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.

For many people, the days between Christmas and New Year are a kind of in-between, limbo-time. We’ve left behind the glitter of the festive season, but have yet to embark on the adventures that 2023 promises.

Could this be an opportunity to halt, take stock and plan how to move forwards with whatever hopes you hold for the future? Picture it as a bridge spanning two countries, like this glorious 18th-century iron and steel confection stretching over the River Wye to unite Chepstow in Monmouthshire, Wales and Tutshill in Gloucestershire, England.

Can you give a fictional character a dilemma that they must attempt to solve by crossing a bridge like this one?

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.

Strolling through a local park one frosty afternoon, a flash of white caught my eye. An envelope tucked into the crook of this shrub entreated: ‘If you find me, open me.’

How could I resist? Of course, I picked up the envelope, opened it up and found inside…

Well, that’s for you to imagine! What was in it? I can tell you this much, it was more than a Christmas card.

Use this as the prompt for a festive short story.

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 once went on an inspiration-gathering walk with the poet Holly Corfield Carr and she asked me to photograph or note down any objects I saw that were circular. It was a shape-specific scavenger hunt! We were near the harbour, so I ended up making notes of mooring bollards, lengths of rope and even coconuts. Then we turned these images into a collaborative piece of writing about time as a circular object, bringing us back to ourselves.

Recently, in a similar area, I spotted the above and couldn’t resist snapping a photo. To me it looks like a winter moon within a circle of hazy cloud.

This week I invite you to take a stroll. Before you set out, choose a particular shape to look out for – circles, squares, triangles… See what creative symbolism you can draw from the objects that make your list, or what stories these disparate items with only their shape in common can inspire.

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.

This tiny figure clings to a fence outside a home. Are they on their way somewhere or escaping from something?

The intensity in their expression and that lifted hand suggests they have an important message to deliver, so maybe this is the miniature figure equivalent of Speakers’ Corner in London.

Who are their audience? What do they want to say? What will it take for one of the big figures (i.e., in this scenario, us) to listen and take action?

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 love how most families have their own in-jokes that tap directly to happy or weird and personal memories. In my family, one of these was my dad’s wildlife photos. Back in the days before digital cameras and the option to crop in, he’d come back from our holidays (mostly to South Wales and Devon) with a film full of anticipation.

Once the pictures were developed we’d spend ages trying to spot what he’d actually been photographing – in the midst of a clump of leaves there’d be a distant bird no one could hope to identify.

Sometimes we’d simply make it up: “Ah, I see you’ve snapped the rare lesser-spotted leaf mimicker! Extraordinary.”

This photo I took in September of a far-off cormorant reminds me of that and makes me smile.

What family quirks could you turn into a short story?

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 adore this bandstand in Buxton’s beautiful Pavilion Gardens. It’s the perfect place for a romantic liaison, to shelter from rain or simply enjoy the views. What promises have been made and possibly broken under its ornate domed roof?

Despite this one being installed in 1997, bandstands are such a gorgeously vintage idea that this one looks to me like a time travel device. Could stepping into it whizz your characters through aeons and eras, and deposit them in a time when sauropods or other herbivorous dinosaurs graze instead of Canadian geese?

Alternatively, imagine the person who warranted this bandstand as a memorial. It’s official name is the  Don Redfern Memorial Bandstand and Google tells me was a conductor, player and promoter of brass bands.

What kind of memorial would be chosen for you?

What story could this thread lead you towards?

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.

Whose paw is this, reaching through a gap in the fence between two neighbours’ gardens? The fur may look soft, but no doubt the claws are sharp!

Could it be a domestic cat, or something altogether wilder? Might it be something stranger  – a hybrid creature, or even a mixed up human with animal forelegs and feet instead of arms and hands?

Does the creature have a tail, wings, a nose that breathes fire? Is it a metaphor for things not being what they seem at first glance? Can you turn this into a work of satire or magic realism that confounds your readers’ expectations?

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.

This graffiti-covered slide is the last plaything standing in a local playground. The sight of it shoots Madonna lyrics into my head (This Used to be My Playground rather than Like a Virgin…) and makes me view this as a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or, at the very least, post-active humans.

I’m picturing a world where nature thrives without kids to play tag among trees and stay inside absorbed by virtual reality screens instead.

But what if one child found this abandoned slide and discovered the joy of that whooosh as they hurtle down its metal chute? If one child discovered the fun of this, could others be drawn by their giggles and cheers?

Or might you interpret this #WritingPrompt in an entirely different way?

If you write or create something inspired by water, please send an email to judydarley (at) icloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I might publish it on SkyLightRain.com.