving something happens that causes intense family drama… what happens and how does it change things for your protagonist?