May 27, 2013 / Topic Ideas

Creative Writing Challenge: Metamorphosis

For some of us, blogging is personal. Others are trying to educate or entertain; many more are hybrids. Yet we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges help you to push your writing boundaries, show off your blogging chops, and, hopefully, spark more post ideas.

To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge or leave a link to it in the comments. (It would also be great if you could link to this post to encourage people to take part – the more the merrier!)  Your post should be specifically written in response to this challenge. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorite posts on Freshly Pressed on Friday.

You can’t move for were-creatures these days. If it’s not werewolves falling in love with vampires, it’s were-rabbits, erm, doing what were-rabbits do (terrifying carrots by the full moon, perhaps?). But fantastic animal metamorphoses are as old as the hills, at least in the world of fiction, so who are we to be dissuaded by the vicissitudes of popular fiction trends when delivering creative writing prompts? Come, take a turn for the worst.

werepig

Image based on Pig With Boots by Ethan Bloch, CC-BY-2.0.

Those naughty biochemists have been busy again, and have accidentally released a powerful mutative toxin into the water supply by mistake. Result? People left, right, and center are transforming into the animals they most resemble (in character, or looks) by the light of the full moon. Tell us the tale of a human-animal transformation.

Enough Already?

If that’s fed the muse enough to get them to work, go, make with the genetic mutation goodness. If not, read on for more ideas.

A Toad By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet

Think about who the transformation is happening to, and what it says about them. For instance:

  • Is everyone turning into dead-eyed herd animals? Is this perhaps a satire on television habits? Or groupthink?
  • Has a beautiful celebrity with an ugly personality transformed into a more fitting animal version of their true selves?
  • Have your wildest animal-turning dreams come true? Or nightmares?
  • Has not fitting in with the people in your school/office/town suddenly been greatly underlined by the fact that they look like lizards and you don’t?
  • Have you always longed to take flight and move far, far away? Perhaps now you can.
  • Has someone been ignoring their true feelings for so long that they’ve now taken irrepressible animal form?
  • Or maybe it’s just that their feelings or circumstances are so strong that they’ve taken the form of some representative beastie?
  • What if we turned this on its head, and a favorite (or feared) animal or pet, like your dear friend Mr. Schnoocums the kitty-cat, turned into a human by the light of the moon?

You decide.

The history of narratives about human-animal metamorphoses is a rich one, from folk tales and myths to schlock horror films and Kafka stories. Steal freely, or mash up old ideas to give them a new lease of life. But wait, the clouds are shifting, the full moon comes into view, the transformation is… URGH… <Eldritch scream>.

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  10. Interesting!
    Creatures of all sorts are coming to mind. Not all of them are horror you know?
    A calm peaceful, white, emotionless bird with the speed of light and the strength of …
    Arghh! Am I the one turning into a creature?
    I hope not. I’ll just smile at your creativity on this challenge. I’m sure it’s so much fun already! 🙂

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  11. Just finished my first ever entry into this thing! Mega stoked, take a second to check it out and tell me what you think: hdmof.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/jacob-and-the-butterfly-dp-challenge

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  22. I am pushing the limit on this challenge. As I sat and thought about metamorphosis and utter change I couldn’t help but meditate on my current changes. I am a teenage-mutant-menopausal-boarding-chick: http://mycyberhouserules.com/2013/05/28/with-less-than-an-hour-to-live-what-happens/ It’s a true story, the truest of them all.

    p.s. thankyouthankyouthankyou I now have a niche as a blogger! I am of the hybrid bloggers. In a world of niched bloggers, I am the mini-wheat of them all. Where is my limo?

    HYBRIDS RULE!

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  24. Being nearly as old as the hills myself, and after all these years of constant reading, I’ve seen maybe a handful of original ideas (Rock-biter being one). And, hopelessly, unable to give up reading, I find myself wading through tons of mediocre, mundane and generally weak variations of the same old beat-the-dead-metamorphosed-horse. If someone were to ask me what a good challenge for either an aspiring or especially an experienced writer might be, I’d offer up the idea of creating a new character. For example: One you can cheer for and worry about, one who does not find eating flesh a tasty pastime. No, I don’t have a clue as to who or what it may be, but I’m the reader wishing for original, refreshing reading…I am currently hanging from the thread of the proverbial fiction here, about to fall into the never ending abyss of scientific literature…Somebody save me!..:)

    Grievously yours,
    Jack Henry Kraven

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  27. I went with a science-fiction bit and thought about what a normal week work would be like if your colleagues were were-animals.

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