(With this writing prompt, I have provided a badge. When you have completed the prompt, feel free to print out the badge and pin it to your jacket. Or maybe shrink it and turn it into a 1″ button to put on a sweater. Or maybe print it on that iron-on transfer paper and put it on a shirt. Because, good for you! You’ve done a thing someone on the internet told you to do. Good for you!)

I’ve been listening to this album by a local band called Friends & Family. It’s free to download. It features a guy singing, sometimes atonally, over samples of easy listening records. I like it.

Here’s what I want you to do: take a familiar story theme. Oh, maybe a love story. Oh, maybe a scary story. Oh, maybe a coming of age story. Oh, something.

Write a familiar kind of story. But write it in the wrong tone. Write a love story in a scary tone. Write a tragic coming of age story in a comedic tone. Write a story about an epic—and completely comic—series of coincidences, but write it in an academic tone.

Write something in the wrong tone, as if you are the sort of person who can’t make accurate judgments about appropriate tone.

And then print the badge.

Go.