Continuing a trend from last week and the week before, here’s another prompt that leads you into plot via your main character’s emotion.
Rage Wallpaper by Thoth God of Knowledge, on Flickr
The Prompt
Write A Story That Features Anger
Tips
You can start your story with an angry outburst then spend the rest of it unpacking what prompted the rage, or exploring the consequences of one person’s rage for all the characters around them.
You can build up to a big, angry finish — showing your character giving in to something they’ve been fighting all the way through the story.
Think about how you have experienced anger in your own life — both in yourself and observing it in others.
Try to get inside the head of someone who has a very different ‘anger vector’ than yourself. (If you’re a ‘push me for weeks until I explode’ person, think about writing a character who is a ‘rage and forget it’ sort).
Remember there is such a thing as righteous anger.
To avoid the story becoming too intense, use the concept of the opposite emotion to show that your character(s) is/are capable of other emotions too. (What is the opposite of anger? Depends on the type of anger, doesn’t it? It might be charm, or humor, or kindness, or gentleness.
How can you tell a story that includes one character containing two opposing attributes. Think about what a character like that wants and go from there).
What kind of language will you use? Animal metaphors? Short, choppy sentences? Dialogue? How will you avoid clichés?
Do you ever struggle with motivation? Lord knows, I do. [1. Let’s face facts: I’m the kind of person who needed to launch an annual month-long, world-wide challenge to get me back to writing short stories!]
It’s October. The mornings are dark. The novelty of the kids being back at school has turned into the grind of early breakfasts and fights over homework. I’m having trouble writing new words, or sticking to a healthy eating plan. Frankly, even the breakfast dishes are looking like a bit like Mount Everest right now…and I feel just as likely to conquer either.
(OK, this is the strangest opening I’ve ever written to a pep talk. Let’s hope things pick up from here, eh?)
How To Move Forward?
So: bad week.
But this morning I got an email that changed my perspective.
A few years ago, a friend sent me a $25 gift certificate for Kiva.org. (Bear with me.)
If you don’t know: Kiva is a micro-lending program that works with people all over the world, to help fund their businesses and entrepreneurial ideas. You choose and person and project and contribute towards their goal. They pay you back gradually.
This morning I got an email about my two most recent loans. Chin, in Cambodia, is a 61 year old mother of five. She’s using her loan to build a latrine for her family because her house has none [2. If that’s not enough to make me stop and count my blessings, I really AM a lost cause!]. Her first repayment came in this morning.
Do you see what I got?
$1.04
All she paid to me was a measly $1.04.
But she’ll keep paying my $1.04 regularly until she has paid off the entire $25 that was my portion of the loan.
Her total loan amount is $750. That must seem like a Mount Everest of a number (or at least Phnom Aural). But she’s paying just under $32 every month for 26 months to pay all her funders. By paying that small amount ($1.04 of which comes to me) she will pay off all her debts. Dollar by dollar, she’ll get there.
Are You Paying Your Creative Debts?
Think of all the ways we borrow from our creative lives. We put off writing to do laundry, to do our day jobs, to be nice to our family and friends, to give to charity, to do anything but invest in our art.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth coming back to the desk if we can’t give ourselves a big payday. It doesn’t seem worth it when we’re only adding a couple of hundred words at a time, or writing our Morning Pages.
But if we just follow Chin’s example and keep chipping away, day after day, month after month, we will achieve the impossible. Chin will pay off her $750 loan. We will create a life that includes our art. We may even create some art that touches other people.
What could you do today if you didn’t have to finish $750’s worth of writing all at once?
What if you only had to write $1.04’s worth of it?
Could you manage that much?
And could you come back and write $1.04’s worth tomorrow? And the day after that? And do the same next week?
Even on your worst day you could manage that, couldn’t you?
Incidentally, my loans? Look at the default & delinquency rates:
Women living hard lives in Peru, Cambodia, Mexico and US have all committed to investing in bettering their lives. And they have not quit. They have never even shown up late.
