We communicate with more than words…let’s explore that today
The Prompt
Write a short story describing your character’s inner reactions/emotions/thoughts to outside events entirely through body description.
Use this ending for your short story. “After he signed the papers, he stood up slower than usual. He almost limped away from the desk and into the corridor.
No, that’s not it.
His head hung to the left a bit, his whole torso’s weight shifted to the right leg for longer than the left one, as if was lugging around a log of wood attached to his left calf. His left knee didn’t bend. His arms, usually swinging, hung limp.”
Steve Maxwell, a fitness instructor, says: “People’s bodies are exactly what their thoughts are.”
Including the body’s reactions to outside situations is a great way to develop depth in characters. It creates a more immediate connection with readers (since they can absorb a lot of implicit information through such descriptions) and makes your writing more effective with just a few details!
How can we show defeat (like in the ending shared above) or anger or love or excitement/fear through body reactions of characters?
Enjoy!
Neha Mediratta
Neha is a generalist currently obsessed with stretching, mind-body-world connection and the spirit’s dwelling place. She writes fiction, non-fiction, takes on editing assignments she enjoys and works with people she admires. She lives by a lake in an overcrowded coastal city with her family and some wildlife. Check out her writing here
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Today’s prompt from Brenda Rech gives you a chance to stretch your imagination
The Prompt
A misunderstood aristocrat wants to unmask an intriguing conspiracy behind a museum exhibit. It takes him to a place he never wanted to go.
Take your character to a different time, a different place. Do they go forwards, backwards or maybe even a bit sideways.
Brenda
Brenda loves writing short fiction and is working on her first novel. 2023 is the third year of her monthly newsletter – Thru the Window.
All her life she wanted to be a veterinarian and took all the right science classes in high school. But, her favorite class was English 300. The teacher was a poet, who loved Shakespeare, and gave funky, fun assignments for creative writing. She struggled through first-year university, her grades in organic chemistry were less than stellar, but her marks in Canadian Lit were awesome. It was suggested that she pursue an English degree and be a teacher. She quit university.
Fast forward. She got married, had two children and ran a successful consulting business with her husband.
Fast forward again. During a monster house move she wrote a blog with photos to send to people who wanted to know how the relocation was going.
Fast forward some more. She joined Story A Day May and has never looked back
Write a story in which a garden plays a central role, whether as setting, character, source of conflict–or any combination of those three elements.
WHAT kind of garden is it? Flower, vegetable… Unicorn? Is it flourishing or fallow? Sprawling or skimpy? And what kind of nourishment does its harvest require? Is that nourishment easy or difficult to acquire?
WHO owns/plants/cultivates the garden? Are they the same person?
WHY do they garden? Pleasure? Revenge? Magic? Obligation? Or why do they refuse/delay/squirm at the prospect? Are they too old, young, squeamish, busy, distracted, sick?
WHERE is the garden located? In the protagonist’s backyard? In a community plot at the over-55 development? On the space station? Atop a soaring skyscraper? Beside the cottage? Behind the castle? Lost in the multiverse? At great-aunt Lulu’s?
WHEN does the garden exist? In memory, 1236 BCE, a week from now, during the Plague, during the war, during the famine? And when does it bloom? Predictably or never or only when the Blue Moon shines?
HOW does the garden connect to the protagonist’s deepest, darkest fear, want, need, desire? How will they feel/act if the garden fails? Succeeds? Remains unharvested? And how does the garden impact the protagonist’s relationship with other characters? Other creatures?
Need more ideas?
Claim an extant garden–a real one, or one from literature or film–and set your story there. BUT, change at least one significant detail about its composition. OR, borrow characters or historical figures and place them in your newly invented garden. Bonus points for genre mash-ups.
OR, retell a garden story from a different POV… like the worm’s.
Michele E. Reisinger
Michele is a writer and StoryADay Superstar living in Bucks County, PA, with her family and never enough books. Her short fiction has appeared in Across the Margin, Stories That Need to be Told, Sunspot Literary Journal, Dreamers Creative Writing, and others. Find her online at mereisinger.com.
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An intriguing use of technology for today’s prompt from Leslie Stack
The Prompt
We all depend on our GPS devices whether it’s through Google, Apple, or other providers, but do we know how those online maps are created?
For at least Apple and Google, a small car literally drives around each neighborhood with a camera on top taking pictures and videos in real time for use later in their maps.
What if one of these drivers inadvertently takes a picture of a crime being committed unbeknownst to the driver?
