I need help with ideas.

[subtletylost]

My friend gave me this prompt because I told her I was bored, but now I don't know what to do with it and it's driving me nuts.

This is the prompt: The summer the world had purple tans.

I know I could make something really cool and interesting out of it but for some reason I can't think of anything.

What kind of things does this draw to your minds?

 

[alchemist]

The photosensitivity reaction of people taking the antipsychotic medication, chlorpromazine.



What? You asked...

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

My friend gave me this prompt because I told her I was bored, but now I don't know what to do with it and it's driving me nuts.

This is the prompt: The summer the world had purple tans.

I know I could make something really cool and interesting out of it but for some reason I can't think of anything.

What kind of things does this draw to your minds?

My 75 challenge entry a couple months ago when the theme was "color."


Wizards turned the Sun and Earth heliotrope. But really, it sounds like something that could start up a few interesting ideas.

 

[Fairytale Jane]

An advanced form of cancer that leads to molting and people preying on the flesh of normal people in an attempt to regain their old skin.

Can be told from an old timer's perspective in an attempt to warn his/her grandchildren the dangers of tanning.

Just a nice pile of rofl

 

[subtletylost]

I have been thinking all night and I still can't come up with an idea of my own, however. feel free to keep posting your ideas, who knows I make 'borrow' one or more of them.

(After a night of thinking, all I've come up with is some characters. Twins, Zelda and Peach, who run a bakery called The Castle and their little brother Mario; Zelda and Peach have three cats (A momma and two kittens) named Moonshine, Loki and Korra; their parents have a dog named Bowser. Wow, sooo helpful toward coming up with a scifi-fantasy story for this prompt.)

 

[Boneman]

What was the song about the 'purple people eaters'...? one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater... by Sheb Woolley...

Either: a change in the sun which signals there's only a year or two before it goes out. Or, inbreeeding with too many aliens? Or: the next step in evolution - a chromosome has lain hidden for milennia and it suddenly and universally erupts, signaling some forboding change that's a-coming? Some food industry's sharp practices are exposed in a shock twist?

 

[paranoid marvin]

Reminds me of the advert for Sunblock 5000 fromRobocop 2 (its on Youtube)

 

[Interversus]

How about;

A joke tanning product that turns the wearers purple instead of tan, takes off so well that it becomes a fashion craze.

The plot needs a twist now, so maybe something like;

Aliens (who happen to be purple also) chose that moment to invade and think there are two species of humans and decide to favor the purples (well they will have nicer bodies in general being young beachy sun worshipers).

Being shallow types, the purples team up with the aliens against the rest of humanity.

there are lots of race angles and potential for comedy, a very tongue in cheek story.

Not sure I could pull it off, but maybe you could?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

A couple of kids are out on a fishing adventure when they find a plant that makes their skin purple - maybe they find a new world on the way.

 

[subtletylost]

These are all really good ideas, I am now kicking my self for never having written this story.

 

[Velocius quam lucem]

Implicit in the statement is a reasonably serious issue.
"The summer the world had ..." (anything) implies that it's summer in both hemispheres. Maybe that could be a jumping off point for you. Sorry, I'm a bit of a hard scientist.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Implicit in the statement is a reasonably serious issue.
"The summer the world had ..." (anything) implies that it's summer in both hemispheres. Maybe that could be a jumping off point for you. Sorry, I'm a bit of a hard scientist.

Very good point. This problem can be avoided if we read the sentence as a metaphor.

(Samuel R. Delany and others have made the point that SF readers will tend to read a sentence literally, while non-SF readers will tend to read it metaphorically. For example, "Her world exploded" is an emotional reaction to a non-SF reader; it's a planet being destroyed to an SF reader.)

Anyway, "The summer the world had purple tans," with a little fooling around, could be a sort of Bradburyian metaphor. Something like "That summer all the world had wings" could be such a metaphor for a happy childhood memory. "Purple tans" is pretty difficult to treat in this way, but you could come up with something. Perhaps it's a memory of a particularly intense, blazing hot summer, spent at a seaside resort, where everybody is so deeply tanned that they are almost "purple" in the mind of the protagonist.

 

[stephen.samuels]

What about some sort of (pauses for thought) - it being about a single POV, a mystery, a conspiracy, mind altering drugs. Because he is important and must be kept from doing something that summer

 

[idiot_prince]

My friend gave me this prompt because I told her I was bored, but now I don't know what to do with it and it's driving me nuts.

This is the prompt: The summer the world had purple tans.

I know I could make something really cool and interesting out of it but for some reason I can't think of anything.

What kind of things does this draw to your minds?

brings to mind of radiation posinging,

 

[Dozmonic]

To me it sounds like the blackcurrants have had enough of being squished into ribena and have decided to fight back.

 

[Cathy M.]

Sunscreen gone wrong.

 

[BetaWolf]

Sounds like someone's been putting retroviruses in the public pools again!

 

[Dream Walker]

When I used to walk downtown the social aid nurses would be out amount the homeless giving them medical care. It struck me that they were all sunburnt a deep mauvey purple.
So perhaps a post apocalyptic scenario where everyone is homeless, summer is the only season and there is no tech to alleviate common maladies such as sunburn?

 

[crow.]

We tan brown because of melanin. Just make melanin purple and you're good.

But that's boring.

You're having trouble because the prompt is "write a story that matters but add this feature."

It's actually a pretty vague prompt.

The only way the world would tan purple is if something got into the water supply--all of it--which is 100% implausible.

So, it has to be that the narrator's eyes changed.