The Prompt
Write a 50 word story. Expand it to a 500 word story. Now revise that story to a 50 word story and make it as different from the first 50 word story as you can.
Peyton Ellas
Peyton Ellas lives in rural California. When not writing, they are farming, running a micro farm animal sanctuary and creating native plant gardens as a landscape contractor. They are the author of Gardening with California Native Plants: Inland, Foothill and Central Valley Gardens. Their work has appeared or will appear in Milk House, Pilgrimage Press, streetcake magazine, Copperfield Review Quarterly and elsewhere. They write the (not) obsolete newsletter on substack and can be reached at peytonellas.com.
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Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
I didn’t manage to use the actual instructions for this story, since it unfortunately arrived too late for me to start on time (damn’ time zones, right?). Instead, I took its title from Twitter and undertook a little writing experiment: each sentence of my story would be a little longer than the previous, until it no longer fit on the line. Then, I’d go backwards, writing progressively shorter sentences, and move back and forth until the story was finished. It resulted in a cute and interestingly shaped story about a little dog in the world of one of my favourite childhood shows.
Plus, I now have an additional source of inspiration for a future story in the actual prompt! ^_^
This was a lot of work for me, but I persisted. I think I will be revisiting this piece and reworking it, perhaps even scrapping it and beginning again.
This story wasn’t as much fun as the earlier ones, but I managed to finish it. I think I will spend a lot of time reworking this draft, or perhaps begin all over again. Who knows?
This was a great way to find my story and then to drill down to the essentials.
It also helped me to (accidentally) start the next story in a series of three AND I think the second ’50 word story’ is going to work well as a summary (every writer’s most dreaded part of the process).
I love a structural prompt! My first 50 word story was more superficial than I would have liked. For the expansion, I added a character for my cantankerous MC to interact with, which ran me straight into a bunch of questions about plot mechanics and created a need for research, but they’re interesting questions! My final 50 word story was written while I was super sleepy last thing at night but (I think?) it was much more dynamic. Thanks for this, Peyton! The longer piece is a keeper / reworker that I’m going to use for Day 8’s prompt.
Wow, I’ve never done something quite like this before. It really challenged me, and I enjoyed the opportunity to do something different. I decided to write from my MC’s cat’s point of view for the first 50… an escape outside through an open front door–freedom!… which leads to a first encounter with a dog. I recreated it in narrative form for the next 500 words, and then rewrote it from my MC’s panicked perspective for the last 50.
Great prompt. I did it. Exactly 50 – 500 – 50 the constraint made my writing better!
So far, whether I scoff at a prompt or am intrigued by it, I have done the exercises and benefitted from all of them. Thanks, Peyton Ellas, this was particularly good for me.
After writing my first 50, I felt strongly it would be better as the last 50 so I worked backwards. I ended up with the 50-500-50. Thanks for the prompt, Peyton!
Oh, that’s interesting.
Thank you, Peyton, this took me places I never expected to go.
Planning the first 50-worder, I thought I was going to have to go with a level of violence I’m not comfortable with in either my reading or my writing. I made the outcome ambivalent, which left me an out.
Expanded, it became a riff on an actual event: when Bush I barfed on Miazawa.
Contracted, it became a plea for honesty.
FWIW, I took the 50 word limit as a precise instruction; both those sections are exactly 50 words. I took 500 words as a limit; it came in at 325.
I’m going to have to keep thinking about this one.
Trust a poet to both stick to the rules AND find a way to finesse them…
Truthfully, my first thought was ‘I don’t do 50-word stories.’
I started reading stories online, and that sparked an idea. Miraculously, it all came together. The stories need work, but the challenge was great.
Thank you for the prompt, Peyton.
Nicely done. Good for you, for trying it anyway!
After start writing is hard to stop.
Well, that’s a good outcome 🙂
I did it while waiting for my tires to be changed. So it was 1.5 hours of writing. Very interesting prompt. I did it by longhand. Excited to spend some time on it tonight and get it into my computer.
This was a lot of fun to work with
Agreed. I love these kinds of limits. It really makes things interesting.
I am so excited to dive into the challenge today! Considering the way my mind works, this will be a fun one!
Ha! That’s the spirit. 😉