This could be in a home, a park, a shopping center, a theatre, or a deserted road. For this prompt you can use the POV of the person committing the crime and finding the evidence on Google or Apple maps or you can use a different POV such as the victim or the officer investigating the crime.
What is the crime and what did the camera see? Enjoy!
Leslie Stack
Leslie Stack is a musician and retired teacher who is finally surrendering to her love of writing. You can usually find her doing research behind dark glasses on a park bench. She lives in a house in Pennsylvania with her husband where the books are plotting to takeover.
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Follow the scent and uses your senses in today’s prompt from Robin Stein
The Prompt
The aroma of coffee brewing, the minty scent of your grandfather’s aftershave or the salty smell of the beach.
What are the smells of your childhood? List three that pop into your head.
Start your story with one of them.
Maybe your character has a flashback when she smells something.
Or, the scent can be used as evidence in a crime.
Perhaps an unfamiliar perfume will reveal someone’s infidelity.
Make sure to use all five senses as you follow the scent to reveal your story.
See where your nose takes you!
Robin Stein
Robin Stein muses, meditates and creates in Newtonville, MA. Her work has been displayed on the Martin Poetry Path and in the Story Dispenser at Wellesley Free Library. Her book, My Two Cities: A Story of Immigration and Inspiration, has been featured at many schools. She enjoys crafting crosswords, walking in nature and playing piano. You can read more at robinsteincreative.com.
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Fleet Sparrow invites us to explore the first person plural, today
The Prompt
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by how many times people will say “we” when they really mean “I”. There’s the courtly “royal we”, the Borg-like hive mind “we”, the “you and what army? we”, etc. So, for a challenge, write your story in the first-person plural.
Think about who would be using the plural first-person. What are they hiding about themselves? What are they telling? How many is the “we” including: one, two, or hundreds? And, for fun, just notice how naturally or unnaturally this “we” comes to you when writing.
Fleet Sparrow
Fleet is an avid fanficcer and smut lover who enjoys playing with long-held ideas and figuring out how to break them into something new. Zie loves Batman/DC Comics, writing, reading, music, and puns.
Sweet dreams, for today’s prompt from Michele E. Reisinger
The Prompt
Some people dream in color, others in black and white. Some never recall their dreams, while others recall them in vivid, haunting detail.
Some believe dreams are psychic housekeepers, tidying our subconscious as we sleep. Others believe they are keys, unlocking a multiverse of otherwise inaccessible worlds.
Write a story in which a dream–or nightmare–plays a central role in the protagonist’s internal and external conflict.
Michele E. Reisinger
Michele is a writer and StoryADay Superstar living in Bucks County, PA, with her family and never enough books. Her short fiction has appeared in Across the Margin, Stories That Need to be Told, Sunspot Literary Journal, Dreamers Creative Writing, and others. Find her online at mereisinger.com.
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We’re diving into structure and character today with this prompt from Neha Mediratta
The Prompt
Write a short story about an accident from the PoV of three different characters:
involved in the accident (e.g. as a passenger or driver of a cart or cycle/bike or car/plane or spaceship),
witnessing the accident ( e.g. as agent who tried to avoid or confront the accident as it happens),
trying to put pieces of what really happened when investigating (e.g. could be a public figure like a police officer or a person just coming to terms personally with this incident).
The playing rules here are to
a) develop our practice muscles to inhabit different perspectives. b) dig deeply into a small but decisive moment. c) convey a final impression of the whole (i.e. The End) with the help of three different characters in the compact space of a short story.
And most of all, have fun writing!
Neha Mediratta
Neha is a generalist currently obsessed with stretching, mind-body-world connection and the spirit’s dwelling place. She writes fiction, non-fiction, takes on editing assignments and works with people she admires. She lives by a lake in an overcrowded coastal city with her family and some wildlife. Check out her writing here
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Let’s get emotional with today’s prompt from Meghan Louise Wagner
The Prompt
Imagine a character who is older (interpret that as you like!) who returns to a place they visited once when they were younger.
There should be some emotional importance to the place, but this prompt works best if it’s a place the character only went to one or two times (not anywhere they’re super familiar with).
Start the story with the character returning to the place. When they arrive and see the place in its present state, have them either be:
a) greatly disappointed or
b) greatly delighted.
Then weave in memories of the place (or memories associated with the place) from when they were young.
Try to jump back and forth between them in the present and the past. By the end of the story, try to show a change in how the character views the place, either in the past or present. (for ex: if it started with them being delighted, have the story end with them being disappointed–or vice versa.)