Take a tiny bite out of your creative debt today
Write a Drabble (100 word story)
Write a haiku
Read a short story (check out the Tuesday Reading Room series for some suggestions)
Sketch out the ending to a story you’ve left hanging
Write a sensuous description of something in the world of one of your unfinished stories (how does it smell, taste, feel, make your character feel?)
Write three pages of stream-of-consciousness blah-blah, to warm up your writing muscles (rip up the pages when you’re finished)
Take the plunge and submit that finished story to a contest or publication (who cares if it doesn’t win? All judgement is subjective, but you gain something valuable simply by putting it out there!)
Let me know what you did — or plan to do — in the comments. Heaven knows I’ll need the inspiration next time I hit a slump!
This email is an example of how to NOT get a guest post at StoryADay. And I’ll tell you why.
Here’s what I received:
——
Message Body:
Hello!
I was stumbling upon the internet when I found your blog and after looking into few posts that you have published recently I can say that the quality of content is very powerful.
I am a blogger who writes on similar topics. I have some content which you’ll be interested in. Currently I can offer you the article with infographics named: XXXX XXXX XXXX. I would like to publish on your blog as a guest contributor, mainly because you have wider audience which might be interested in similar subject.
Please let me know if it is possible for you and I will send you my piece for review purposes.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
——
Here are the things that got it sent to my spam folder.
There is no greeting. It’s not hard to find my name on this site. Use it.
“stumbling upon the internet” and “quality of content is very powerful” sound like English-as-a-second-language and, in particular English-spammers-use.
“I am a blogger who writes on similar topics” – still very vague and spammy.
“I can offer you the article with infographics named XXX” — doesn’t tell me what the article will do, teach my people or whether the infographic is something you made yourself or something you’ve ripped off from other people. Doesn’t tell me how long it is or give me any sense of your writing style.
If an article has quotations, I want to know that you’ve read the original source yourself and chosen the quotes as I do with my Tumblr feed (with the exception of my outpouring of quotes the day that Maya Angelou died and I was pulling quotes that other people had posted. Even then I searched for more than one instance of any quote to sort-of-verify it was legit.)
“I would like to publish on your blog as a guest contributor, mainly because you have wider audience which might be interested in similar subject.” You want to post here because I have spent over a decade building up an audience and you want those eyeballs? No. Tell me what my readers will get from your post, not what you’ll get.
There is no signature. Sign your name.
There is no link to anywhere I can see your previous work, or your own blog.
Do not do as the “person” above did. Send me good pitches for great guest articles and I’ll be happy to share my blog’s eyeballs with you. Send me crappy pitches and I won’t reply, and you’ll end up in the spam folder. Sorry.
Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy
Continuing on from last week’s prompt about a character experiencing an emotion, this week we’re focusing on Joy.
joy! by atomicity, on Flickr
The Prompt
Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy
Tips
How to define ‘joy’? I’m going with ‘a momentary experience of intense happiness’, though CS Lewis famously mixed that feeling of happiness with one of ‘longing’ in his definition of joy.
The main character does not have to be the character experiencing the moment of joy. They can be an observer.
How do the characters observing the joy-filled character’s behavior react? Do they reflect the joy? Do they feel bereft because they lack it? Do they envy the other person? Do they show that directly by being sad, or do they bury it and act like a jerk?
Will the joyful moment happen at the beginning of your story and kick off all the events that follow? Will the character be sustained by the fleeting sensation or spend a miserable existence in a futile attempt to recapture it?
Will you build up to the moment of joy at the end of your story (huge climax? Happy ending?)
What does it actually feel like to experience (or witness) joy?
What kind of a character could really use a little joy, and how can you put them in a situation where they experience it? Do they deserve it? Does that matter?
Character is king, in stories, but how can you make your character more realistic? Share an emotion that all of us have experienced. Examine it in the context of what your plot is doing to the character. This is an especially useful skill to work on if your stories tend to be set in fantastic, futuristic or historical settings. We can’t easily identify with Frodo fighting off goblins, but we can feel his pain as he longs for the Shire (and shed a tear when he and Sam face the reality that they probably won’t make it home again).
