The Prompt
Take a story that you’ve written (maybe this month? Maybe from a longer or older work?) and rewrite an important incident, from the point of view of your main character’s nemesis.
Your beloved main character does need some flaws in order to allow readers to relate to them. Writing a story about them, but from the point of view of someone who is supremely irritated by them, gives you a chance to explore all the ways in which your character might not be perfect…
Try to make the story you write today complete, with no need for the reader to have any outside knowledge of these characters. Practice setting everything up, dripping out backstory, raising the stakes…you know, all the good stuff stories need. All while playing with your existing characters in a new way.
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Hero of Their Own Story
Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. Her writing really took off when she learned to be mean to her characters. For an example of that, see ‘Amel and the BRIDE’ in the May/June 2026 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
I am working on a Norse myth right now for telling aloud. I took the perspective of someone who ends up being a “personal support worker” to one of the gods who makes a foolhardy sacrifice and is left unable to care for himself. The support worker is complaining about how much the god complains, but it ends with them commenting that at least it pays! Another very short piece, not even two hundred words. I am pushing my limits every single day to get a story done, and I am meeting my goal because I set my bar very low. It has to be complete, it has to be at least one sentence, and it has to be done before I go to bed. All three met! Wahoo!! And, this is a really great exercise. I can see myself using it often and putting more time and effort into the creativity of it.
Done! Completed the task and eyeballed another story that will benefit from the exercise in June. Happy with the results. Thanks for the prompt!
I rewrote “Sketchbook,” a story about a hack writer of police procedurals who is driven beyond himself by the art of a college friend, from the POV of the college friend, who is himself insecure in the face of his writer friend’s commercial success and unerring ability to identify quality.
This may be an actual, good story.
Niiiceee! Sounds like a good read!
I used the story I wrote for #15 prompt, a cliche character. In my story the cliche character is a 50’s housewife who feels she’s not being treated right. For today’s prompt (#22) the character with the opposing view is her husband. I think this prompt will help me in future stories by me being able to put some of the opposing (antagonist) character’s views into my stories. It may even help to show that my MC’s aren’t so perfect.
Might be a bit predictable, but I wrote from the bully’s point of view from an earlier story I penned this month. To be clear, the bully was an unnamed minor annoyance in the original, but I didn’t want to spend too much time fretting about which character or story to choose.
Impressive decisiveness!
I picked the nemesis from my Day 1 story. In a moment of synchronicity, the person I modeled her after was on my mind for no apparent reason this morning! Like Fallon I didn’t want to stay in this person’s head for long, but I set a timer for five minutes and I ended up getting some fun insight into my MC. Great prompt!
Very cool!
I didn’t actually take a moment from a story, but I did write something from the POV of someone from the character’s life who doesn’t see him in the best light. Only 148 words because I really didn’t want to stay in this character’s head for very long.
Hope you don’t mind me saying so, but I love the phrase, “I really didn’t want to say in this character’s head for very long.”
What Melanie said!
All our characters are us – we take material from people we observe, but we make them live with what we know about ourselves. So characters in whose heads we don’t want to live can be a source of insight into personality, conflict, story, truths we (or I, anyway) would prefer to avoid. Give yourself a pat on the back for those 148 words. They’re among the hardest kind to write, and sometimes the most useful.
not a great story, but lots of words. I picked an antagonist from a previous day. It was interesting to see why the antagonist did what he did.
Done is done! And “done” is a “great rough draft.” =) Seems like it served you well!
I like your comment, ‘It was interesting to see why the antagonist did what he did.’ That reads like my experience sometimes where, the character, even the story goes a direction I never epxected.
OK, today – in line with today’s prompt. particularly the line ‘important incident, from the point of view of your main character’s nemesis.’
The Nemesis in this case are the ‘Drow Assassins’ hunting the main characters in a long-drafted novel. https://afstoryaday.blogspot.com/2026/05/pendant-of-power.html
Cool title.