Meghan Louise Wagner
Meghan Louise Wagner lives in Northeast Ohio. Her work has recently appeared in such places as Nashville Review, Cutleaf, Story, AGNI, Okay Donkey, and The Best American Short Stories 2022. More about her can be found at: meghanlouisewagner.com
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Sound can be stimulating…in today’s writing prompt from Monique Cuillerier
When I’m having a hard time falling asleep, when my mind won’t stop throwing up new worries or old memories or random fears, I listen to white noise tracks, preferably nature sounds. (Here’s a short playlist of some of my favourites)
In doing this, I unintentionally discovered that listening to these soundscapes provides me with lots of ideas for stories (or further developments for works in progress).
(It is not, however, particularly helpful in getting to sleep!)
Listen for a while. Maybe 5 minutes, maybe more. (I will warn you that some of the tracks are many hours long…)
Let your mind wander as you immerse yourself in the sounds. What do you think of? What images come to your mind? How do you feel?
Then write a story based on your reaction and the ideas that have come to you.
It might be something quite literal (like rain falling on a roof inspiring a story of being inside a cabin during a storm) or less so (for example, the feelings of isolation or coziness that arise).
When I opened the door, I never expected to be hit by *that*.
What is *that*? An idea, a smell, a sight, a sound? Something else? How does the protagonist react to it? What do they do next? Start your story with this line and see where it takes you.
Fallon Brown
Fallon Brown is a nonbinary writer from Northwestern Pennsylvania. They write mostly romance and cozy mystery novels, with some fantasy and historical in there as well. When they aren’t writing(rarely), they tend to devour books or let their mind unwind with crochet or cross-stitch projects. The first two books in their Jax of All Trade mystery series are available. You can also find them at stitchingastory.substack.com or on Instagram and twitter: @frbrown906
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Write a story, and after 5 minutes of writing, this jar appears in your character’s world.
or . Write 100 words about meeting the ruler of this kingdom.
Or whatever you would like.
CH Schoen
C.H. Schoen is a late-night writer hailing from the midwest. Her passion include studying the different belief systems of the world and walking the land with her dogs. She can be found most nights crafting weird little stories and posting visual prompts to https://www.savvywordslinger.com.
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An intriguing premise for a story from Lisa Thornton, today
Let your mind wander. Any genre works. Make it your own. Have fun!
The Prompt
“She wrote it on the back of the list she had been keeping of the best neon signs she’d seen so far. There was no way to know if he would ever read it, but that wasn’t the point.”
Lisa Thornton
Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse living in Illinois. She has words published/forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Roi Faineant Press, Bending Genres, Fiery Scribe Review, Bivouac Magazine, Cowboy Jamboree and more. She was a finalist for the 2022 SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She can be found on Twitter @thorntonforreal.
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Old Label Scars: Setting and Character Prompts From Closed Stores and Restaurants
Think about your favorite childhood store, attraction or restaurant. Did you sing the Woolco song and chase “blue light specials?” Did you cheer the drums and ice cream at Farrell’s? Can you spot a Whataburger a-frame building even when it’s been turned into a bank? A Toys-R-Us turned into an electronics store with the familiar front intact but painted over? A more recent Payless Shoes that is empty but still has remnants of the sign. A wooden roller coaster standing guard over a city with no visitors.
With many businesses closing due to Covid and entire malls being abandoned across the country, there are often “label scars” where businesses have left, leaving only the shadows of their names behind. As you shop or eat, watch out for those label scars that may trigger memories of shopping or food locations that are newly or long-gone.
Prompt
Write about your childhood memories of stores and restaurants that are no longer open. Did you visit a Stuckey’s on a family vacation? Eat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter?
Write about your first job working retail or as a restaurant server in a place that isn’t open anymore. What do you remember about the experience, good and bad? What did your uniform look like?
Imagine the employees and shoppers at the same places. Invent characters based on those people. Write about their interactions. Does the manager fall in love with an employee? What was the bestselling item when you worked there?
Make a list of the sensory details you remember from these closed businesses. The smell of Wicks and Sticks. Tastes from food court stores that don’t exist anymore. Colognes in department stores. The sound of those Farrell’s drum beats. The smell of mall bookstores. Sounds of mall piano stores or dogs barking in the pet store. Shoe stores where they x-rayed your feet and fit your shoes.
If you find a label scar on a storefront, take a picture of it and create your own ekphrastic prompt. Write about the emotions you feel when you see it. What decade does the remaining font shadow feel like it belongs to? Who hung the sign? Who took it down? Was it a family business that failed?
