StoryADay September is just around the corner!
Perhaps you’re not sure you can make it through a month of short story writing; or perhaps you’d just like a little extra help.
This week’s Write On Wednesday writing prompt is a chance for you to warm up AND to get a taste of what you’d experience as a StoryADay Superstar.
This is what the regular prompt looks during StoryADay
And here’s the Superstars version
Change Your Point Of View
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How did you get on yesterday? Was it easier or harder to write when I didn’t give you any particular restrictions? I’m curious to hear how you find that and what you’ve done, what you used from earlier in the month.
Today, your prompt is to actually take a story from earlier in the month and change the point of view. Take a story may be, from the beginning of the month, maybe something that you didn’t finish, maybe something that you finished and really liked and tell it, either from a different character’s point of view, so that gives you a whole new story because you’ve got to, you know, it’s the difference between say The Wizard of Oz and Wicked. You know, one is Dorothy’s story and the other one is the Wicked Witch of the West’s story.
You could do that, which gives you two brand new stories or you could take one that didn’t feel like it was working perfectly and see about changing it.
Maybe you wrote it in the first person, but you felt like you needed the opportunity to jump out, say that character’s head and show something that happened from another point of view within the story, try writing it in the third person.
Or maybe you wrote it in the third person limited, but you really want to have more than one point of view or you want to see how it would sound at first person or you wrote it first person past tense, you want to try present tense because it was, you know, a mystery and you didn’t want to give anything away.
All kinds of things you could do here. But take a story that you told and retell it in a different way.
And, I called this changing your point of view, but if you want to change up the order of when events in the story, go for it. If you want to jump into a different character or change the format entirely.
Maybe you told it as a series of letters and you thought, well, you know what? That would be a really interesting story told in a more traditional narrative way. This is your chance.
Take a few minutes to think back over the stories you’ve written. Hopefully you’ve been keeping them all somewhere safe, either in one folder on your hard drive or in a Scrivener notebook or in the same journal.
Maybe you’re a long hand writer, Take one of your earlier stories, retell it in a different way (type it without looking at your written version, or dictate it into your phone).
Come back and have a discussion with us. I’m very interested to hear how telling the story in a different way works for you, what works better, what was hard, what, what flowed better and whether you think it’s a stronger story.
It’s okay if it’s not.
If you look at it in the second version that you write today and you think, you know what, it was better the way. That’s also okay.
None of this is wasted. None of the time that you’ve invested in your writing this month has been anything other than positive and a step forward on your journey. It may look like you’re taking two steps back, but every minute that you turn up and engage with your inner writer is one where you are developing yourself as a writer, developing your skills as a writer, developing your network and your support network as a writer and an artist.
So, thank you for being here and for still being here at this point.
And with that, I release you to go and work on your rewritten or point of view changed story.
And I will see you back here tomorrow.
Isn’t that helpful? Don’t you feel inspired?
If you’d like to go through the month with content like this every day PLUS the camaraderie of a fun writing group don’t wait! Registration closes soon