Continuing a trend from last week and the week before, here’s another prompt that leads you into plot via your main character’s emotion.

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features Anger

Tips

• You can start your story with an angry outburst then spend the rest of it unpacking what prompted the rage, or exploring the consequences of one person’s rage for all the characters around them.
• You can build up to a big, angry finish — showing your character giving in to something they’ve been fighting all the way through the story.
• Think about how you have experienced anger in your own life — both in yourself and observing it in others.
• Try to get inside the head of someone who has a very different ‘anger vector’ than yourself. (If you’re a ‘push me for weeks until I explode’ person, think about writing a character who is a ‘rage and forget it’ sort).
• Remember there is such a thing as righteous anger.
• To avoid the story becoming too intense, use the concept of the opposite emotion to show that your character(s) is/are capable of other emotions too. (What is the opposite of anger? Depends on the type of anger, doesn’t it? It might be charm, or humor, or kindness, or gentleness.
• How can you tell a story that includes one character containing two opposing attributes. Think about what a character like that wants and go from there).
• What kind of language will you use? Animal metaphors? Short, choppy sentences? Dialogue? How will you avoid clichés?

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