Do some research. Go online and see when/how the business closed. For example, the history of Chi Chi’s closing is well-documented but you might learn about your own regional favorite shuttered store. Write about how the community felt when the business closed. Did a little girl cry because Chi Chi’s wasn’t there with a sombrero and fried ice cream for her birthday?
For further research, visit online sites that explore dead malls and abandoned stores. Write about those locations by imagining what happened to them.
Amy Barnes
Amy Barnes is the author of three short fiction collections: AMBROTYPES published by word west, “Mother Figures” published by ELJ, Editions and CHILD CRAFT, forthcoming from Belle Point Press in September, 2023. Her words have appeared in a wide range of publications including The Citron Review, JMWW, No Contact Mag, Leon Review, Complete Sentence, Gone Lawn, The Bureau Dispatch, Nurture Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, McSweeney’s, SmokeLong Quarterly, Southern Living, Allrecipes and many others. She’s been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, long-listed for Wigleaf50 in 2021 and 2022, and included in Best Small Fictions 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit Associate Editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor,and reads for Retreat West, The MacGuffin, Best Small Fiction, The Porch TN and Narratively. You can find her on Twitter at @amygcb.
K. B. Carle invites you to leave your character unnamed
The Prompt
When writing or brainstorming the beginnings of a story, one complication that paralyzes the writer is what to name their character?
Some have a placeholder name such as “John Doe,” waiting for the character to reveal their name once the story is complete and will add this new name while editing.
Others, like myself, go to Google for unique, unusual, or rare names. But what if we made the decision not to name our characters at all?
For this prompt, resist the urge to name your main character. Instead, consider characters such as
Cathy Ulrich’s, “The Astronaut’s Wife,” who is simply known by her wife’s job title and role in their marriage.
Hema Nataraju’s “middle-aged commuter,” or
Eric Scot Tryon’s “Wife #2.”
How do names identify our characters? Are they defined by their job title, feelings, or their role in the world around them?
DO NOT be afraid to experiment and, as always, have fun! Afterall, someone dared to create villains such as Polkadot Man and Condiment King.
K.B. Carle lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her flash has been published in a variety of places including Lost Balloon, Five South Lit., The Rumpus, JMWW, and elsewhere. K.B.’s stories have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and her story, “Soba,” was included in the 2020 Best of the Net anthology. Her story, “A Lethal Woman,” will be included in the 2022 Best Small Fictions anthology. She can be found online at kbcarle.com or on Twitter @kbcarle.
Nathan Ballingrud sets up the scene for a horror story (perhaps?)
The Prompt
Molly heard her mother’s car pull into the driveway. She closed her math book and ran to the front door. The two hours she spent between the end of school and the time her mom came back home from work were always lonely.
She met her mother at the front door.
“Hi Mom!” She gave her a hug.
“Hey sweetie.” She set down her purse and her keys. “What are you doing?”
“Homework!”
“Well go finish it up and we’ll watch a movie when you’re done, okay?”
Molly was about to head back to her room when the door opened again. Her mother came in, again. “Hi, Molly!” She joined the first in the kitchen — two carbon copies of each other. They didn’t see each other or seem to know the other was there, but they kept talking cheerfully to her. And then a third came in. And a fourth.
Molly crept slowly back to her room. The kitchen was full of their happy talk, all their words running over each other. She hated nights when this happened. She slid under her bed and put her hands over her ears. She hated what came next.
Nathan Ballingrud
Nathan Ballingrud is the author of The Strange, Wounds, and North American Lake Monsters Find him on Twitter at @NBallingrud
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Start a story with a character in the middle of a conversation, where everyone knows something the main character doesn’t know.
Allow the main character to ignore the people around him. Use the setting to reveal something about the main character.
Let the main character gives us snippets of who the characters are around them.
Eventually, let one of the other characters get through to the main character!
Let the main character know seeing the room around them differently.
How does this added context force the main character to act/react?
How do they better understand the other characters in light of this revelation?
Tommy Dean
Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022). He lives in Indiana, where he currently is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022, Monkeybicycle, Moon City Press, and numerous other litmags.
His interviews have been previously published in New Flash Fiction Review, The Rumpus, CRAFT Literary, and The Town Crier (The Puritan).
He has taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, the Barrelhouse Conversations and Connections conference, and The Writers Workshop.
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A question from Mary Robinette Kowal, to prompt today’s story
The Prompt
The thing that I want you to think about is is just the answer to a question :
What’s in your character’s pocket?
So is there a thing that they carry with them all the time?
Is there something that they have put in their pocket specifically just in that moment?
Do they not carry anything in their pocket? How can they get away with that?
