The Prompt
Take one to two minutes to jot down a list of common idioms, metaphors, or similes–any phrases you might consider overused or cliché.
A quick search yields examples like “paint the town red,” “playing the world’s smallest violin,” and “love is a battlefield.”
Select one and literalize it. Write a story, for example, in which your character(s) really do paint the town red. Why do they do this? What are the expected or unexpected consequences?
For bonus points, try setting challenging limits on your drafting time for this one. Can you get from an opening to an ending in two 25-minute sessions? How about in just 30 or 20 minutes?
F.E. Choe
F.E. Choe is a Canadian and Korean-American writer whose work has been published in adda, Augur, Clarkesworld, Fractured Lit, and The Moth Magazine. She is a 2023 alum of the Clarion West and Viable Paradise workshops, and an Editor at 100 Word Story. You can find her online at www.fechoe.com.
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Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
I used “a matter of life and death” in relation to the literal nature of the phrase in Vulcan reproductive/marriage practices.
Because of course I did! And had a lot of fun in a not-great- but-has-potential 645 words.
“Finished” my Day 2 story by writing a flash piece that wanted to become something more. So I put some notes at the end about where I see that larger story going. But I’m calling the Flash version ‘done’ for now.
Hey, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I was wondering where the day 3 prompt is. It’s not appearing on the blog (at least on my end), and clicking the Twitter link gets me a 404 error. If anyone could help with this, I’d really appreciate it.
The prompt just arrived in my inbox, so I can get to writing. ^_^ Still not seeing it on the blog, though.
So sorry about that. I had a tech glitch today that took me too long to notice/fix (It was more than one glitch, so when I thought i had it fixed, I had only fixed part of it!!)
I hope you found it, when it finally appeared. We should be back on schedule for tomorrow.
All good. It worked out in the end. 🙂
I took ‘killing two birds with one stone’, turned it into a silly little murder mystery, and managed to literalize a few additional idioms within the story. The writing went on longer than I expected, but that was a fun ride!
Love that! More writing!
No perfectionism here! Excellent!
I came up with only a few sayings, but settled on “The pot calling the kettle black,” and set my story in a restaurant on the cook’s first shift. I tried to finish in thirty minutes, resisting the urge to linger, to get things perfectly right. It isn’t quite flash yet, but it has potential.
Perfectionism begone!
Loved it!
Used the metaphor: “to make nails with heads” ( from german: Nägel mit Köpfen machen) which means : to go the whole hog in English. Turned out a beautiful story about friendship. It helped a lot to limit the time to 15 minutes. Thank you!
I made it in less than 30 minutes. It helps me to make a really good story with potential. I hope so.
I took the phrase “Sharp as a tack”, and wrote a story in which my character gets pushed into a pencil sharpener.
Yeesh
After getting this idiom from a Google search, I knew I could write something about this as soon as I read it.
Short and sweet, it reads:
“I went out to see what all the commotion was about. Rover was barking at one of the two big trees at the bottom of the garden. My cat Fred jumped down from the other tree. I realised Rover was barking up the wrong tree.”
I liked this prompt from the outset and wrote my story while sitting at the Hospice House reception desk. I used email on my chromebook and lost my internet connection at some point. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve everything but the final paragraph. I knew how it ended….
THat’s the spirit!
I had to mull this one over for a day. I looked up similes and metaphors but wanted to use something I came up with on my own. I woke up this morning with the phrase and the story.
Tim lived in the coral reefs Hanalei Bay. He loved his world. He watched his fish friends swim among the beautifully colored coral and through the flowing sea grass….
[comment clipped to protect the author’s intellectual property – JD]
Love it!
I loved this one!
I loved this challenge . I chose ato write a story using “It’s better to have loved and lost,than to have never loved at all.
I chose to use “speak of the devil,” and it turned into a tarot card reading, with the Devil card at the forefront, and two best friends looking out for each other’s work-life balance. It was definitely not what I had first intended to write… “The cat’s out of the bag,” a story focused on the two cats that made cameos in yesterday’s story. They still made a cameo today, but they’ll have to wait for their spotlight.
Oh that sounds interesting (and I had kittens in mine!)
