The Prompt

Look up “funny news stories” or find as many local newspapers, real estate magazines, Craigslist ads, or NextDoor posts as you can. Which headlines speak to you? Some of my favorite from the last year are: “Urgent! Stolen Turkey!!!!!!” from NextDoor, “Man in Chicken Outfit Robs Supermarket” on my local news channel, and “Raccoons are at it again” on a Facebook post. Don’t read the story; make it up based on the headline.

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Jared Lemus

Jared Lemus is a Guatemalan-American author and finalist for the PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short story collection for his book, Guatemalan Rhapsody. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Story, and elsewhere, and his debut novel, Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring, is forthcoming with Ecco-HarperCollins in the Spring of ’27. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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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.

The Prompt

Your prompt today is to find a way to use all of the following words in a story. (The words are taken at random from Mary Oliver’s “Upstream: Selected Essays”):

• poems,
• winged,
• faith,
• bog,
• darkness,
• summer,
• more,
• many,
• course,
• equally.

The point of this is to lower the stakes for you, so that you can write something without worrying about making it a work of art. With these constraints in place, it’s a triumph to simply write a coherent story. In the process, you’ll be practicing all the skills you need in your storytelling life: showing up, puzzling out the story, staying at it until you reach ‘the end’; character creation; putting obstacles in their way; creating conflict; resolving the puzzle; putting some sort of ending on the piece…

You’ve already given yourself permission to write. Now give yourself permission to write something imperfect. (It’s a valuable skill!)

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Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. You can find her most recent story in the May/June 2026 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. If you’re struggling with your writing or your writing practice, Julie offers coaching sessions (One-off troubleshooting or multi-session packages):

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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.

The Prompt

People often react to weather in unexpected ways. What weather events haunt you? Alternatively, what weather simply annoys you? Maybe a sudden gust of wind blows your character’s hair up, or an untimely frost nips their tomato plants. Put your character in the path of a coming storm, or set them a thousand miles away, watching the storm on the news. What happens after the storm has passed? Try to capture the heart of your story in one-thousand words or less.

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Myna Chang

Myna Chang is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and WW Norton’s Flash Fiction America. She hosts Electric Sheep SF and publishes MicroVerse Recommended Reading. Find her at MynaChang.com or on Bluesky at @MynaChang.

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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.

The Prompt

Write a story about a person, an animal, or even an inanimate object that finds joy or deep meaning in fulfilling its purpose.

(Note from Julie: this song was inspired by a Bermuda Palm that lived out its life in a glasshouse in Scotland.)

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Aimee Ogden

Aimee Ogden is an American werewolf in the Netherlands. She is a three-time Nebula Award Finalist, most recently for her short story Because I Held His Name Like a Key, and the author of four standalone novellas from publisher Tor.com, Psychopomp, and Interstellar Flight Press. Over 100 of her short stories and novelettes have appeared in publications such as Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. For more about her work, please visit her author website: aimeeogdenwrites.com

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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.

The Prompt

We’ve all had the experience of being caught off guard in a situation and not known what to say, only coming up with the perfect response when it’s much too late. Use that memory to inspire a story. Will your character respond in the moment? Will they not? What else might happen? You decide.

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P.A. Cornell

P.A. Cornell is a Chilean-Canadian speculative fiction writer. A two-time finalist for the Nebula Award, her stories have been published in over seventy magazines and anthologies, including Lightspeed, Apex, and eight “Best of the Year” anthologies. In addition to becoming the first Chilean Nebula finalist in 2024, Cornell has been a finalist for the Aurora and World Fantasy Awards, and in 2022 won Canada’s Short Works Prize. When not writing, she can be found assembling intricate LEGO builds or drinking ridiculous quantities of tea. Sometimes both. For more on the author and her work, visit her website pacornell.com.

Latest Book: Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl

Forthcoming Collection: The Astronaut Among the Flowers and Other Stories

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Sample Warm up for Day 1

Sample Brainstorming Exercise For Day 1

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.