What’s in their pocket?
Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, Ghost Talkers,The Glamourist Histories series, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and a four-time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, lives in Nashville. Visit at maryrobinettekowal.com or visit her Patreon
Catch Mary Robinette Kowal on the StoryADay podcast here: Part 1| Part 2
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Write a story using this helpful structure from Rachel Swearingen
The Prompt
Expand, Narrow, Explode the Frame
Write a scene in which a character is looking for something or someone that has been lost. Use all the senses to describe the setting. Give us a sense of the body and include the following “moves” in any order:
1. Allow the details of the scene to feel close, contained, even constricting. 2. Describe the thing that has been lost, a brief memory perhaps that has been triggered by its loss. 3. Look down. Zoom in on something very small. 4. Bring in a distant sound. 5. Draw attention to an opening of some sort, a window, a door, a hole in the wall or in a dense wood or in a thick covering of clouds, for example. 6. Can your character see or sense what is beyond that opening? 7. Allow your character to climb down or up or into for to a new vantage point. 8. Is your character alone? Invite a stranger to the scene. What happens now?
Rachel Swearingen
Rachel Swearingen is the author of “How to Walk on Water and other short stories” which received the New American Press Fiction Prize. Find out more at RachelSwearingen.com
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Thanks to StoryADay-er Jeffrey T for recommending this resource!
PostSecret is a site where people confess their secrets online, via postcard. Some are sweet, some are sad and some are downright disturbing. They are all fantastic moments that suggest short stories.
If you’re worried about ‘stealing’ someone’s story, don’t be. You’re inspired by the emotion behind their postcard, or the moment that it evokes. What you write won’t be their story. It’ll be yours.
Don’t quote the actual words on the postcard (that’s plagiarism). Just think about what inspired the person to confess this secret and go from there.
Don’t choose one of the tragic ones unless you like writing tragic stories. I liked this one, this one, and this one.
Don’t be surprised if your story veers away from your first assumptions.
Focus on the moment suggested by the secret. Write only about that. Use as little backstory as possible, for a taut, emotional story.
OK, you’re thinking of embarking on a big creative challenge.
How’s that making you feel? Feeling some resistance? That’s normal. Feeling a cold rush of terror? Not unusual. But I’ll bet you’re feeling something else too: a little thrill at the idea. (C’mon, you’re a writer. Of course you’re tempted.)
Sharing your creative efforts is a risk and taking a risk requires bravery.
And sometimes, taking that risk leads to something completely unexpected.
Let me tell you a story about what happened when I met Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writer’s Month, an insane creativity challenge I in-no-way-ripped-off when I started StoryADay.
How I Absolutely Did Not Rip Off NaNoWriMo
In the late 1990s, when the Web was young, I had a writer friend who was a real sucker for collaborative creative challenges: Illustration Friday, Livejournal memes and, eventually, this crazy new thing called National Novel Writer’s Month.
It was the first time I had entertained the idea that writing might be anything but a solitary endeavour.
Over the years, I tried a few of these challenges (100Words.net, NaBloPoMo) and even came close to signing up for NaNoWriMo in 2009. I had read NaNoWriMo founder, Chris Baty’s book “No Plot, No Problem” and loved his ‘creativity for all’ outlook — but by this time I had I had two small kids and my creative life had contracted to the point where I was reduced to drafting critical analyses on Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends (I have a whole thesis on Gordon’s daddy issues, and Percy? Classic victim mentality.)
So I chickened out. Again.
What Do You Do When You Hit Rock Bottom?
The winter dragged on and I sank into a deep slump.
I was grumpy with everyone all the time. I needed a creative outlet but every time I started anything, even my beloved short stories, I failed to finish.
You know that feeling when you’re scared to start because you might let yourself down again?
One memorable day in March 2010 I hit bottom. Driving along a bleak country road in Pennsylvania – the bare tree-limbs reaching out to claw out the last shreds of my creative soul as we sang along to “Cranky, He’s The Dockyard Crane” – I snapped. That’s it, I thought. I have to do something really scary to jolt myself out of this. I’m going to write a story a day for a month. I can do a story a day, right? I’m going to finish each one, and I’m going to tell everyone about it, so they can shame me if I stop writing.
It was terrifying.
So I did it.
See? “Inspired by” NaNoWriMo. Not “Ripped Off From”.
Fast forward to this January.
With two years of StADa under my belt I was ready to stretch my wings. My wonderful husband practically pushed me out the door to the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC (If you haven’t been to a conference, I can recommend it: being surrounded by professionals and passionate would-be-professionals has a powerful effect on your motivation and self-respect, never mind what the workshops do for your skills).