The Prompt
Write A Story In Which A Character Is Homesick
Tips
Make the homesickness fuel the plot somehow – have the character make a truly stupid decision in reaction to their homesick impulse. Or have them do whatever it takes to overcome it.
Put the homesickness in a surprising context — maybe a soldier finds himself ‘homesick’ for the place he had the worst experience of his life; maybe a 90 year old immigrant smells something that catapults her back to her childhood in a faraway land…
Maybe it’s not your main character who is homesick. Who else could be homesick and how would that affect your protagonist?
Are the people around the homesick character sympathetic? Impatient? Uncomprehending? Oblivious? Why?
Lead the reader through the emotions of homesickness as your character experiences it. Is it an ache in their forearms as they resist the temptation to call their old home phone number and see who answers? Is it a yawning hollow in their belly, as if they’ll never be able to eat enough to fill it? Is it a prickle behind their eyelids and a digging of nails into palms? Think about how you’ve felt when you’ve had that yearning to go home again.
If you’re not managing to conjure up the emotions to mine, try this: go to Google maps. Type in the address of somewhere you went once, for a shining hour or day or year — somewhere that holds special memories for you. Go into Street View. (Look up your first family home, your first school, that place you went on vacation once and had the torrid affair with a local boy…). Look at the light, the sky, the architecture, the sidewalks, the window frames, the shop fronts. What do you feel? What do you notice? What had you forgotten? Use details like this to make your character’s longing for home seem real to a reader.
It’s just an ordinary a day in the office, when suddenly the boss notices his staff are turning into fish…
This engagingly bizarre and whimsical short story by Stephen Koster reminds me why I love the short story. Short stories let you break all the rules. They are amuse-bouche. They are wonderful places for trying out ideas you could never sustain in a novel (or maybe you could, but a short story is certainly a good place to test out the idea).
As with many of the short stories I read, this one wasn’t perfect, but it was amusing and it split my brain open and filled it with all kinds of ideas, and it inspire me to write. Can’t ask for more than that!
You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!
Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
****
Examples of Goals
“I’m going to write every morning from 6-7 AM.”
“I’ll write 250 words a day, minimum.”
“I’ll write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.”
“I’ll write one full story and revise another.”
“I’ll write four stories and submit one story to a publication.”
“I’ll outline that presentation I’ve been putting off working on, and create half of the slides.”
“I’ll track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing.”
“I’ll keep a journal to track my resistance to getting the work done.”
So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:
(Next check-in, Nov 1, 2014. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you’re warming up for NaNoWriMo, you could do worse than write a few short stories. How about a collection of ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2014? Yes? Click here.
Check back in on Nov 1 and let us know how you got on.
NaNoWriMo Is Coming
I know, from previous years, that you lot love a challenge and a huge number of you will be plunging into National Novel Writers’ Month in November.
Results of the 2013 survey
Some Unsolicited NaNo Advice
Outlining – Until I attempted novels, I was a dyed-in-the-wool ‘pantser’ (writing by the seat of your pants). Now, I’m more of a ‘write until I get stuck, outline the next bit, write until I get stuck again’ kind of writer.
If you don’t have a clue about outlining (as I didn’t), I can’t recommend this book highly enough:
Million Dollar Outlines* by Dave Farland. And he actually does sell lots of novels, so his system works, at least for him. I like Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering* too, but it seemed to stall me, more than it helped me. Farland’s book was much better for my style of working. Take a look at them both and I hope one or other helps you. (*Amazon Affiliate links)
Mental Prep – Don’t forget about the free StoryADay Creative Challenge Workbook that you received when you first subscribed to this list. (Don’t know where it is? Get another copy here.)
It’s a kind of ‘guided meditation’ through the mental prep for a big challenge like NaNoWriMo. The workbook helps you:
Get excited about the challenge;
Think about practical ways to increase your odds of success/sticking to it;
Create a customized, personal ‘creative well’ that you can keep coming back to, throughout the challenge, to remind you about what you set out to do.
