Written by June 9th, 2014

Writing Prompt: Groundhog Hour

Groundhog Day is a movie about a TV weatherman played by Bill Murray. His character relives the same day over and over again for almost the entirety of the movie. Only he knows that he is reliving the day over and over again; everyone else around him resets, and they do not know they are stuck in a time loop.

Now, this concept of time loops has been used a lot in books, in TV shows, and in movies. It is common to encounter this kind of plot, and at this point most of these books, episodes, and movies veer into the cliche. Still, some authors seem to be able to find new and interesting ways to play with this concept.

Just last year Kate Atikenson published the book Life after Life about a person doomed to die and live again. No matter what hapened, the main character would come back and experience the same life, the same time period, the same family, but only she would retain any memories of past lives and where choices she made in the past took her. It is a great read.

Your prompt today is to take the concept of looped time and play with it. You get to choose the amount of time, be it a minute, hour, a day, or a year. You get to choose all the elements of the story. Just start with a time loop and go from there.

Have fun!

 

We Send You Publishers Seeking Submissions.

Sign up for our free e-magazine and we will send you reviews of publishers seeking short stories, poetry, essays, and books.

Subscribe now and we'll send you a free copy of our book Submit, Publish, Repeat

Primera:  Seeking Manuscript Submissions

Primera: Seeking Manuscript Submissions

Primera is a digital-first imprint of Oliver Heber Books. Oliver Herber Books was founded by the author Tanya Anne Crosby, and you can learn more about the publisher as a whole here. They are based in Michigan. In 2023 they started Primera, which is open to agented and direct submissions from authors. It was hard…

Search Press

Search Press

Search Press’s tagline is “the world’s finest art and craft books”. They specialize in “practical, reference and inspirational art and craft books for beginners through to professional artists and crafters”. Everything they publish is highly illustrated, They only focus on publishing nonfiction work that fits into these categories. You can get a feel for what…

Brick Cave Media

Brick Cave Media

They are a small Science Fiction and Fantasy focused press based out of Arizona. It was founded by Bob Nelson and J.A. Giunta. You can read their origin story here, but it essentially started out as a self-publishing operation, initially not even focused on books. In 2010 they published their first book. They have published…

53 Magazines Seeking Genre Fiction

53 Magazines Seeking Genre Fiction

Most literary journals are interested in literary work, by which they mean, not genre work (although this is changing a little). The definition of genre is a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter. However, in the context of writing, genre can refer to…