Hopefilled Futures Writing Prompt
A futurism prompt looking for hope beyond the terrors of the present
Within my job, an aspect of my work is to deliver exercises or activities that help to transform the future(s) of community by future-back thinking and/or futurism perspectives. It’s the same framing that we’ve received from writers like Octavia E. Butler, adrienne maree brown, Prentis Hemphill, and others who have visioned a future based upon the trajectory of current trends in society—seeing a signal or a drive of change that could be a pathway to a particular future.
What I have encountered recently is people who believe visioning the future is irresponsible—some believe it’s just daydreaming (which like, daydreaming and resting and imagination work is so important, but they’re implying that it’s just childish) or all we can do right now is live in the now because of the cause we are fighting and enduring. All that to say is: the now is important, however, if we do not play a role in visioning new futures and shaping them, then we’ll always be trapped in someone else’s story, or someone else’s vision of how the world should. Instead, as writers and storytellers and artists, we have an opportunity to reshape the world as it could be.
What was significant from Octavia Butler was that visioning the future and seeding hope for overcoming the existing barriers was important. If things get worse, and if in the now, that’s all you can see, then it’s an opportunity to vision how the bad thing will snap, will collapse, will burn away and in its ashes, something new and something filled with hope arises. And that’s the heart of this futurism writing prompt:
1) List up to 10 dreaded truths that exist or that we are stumbling towards now. (Set a time limit, no more than 5 minutes.)
2) Take a breath, shake off some of the dread that may have surfaced, walk away from where you where, even scream if needed (and if it doesn’t cause too large of an alarm).
3) When you return to your list, you get a chance to implode one of these dreads, by crafting a hopeful future after said dread is neutralized, destroyed, abolished, obliterated, whatever happens to it. Your focus on your writing prompt should not just be its destruction, but in 5-20 years, what hope emerges out of the wake of the deconstruction of this dread? What does reality become with hope seeded within it?
What current dread would you obliterate? And what hopefilled future comes out of its ashes?
(After writing this, the algorithm naturally elevated this video on IG: reinforces and expanding upon this concept.)