This is NOT an outlining tool, but rather a roadmap to your own creative goals (with your own personalized key to the pitfalls you want to avoid).
Training Runs – You wouldn’t run a marathon (or even a 5K) without doing a few training runs.
Sitting in a chair typing for 2000 words a day is more mentally and physically draining than you’d expect.
Naturally, I recommend short stories as a great way to warm up for a novel. You can write
Character studies,
Prequel events (that shape your characters/settings/mysteries),
Dialogues that explore the issues and characters in your novel-to-be.
Get writing NOW for November success!
If you’d like to get hold of a pre-made plan of how to get 10 short pieces written before Nov 1, AND support StoryADay at the same time, check out the Warm Up Your Writing Course in the StoryADay shop. It has three weeks’ worth of writing assignments, audio lessons, workbooks, worksheets and handy checklists you can print and adorn with gold stars.
(If you’ve bought this in the past and have any problem accessing/finding your files, drop me a line and I’ll help you out.)
Well, that’s it from me, for now. I hope your October is delightful and filled with stories and Story Sparks. Don’t forget to check in at the Serious Writers’ Accountablity Group page and tell us what you’re up to (get your friends to come along and post too. There’s nothing like a bit of peer pressure!) Tweet This:
I’m making a commitment to my writing this month. Dare to join me? http://bit.ly/SWAGr #amwriting
Keep writing,
JulieP.S. Writer’s Digest is taking nominations now for their 101 Best Websites for Writers. If you’ve enjoyed the StoryADay challenge, the community or the articles here, and would like to help expand StoryADay’s reach would you do me a favor and send an email to Writers.Digest@fwmedia.com with the subject line:”101 Best Websites” and let them know what you love about StoryADay.org? They’re taking nominations until Dec 1. Thanks!
Today I was writing a scene for a longer story in which my fish-out-of-water character comes up against people she has befriended but disagrees with. It’s very difficult for her to do this, and it was so much fun to write, that I’m recommending you try something similar.
The Prompt
Write A Story Centered Around An Argument
Tips
Make sure you make it clear what each character wants and what the stakes are for each character in this argument (in my case, my main character desperately wants to fix a mistake she has made that had consequences for her new friends, without getting them in more trouble. They want to help her and she’s determined to go it alone. The new friends variously want to help her because: they like her; they have a lot to lose too; it’s the right thing to do; they’re bored and want adventure; and simply to take advantage of an opportunity to tease a big brother mercilessly. Each character in the argument has a reason to be in it.)
Think about how you FEEL when you’re in an argument. Try to use some of that physicality — but without resorting to cliché. Be outrageous. Make up new metaphors that suit your setting. Have fun with this. You can always edit them out later.
If you want this to be more than a ‘talking heads’ situation, have your characters DO something as they argue: maybe they’re hiking along a dangerous ridge so they must remain in control or they risk plunging over the edge; maybe they’re doing the dishes; maybe they are hiding from the bad guys and the whole argument must be whispered…
Have some fun with this. Let your characters say things you would NEVER say, because you’re such a nice person (you are, aren’t you?)
Fall is coming (at least in my hemisphere). Can you smell it? Do you live somewhere with autumn colors. Have you ever been to a place like that? Have you missed it? Have you never lived somewhere like that and wonder what all the fuss is about.
The Prompt
Write a Story With An Autumn Theme
Tips
You can do bonfires, leaves, Halloween, whatever your local ‘color’ is.
If it’s not autumn where you live, think of this as ‘banking’ a story that you can revise and begin to submit to seasonal markets in the next couple of months. Lead times, people, lead times!
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![[Reading Room] The Day We Were Fish by Stephen Koster](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2014-10-13-at-8.45.25-AM.png)
It’s 
by Dave Farland. And he actually does sell lots of novels, so his system works, at least for him. I like Larry Brooks’ 
* too, but it seemed to stall me, more than it helped me. Farland’s book was much better for my style of working. Take a look at them both and I hope one or other helps you. (*Amazon Affiliate links)
