The Prompt
You made it! You’re hear at the end of the month, still showing up, still writing. Whether you wrote one story or thirty-one, congratulations. This is a pretty good day.
Today I want you to write a story about someone’s best day ever.
You are, of course, free to use that title ironically (and write about the opposite).
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Julie Duffy
Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She coaches other writers and creatives on how to keep the momentum going. She also hosts a year-round writing community. If you need a place to keep you on track going forward, join us in the StoryADay Superstars:
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? How much did you write this month? What’s your ‘epic win’? 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.
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Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
I did all but 5 of the prompts, I really enjoyed it and intend to keep going, using the prompts I didn’t quite get finished.
One was writing a story around a favourite song but there are so many songs I love that when it came to it I was quite overwhelmed to pick one.
But I’m looking forwards to getting them done, thanks for all the prompts they have been great
I’m posting so late. I just finished Day 31 and since I haven’t been to bed yet, I qualify it as done on Sunday, May 31. Woot woot! Now, bedtime.
Fizzled out and didn’t write in the past 3 days. Family and life had their way along with a previous shoulder injury.
Ended with 25 out of 31. I saved all the prompts and will work on them in June. I had a lot of fun this year. Hope everyone keeps writing. I have a few goals including a novel about the gothic world. And a story about the 60’s ending at Woodstock.
A weird one. Two adult children experiencing their father’s playfulness, enacted before his death, as the best day of his life. Some good material, possibly worth following up.
Thirty.
As the newspaper reporters used to say. Except that today is thirty-one.
Done! 522 words of Ezra’s first time pitching in AAA. But, his best day turns into his worst by the end.
For May:
21/31 prompts written to
My document(including all the warmups and brainstorms: 8437 words
Only the first and last stories were over 500 words.
Of those:
13 were for Deltry Ocelots 4(mostly back story, though a couple could find their way into the actual story)
6 used characters from Page Turners(and might find their way into the actual story)
and 2 were from other projects.
Way to go, Fallon!!! Clever to do from best to worst! (I feel sad for Ezra as I write this and hope that it will eventually turn around for him!) I’m always so impressed with how you keep stats…and suddenly I see that connection with your favorite sport. Though all sports keep them, baseball seems to live for them, and true fans seem to know their teams backwards and forwards!!! =)
Fallon, gotta love the by-the-numbers, here’s a summary from my perspective, interesting exercise, thank you for the idea, and WELL DONE!! on your month!!
Thirty-one stories. 25,027 words. One draft each.
This year’s May spanned horror, sci-fi, memoir, fantasy, poetry, crime, satire, and dialogue — sometimes in the same week. Eight stories drew from the StoryADay prompts directly; the rest came from a backlog built across the year and a daily walk with a voice recorder. The AI/technology thread ran strongest — seven stories across the month interrogated what’s coming, from Asimov’s Zeroth Law to the MIT AI endgames. A D&D campaign world generated eight pieces of its own. Two submarine stories surfaced from twenty years of Navy service. One story — a dystopian piece in the Solzhenitsyn mode — was withheld from the blog as a competition entry.
The month produced flash as short as 99 words and a DwarvElf novel chapter at 1,511. It included a verse chronicle of written language from Sumerian clay to LLMs, a pelican who couldn’t fly because his bill kept filling with saliva, and a paladin’s pre-dawn kit list that said more about the character than any backstory could.
31 for 31. See you next May.
Knocked out the draft and the May challenge. Time to recalibrate. Happy writing. 😊
OK, here is my story for the day, the final day, it is written against more inspired by the Day 30 prompt: https://afstoryaday.blogspot.com/2026/05/endgame.html
It’s been great, getting 31 pieces of content out this year. I’ve learnt a bit. If I do this again next year, I may work to hold a few anthology/competition pieces back from you all. I only held one back this year, and will submit that to the Newcastle writers festival in July.
I first did this challenge back in 2017, and have been an inconsistent participant over the years. Yet to come and finish a run of 31 in 2026 is great. Julie, thank you for being there again this year and hosting this event.
May Inspiration strike you all, now and into your futures.