I loved this prompt. I used ‘night owl’ and ‘quiet as a mouse’ in a story about two co-workers who, unbeknownst to each other, both transform after work (and have an almost disastrous encounter).
Oh, that’s a great premise!
Gorgeous fun, this was. I took the currently overused saying “It’s baked into my DNA” and created a group of geneticists (all men except for the token woman) who baked into an unborn baby’s DNA the qualities both its parents wanted: musical talent, extra-strong muscles, and fleetness of foot for ballet and Olympic-level running. Oven carefully calibrated to bake only the DNA, not the baby. When time was up the kid ran out, flexing muscles, dancing, and singing “Baked into my DNA” to a tune of its own composition.
Took me about 15 minutes and feel OK about summarizing my premise and story here; I’m highly unlikely to develop it but value the exercise. I love writing flash more than anything else and will be somewhat apprehensive when longer forms are wanted. This is going to be a great month!
Excellent! Love your attitude!
I’m starting to remember. Story A Day May is about unexpected outcomes.
I thought I was going to write a silly piece about not counting chickens before they’re hatched. The tone of the piece wound up being light, but it actually had something to say about breaking down prejudices (if you’ve lived with or near hens you might well be prejudiced against them) and making friends. Not at all what I set out to do, but I’m happy with it.
I did not set a time limit on myself, but I completed it in two sessions, one about half an hour, one closer to an hour.
And this is why we should never try to ‘be’ someone else. Our values come through in our writing, if we let them!
Greetings, Well, baseball idioms are funny, but I’m a basketball person (NCAA that is primarily) and I wanted to use some basketball cliches. However, I realized that some of my favs have been taken over and are lots of places other than basketball.
So, I came up with two. Cut the mustard and think outside the box and used them both. It’s a story about a business (one who has really gone down and lots of my money with it). The staff is getting overhauled and must now prove they should keep their jobs by “cutting the mustard” (several varieties) and managers must demonstrate they can “think outside the box”. All the thinking boxes have been removed from managers offices. Yeah, that was fun.
I don’t know what the game pieces are or how they work.
That DOES sound fun.
I chose “It’s all good,” my #1 most hated cliche. It is also the cliche the person I hated more than anyone else in my life always used. My first two ideas for stories involved me trying to have the MC be the one who uttered this horrible phrase all the time. After that wasn’t working for me I became so disillusioned I thought maybe I should switch to another cliche. But I hammered on and came up with a more likeable protagonist and her antagonist who uses that phrase constantly. It’s about a woman going through a tragedy and her husband keeps saying, “It’s all good.”
Good for you, for finding the right way to play with this phrase. It’s not always the first (or second) idea that pays off….
I wound up with a very rough draft for time reasons. The saying I chose was “I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday,” but that is just what happened to one of the characters during harvest. Only it wasn’t yesterday. I even got to include a country doc who makes house calls, something almost unheard of nowadays.
Now if I ever hear that experession again I’m going to HAVE to ask, “So when DID you fall off the turnip truck?” and think of you!
This exercise took me to places I didn’t expect when I selected ‘Tempest in a teapot’ as my overused phrase. An adolescent girl learns to control her raging emotions with the help of a caring mother and an old teapot. Not my best writing, by far, but my creativity did get a workout this morning!
Love it. Isn’t it fun to take another look at these phrases and the possibilities they present?
Another fun prompt. I chose a fly on the wall. In two 25-minutes sessions I wrote a 660-word story in the fly’s POV. I left the ending hanging. Was the flying going to get away again, or was the man going to kill him?
Oh no! The poor fly!
Super happy with today’s writing. I found (goggled) about 20 metaphors and idioms. My story did not include a single one of the them. On my way to my writing desk, I thought of “heart of gold” which led to “dying of a broken heart”
It turned into a story!!
I love how your brain ‘wasted’ all your hard work and came up with a different idea instead.
To I’m sure sure absolutely everyone’s(*cough*no one’s*cough*) surprise, I did a search for baseball idioms. Who, me? Nope. Never. 😀
Managed to work in: step up to the plate, throw a curveball, knock it out of the park, and touch base. A little bit of back story for Nik and Leigh. 430 words just poured out of me. Home run, indeed.
Way to watch the ball, Fallon
You’re pitching a no-hitter!
(Oh, please forgive me.)