Update 4/6/11: In need of a prompt

[spacemutineer]

I've been craving pretty desperately to dive into a new short story, but so far have come up dry for good ideas. What I do have rolling around in my head is either too complex to make into something relatively short (sub 2000 words, I would hope) or just simply not kicking me into gear at the moment.

I've been trolling shkinkmeme for days for ideas, but that's been bone dry as well. Is there anywhere else to look for quality prompts? I have found little. I've been reading, hoping that would spark something for me, but so far nothing.

In the meantime while I search for something that really strikes me, I'm trying to fiddle with some partially written bits I came up with previously. Maybe one of them will catch for me. The first is actually (somewhat ludicrously) a western of all things. There have been a couple of prompts for westerns on the meme and since I love to try new genres, I've been tooling around with it. I like it to a degree, but currently it is long on atmosphere and short on plot. The other fragment I'm playing with is about Holmes as a scientist, which is an idea I am extremely attracted to. I think I have a good understanding of where I want to go with this one and I do like it quite a bit, but it's just not flowing for me at the moment. I'll try some stream-of-consciousness brainstorming today; see if I can't jostle myself out of this writer's block.

Comments

[jcrowquill.livejournal.com]

Are you looking for canon or BBC prompt?

[jcrowquill.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... my brain is slightly fuzzed myself. I should be working on the original stuff, or anything that is NOT fanfiction. But it's so much easier. I can sit down and churn out 4,000 words of a stupid fic, but I am lucky to get out 400 of my original piece in the same time. >_<

With Holmes-fic, I haven't seen much surrounding asylums. Perhaps Sherlock has finally pushed his eccentricity a tad too far (or had it publicly misrepresented by a malicious entity of some sort) and is confined to an asylum. His task at present is to irrefutably prove his own sanity.

If you're looking for original stuff, there are a lot of interesting potential setups in the Peterloo massacre and its social implications. It's not victorian, but it's got a lot of interesting historical potential.

[slashykink.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness, I hate writer's block! I'm suffering from a dry spell myself.

I personally am a fan of Lovecraftian takes on Sherlock Holmes, or reworking a Lovecraft story to use Holmes, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head for gen fic...

If you can't find a good prompt on the recent sections of the meme, you could go back several months. From reading some of the really old posts (back from the old meme), it seems that the tone and general type of prompts shifts a bit over time.

[methylviolet10b]

Holmes' hands give him away. ;-)

It's just a thought. Good luck with the writers' block!

Ideas

[rat-chan.livejournal.com]

Holmes' first/early experience with cocaine, describing how it makes him feel, comparing the sensations to the euphoric feelings he gets pursuing a case...
(Why is a Pink Floyd song running through my head?)

Or...
After The Final Problem, Watson goes to Baker Street and looks at Holmes' violin (perhaps cradling it if you want to go angsty). Perhaps certain scars on the violin surface remind him of the man who played it or the time they spent together. Perhaps the curves of its shape recall images of the thin frame that cradled it, the hands that called music from it...

Holmes or Watson watching the other do something mundane and finding it strangely beautiful/erotic.

(I don't know where to go for prompts, other than the kinkmeme.)