The keynote speaker was to be NaNoWriMo’s own Chris Baty, which was a bit thrilling, but I wasn’t actually going to, you know, meet him or anything. (Not if I could help it, anyway.)
The first evening was a whirl: so many ideas, so much inspiration, so many notes to take, so much preparation to do for the Agent Pitch Slam (like speed dating, with literary agents). I was up so late preparing my pitch than I hardly slept.
I Blame Sleep Deprivation For What Happened Next.
I stumbled into the wrong session. After ten minutes, I ducked out early to look for the right session. As I wandered past the author area, my heart gave a little lurch. There was a tall, bald man sitting behind a stack of Chris Baty’s books. And I’d just made eye contact with him. It couldn’t be, could it?
The long moment stretched. My internal thermostat went crazy. I think I did that darty-eyed thing small animals do when cornered.
What would I say? Would he be mad at me? And would he even understand me, now that my tongue had swollen up to three times its normal size and my mouth had turned to sandpaper?
The next thing I remember, I was standing in front of the great man (really. He’s very tall) handing him a card and confessing my sins.
He looked at the card.
He looked at me.
“Is it free?” He asked, somewhat unexpectedly.
“Um yes, yes!” I said. “I mean I have some courses and ebooks people can buy if they want, but the challenge? Oh yes, totally free. They don’t even have to sign up at the site. I just think its so important to encourage people to be creative and…”
I was babbling and breathless.
“Huh,” he said, looking up at me (he was sitting down). “This is so GREAT!”
He beamed.
I beamed.
We started ranting about creativity and the importance of people giving themselves the permission to write. We raved about community and the other creative challenges on the web (he gave me generous, concerned advice about running a challenge), and we shared typical-writer-insecurities. We talked about the thrill of writing and the joy of having a hand in other people’s growth as writers. We promised to stay in touch. I may have started to refer to him as “m’new-boyfriend-Chris-Baty” (it’s OK, the wonderful husband understands). I walked around on a cloud for the rest of the weekend.
The last person I saw, as I wheeled my suitcase out into the New York streets, was m’new-boyfriend-Chris-Baty, sitting in the lobby, tapping away on his laptop. He looked up and waved. I had a new ally and it felt wonderful.
Confront Your Fears And Wonderful Things Can Happen
Starting StoryADay was scary.
Walking up to Chris Baty was scary.
Sitting down to write every day is scary.
But pushing yourself to do the scary thing is almost never a bad idea. (Unless that scary thing involves heights. Or venemous snakes. Don’t do them.)
You Can Do This – Today
I cannot stress strongly enough the value of:
Making a commitment to your writing,
Taking a chance on yourself,
Reaching out to a wider community of writers,
Being open to support and encouragement from unexpected sources.
StoryADay May is one way you can do all those things. Sure, the aim is to write a story a day, but I’ve always maintained that you should set your own rules. Some people aimed for 3 stories a week and hit that challenge. Some people aimed for 31 but their lives got complicated and they came out of the month with ‘only’ 12 stories … and were still thrilled.
But you don’t have to wait for May and you don’t have to travel to New York to confront your fears.
After reading the first few lines of “The Door” by E. B. White [1. found in Fifty Great Short Stories, Milton Crane (Ed.)] my immediate feeling was one of outrage: here I am reading a story by the author of a book that has generations of writers in terror of writing something the ‘wrong’ way (The Elements of Style by Strunk & White), and it’s all over the place! White is breaking his own rules with flagrant , jaw-dropping abandon!
Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn’t. And everybody is somewhere else. Maybe it was the city, being in the city, that made him feel how queer everything was and that it was something else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the names of things. The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid, or they were duroid (sani) or flexan (duro), but everything was glass (but not quite glass) and the thing that you touched (the surface, washable, crease-resistant) was rubber, only it wasn’t quite rubber and you didn’t quite touch it but almost.
OK, so there aren’t actually many disregarded rules there, apart from possibly some missing quotation marks – but still! What an odd and unbalancing opening that is.
And I loved it. Because the words are doing exactly what the writer intends to convey: they are confusing and disjointed and all out of kilter. They are slightly beyond comprehension. Just likethat we are in the same emotional space as the main character.
You couldn’t do this without a good command of the norms of writing, so perhaps E. B. White is exactly the right person to be writing this story!
Why The Story Works
This was a trying story on a first reading. I was never really sure what was going on, although I have my own ideas. It was like reading a stream-of-consciousness Beat poem.
