We’ve had such heavy deluges this winter that normally tranquil streams and weirs have grown uncharacteristically ferocious. The one show here flows beneath Pulteney Bridge in Bath and looks like it might just sweep all the bridge-top shops and cafes away.

The ridges are where gulls, ducks and even pigeons like to perch, but now those spots may be to tumultuous for fish, let alone birds.

Can you use an extreme weather event or natural disaster to thread drama through a flash fiction tale or other creative work?

Alternatively, pick one of the figures shown. What struggles will a calamitous storm bring for them?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

I’m always intrigued when I see a lost glove clinging to a shrub or balanced on fence. Is someone walking around with one warm hand, and one cold, wondering where their lost knitwear fell? Did a rodent or robin carry it off to turn into a cosy bed? Did someone take the promise to lend a hand a tad too literally?

Who lost this glove, and how? What happened next?

Is there some magical myth here in the making? Take these seeds and turn them into a story fit for this chilly season.

On 12th December 2019 my winter’s fairytale ‘Click Clack Twitch‘ appeared as part of Storgy Magazine‘s flash fiction advent calendar.

You can read ‘Click Clack Twitch’ here. The story also appears in my 2022 short fiction collection from Reflex Press, The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain.

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

With the year stretched before us like a rather intoxicating promise of possibilities, I find myself picturing my world as a doorway that could lead just about anywhere.

Of course, not all doorways are built the same way – some look more like windows, while others could seem like trapdoors into tunnels, onto bridges or the spaces between stars. Some lead to new jobs, new activities or simply lead us home.

Some may even feel less like ways through than a barrier – consider ha-has (dug-down ditches that stop livestock scattering or fires spreading). Then there are the ones that can serve as both a barrier and a means of escape, like drawbridges and, well, any door in a house. What about cat-flaps, drainpipes and stiles? They’re all potential ways through and over.

I’m told the one at the top of this post, photographed in Derbyshire, is a lunky hole, a feature of dry stone walls meant to let water or wildlife through.

Can you use this imagery as a springboard into a work of fiction where anything is possible?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.