Writing prompt #9: LETTERS TO THE FUTURE

Hi Everyone,

We’re all accustomed to reading flashbacks in every literary form. What’s happened in the past suffuses the present and forms the basis for most storytelling. Once upon a time …You’ve got to hear this …That day changed my life … Irresistible invitations all.

But what if we were to write letters to the unknown future? Letters that our narrators might address to their future selves—or to others? What would they need to say? What would they desperately want? What would incite them to write?

YOUR PROMPT: Choose a very specific time—year, day, moment—in short, a crucible in the life of your narrator(s) and have them write a richly detailed letter to the future. Flash forward this lifeline—and allow it to inform the present.

For epistolary inspiration, please consider Carolina de Robertis’s luminous anthology, Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times. (For my letter, I wrote to a female descendant two hundred years into the future.)

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525435136

As always, please feel free to post questions, comments, and suggestions on this or any other prompt!

Abrazos,

Cristina