But it hung together. It worked even though little in the story is explicit.
Some reasons it worked:
It was visceral. The writer takes us right inside the head of someone who is disorientated and out of step with the world. He keeps us off-kilter with his language. We are never explicitly told what is up with the main character (they way we may not know what’s up with ourselves when we are ‘out of sorts’). We do, however, feel what the character is feeling, through this helter-skelter narrative.
We are inside his head, though it is not all first-person. The story switches point of view without fanfare, so sometimes we are in first person and sometimes not (“Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the name of things”).
The author sets up a metaphor at the beginning, that of rats in a scientific experiment, “…trained to jump at a square card with the circle in the middle of it…”. It is a clear and coherent part of the story. He then takes this metaphor and alludes to it throughout the story, using the phrase ‘the one with the circle on it’ in various places to let us know he’s talking about frustrated expectations or unexpected changes — about life changing the rules, just when we’ve got the hang of them — whether or not we know what’s going on in the particular moment (and on a second reading, these moments become more clear).
The story (and the protagonist) travel somewhere. At the end, I’m still not exactly sure what is going on, but I know more than I did at the beginning. The protagonist is moving on.
The ending has a finality to it, a sense of actually being an ending. The author ties everything up in a bow by bringing back some metaphors from earlier in the story, the way a modern stand up comics will bring us back around to a joke from the start of their routine, before taking their bow.
This was an oddly satisfying story.
I think it is made more difficult by reading it at a time (and as part of a culture) very different from the the one in which it was written. Life was changing for the protagonist in ways that reflected the times. Now, 70+ years later, it’s hard to catch all the cultural allusions (without studying more deeply).
The style feels very modern (or possibly “Modern”) in its form and ambition. In fact, I was stunned to find it was originally published in 1939. I think it would still prove a bit too avant garde for many readers.
But it was anything but boring.
Writer’s Tips
If you are uninspired by a story that you are writing, maybe it’s because you are sticking too closely to the rules, to a formula.
Try taking a leaf out of E. B. White’s book and mess with your readers a bit.
Try a different style.
Say less — or more.
Drop the dialogue attributions.
Throw out the quotation marks.
Write run-on sentences — or write in fragments.
Tell the story out of order.
Try to make your language sound less like you and more like the inside of your character’s head. Let the words race, if your character is running; or make them lugubrious if she is weary.
Allow yourself to take some chances.
After all, words are just squiggles on a page, and even the most experimental squiggles can be erased and re-written.
My nine-year-old son recently volunteered that he hates “I” stories, because you can’t know the main character’s name until someone else says it.
I found it interesting that he finds this lack of information about a character annoying. Perhaps I did, at age nine. Now, however, I enjoy the gaps in a short story, in the descriptions. I relish the mystery, the sense of discovery. Sometimes the discovery is simply the true character of the protagonist. Sometimes, the character turns out to be not human at all.
The Prompt
Write a story in which the reader does not know a key piece of information about one of the characters. It can be as simple as making the story a first-person narrative, or you can offer a twist in the tale.
Tips
Don’t worry about your audience and who might read it
Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story about the a mysterious character: #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-oJ
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is “the ambiguous protagonist”! #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-oJ
Come and write with us: #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-oJ
See my story – and write your own, today: #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-oJ
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
This week’s story is “Live From The Continuing Explosion”, taken from Perfect Circles, a collection of previously-published short stories by Simon Kewin. (Full disclosure, Simon is a former StoryADay participant and co-founder of Write1Sub1, a year long writing and publishing challenge that I highly recommend you check out. The new collection is available on Kindle and, at the time of publication, is priced $0.00!)
Live from the Continuing Explosion is a Big Ideas story.
When I was writing about Dorothy Parker’s “The Standard of Living“, I spent some time talking about how short stories are fabulous for taking a tiny moment and using it to create characters and events that stay with the reader, regardless of scale.
This week’s story, Simon Kewin’s “Live From The Continuing Explosion” is, by contrast, a Big Ideas story. Yes, it starts with – and stays with – a moment in time, but the moment contains a huge, earth-shattering event that shapes not just the lives of the participants but grips the whole world in its fall-out.
I’m reluctant to say too much because this story unfolds gradually, but at its heart is a terrorist event and its effects on one person and on the world.
Kewin manages to share his big ideas while creating characters that grow more and more real throughout the story. He uses the event to talk about ideas as personal as the relationship between twins and as vast as philosophy, global politics and the nature of mankind.
