During a woodland stroll, I happened to glance upwards, and my heart jumped in alarm. High above me, a small face peered down – not a squirrel or a blackbird but something utterly unexpected.

I live in the kind of area where fairy doors are added to trees, complete with miniature umbrellas and hats. It’s a fun place to take a stroll!

Imagine the different ways a character might react to this glimpse. Once their heart has stopped racing, are they more likely to smile or scowl? How can you use this response to highlight aspects of their personality, or even flashback to an incidence in their past?

Or, if you like, focus on the tiny figure in the tree. What’s their primary emotion on seeing and being seen by some large lumbering creature like us?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

On the same day that we came across farmland where we’d expected no farm, we encountered two horses behaving uncannily un-horselike. They were motionless in their field, standing there as though someone had forgotten to switch them on.

I’ve since been informed this is perfectly normal – this is them resting while their bodies get on with the exhausting business of digesting hay. But their stillness made them seem like a museum scene, and made me feel for an instant that none of it was real.

Can you use this eerie feeling to build up a scene where someone gains the awareness that their home is no longer quite what it seems? What might the clues be? How might your protagonist test their inkling? What could ensue?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

My part of town seems to be overflowing with building works currently, with scaffolding and partial constructs glinting through every view.

Rounding a corner, I glimpsed a crane apparently leading directly to a cloud, and for a dreamy moment my brain accepted that as truth.

In that instant, I thought, ‘Oh look, a walkway from here to there.’ As though that made perfect sense.

If ‘here’ is the urban centre I’ve barely stirred from for more than a year, where might ‘there’ be?

What optical mis-step or misunderstanding could you weave into a magical tale or work of art?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

During the past year, we’ve all learnt new ways to communicate, and to show our affection without infringing social distancing requirements. Facebook even introduced a new heart-hugging emoji representing ‘care; to join the ranks of ‘like’, ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’, and ‘angry’. (Still waiting for the ‘frankly confused’ option).

In the UK’s southwest, a local skywriter has been adding smiley faces to our views.

Imagine if your only option to communicate with distant loved ones was by skywriting! How might the public nature of these declarations influence what you choose to say? How might two people be implicated for their shout-out? And given how the image is altered by perspective, what confusions and misapprehensions could ensue?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.