The image below is a “composite image” collected by Nasa’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper, which is part of their Juno mission to Jupiter. There is an interesting article here if you’d like to know more about it.
When I saw this, I immediately thought this storm (or storms?) would make for a nice writing prompt. Cosmic Horror is the first thing that comes to mind for me, but I’m sure there are a lots of other possibilities.*
One idea for writing prompts I’ve been seeing a lot of lately (again, on Twitter mainly) is a six-word story prompt or some other number of words. Besides being fairly easy, I find such a prompt serves as a nice vehicle to explore possible story ideas or sketch out a broad theme. If I can’t think of something pithy that encapsulates a story with a beginning and end then perhaps something leading into a theme. This type of prompt could also serve as a entry point into a poem, either using the technique in a similar way as brainstorming for a story or perhaps coming up with a line that inspires a larger poem.
I could see this image-as-a-prompt working in other mediums, such as painting or drawing, music, or even making a quilt … pretty much anything.
Can you think of a six word story using the above image as an inspiration? If so, drop it in the comments.
* I originally saw this on Twitter, courtesy of Science Fiction writer Bert-Oliver Boehmer (@BOliverBoehmer).
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