The Dangerous World Of The Big Idea
This story, if categorized at all, would fall into the ‘sci-fi’ bracket. One of the attractions of sci-fi is its ability to deal with big ideas, even more than the appeal of technology, spaceships or characters in tight-fitting jumpsuits (only one of those three sci-fi staples appears in this story, and it’s not the jumpsuits!).
The danger of the big idea, however, is that it can hijack the story – that the author’s voice leans over your shoulder and lectures like a pompous professor. It’s hard to insert thoughts about gods and politics into a story without jumping up on a soapbox.
One of the ways “Live From The Continuing Explosion” deals with this danger is by giving various characters a virtual soapbox as part of the story. Right at the end, for example, one character makes a speech about “what has been learned”. It doesn’t jar, however, because it is an actual speech, in front of a crowd. As reader, you’ve come along on the journey with that character as she moves from by-stander to reluctant figure-head, and you have a lot of sympathy for her. A lot of the action before the end is sketched out, implied, and I was happy to have the character tie everything together at the conclusion. Plus, that’s not the end of the story…
Beyond The Big Idea
If this story dodges the danger of using big ideas it is because the author spends time building up the characters, even the minor ones. He concentrates at times on descriptive writing so that the reader can *see* the set-pieces and isn’t just being lectured to. He does that with vivid descriptions – not of the height and weight of his characters, by how they move, what they look at.
The two children run, screaming with delight. Around the legs of the adults in the crowd, legs like planted trees. They run in easy harmony as they veer left or right, speeding up or slowing down together without needing to watch each other. They laugh so much they can barely breathe. They hold hands, letting go only at the last moment as they split off to go around someone before reuniting.
A dog, watching them, barks excitedly, wanting to join in.
They run as if they have practised the whole set of manoeuvres beforehand. They run almost as one, a single being with two halves.
It’s a lovely, vivid moment and — given what follows — a really great opening to the story.
Staring Down A Cliche
It’s hard to describe the world in terms readers understand without stumbling into cliches. Of course it is. Cliches become cliches because they are good desciptions that we identify with.
Kewin deals with one of these in a way I really liked: he jumps on the cliche and expands it until it is no longer a cliche but an image that is all his own. He uses words that work exquisitely well to do this. When talking about an explosion Kewin takes the cliche “the blossom” of an explosion and expands it:
… vast, obscene flower billowing forth at demonic speed, black stigma deep inside red and yellow petals.
(By the way, use of ‘stigma’? In this context? Love it!)
He also takes the the idea of someone being inside a bubble and ‘owns’ it: making it the universal name for a phenomenon, not just a literary device. People all over the world begin calling the phenomenon ‘The Bubble’, as naturally as if someone had officially named it.
Short Story or Novel?
The other danger of the big idea is that you must devote so much space in your story to the ideas that the action and character development happen too quickly and the reader is left wishing the story had been a novel instead.
I think this story suffered a touch from this — which is not the worst thing anyone could say about a story 😉
Writer’s Lessons
If you can’t see a way around using a familiar image, try using one of Kewin’s techniques: expand the cliche with a clever twist, or weave it through the story so that it becomes natural.
If you ever feel that you have no ideas that are big enough to merit writing down, remember this. For the short story, tiny truths are even often just as valid, if not more, than big ideas.
Have you written stories with Big Ideas behind them? Are they easier/harder to write? Do you feel they worked as well as stories based on smaller moments?
When you write, if it is to be any good at all, you must feel free, free and not anxious.
-Brenda Ueland “If You Want To Write”
Some of my best writing, before I started to concentrate on my fiction again, was done in hand-written letters to my childhood friend, Linda.
She is witty and clever and very different from me in many ways, but we share a long history, and she understands all my references. She is unfailingly supportive, except when I’m being an idiot and need a kick up the rear, which she will happily – and gently – administer.
Writing letters to my friend is effortless because I want to entertain her, I know her, and I know she will be a generous reader.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could be sure that all your stories were met with such an audience?
Well, of course, you can’t. But the best way to assure a good response to your writing is to write your very best stuff. And the only way to write your very best stuff, is to come at it with confidence, as if it were going to be read by your ideal reader.
Do you know who your ideal reader is? (Hint: it might be you).
Sketch out a few characteristics of you Ideal Reader now.
Do you actually know someone who would be your ideal reader?
What authors does she like?
How does he like his characters to act?
Now, keep this image of your ideal reader in mind next time you sit down to write a story.
If this technique helps you, leave a comment and the description of your ideal reader, below. I’d love to see what you came up with.
Pinterest is a bookmarking site that lets you save images, rather than text links.
Find a page (or picture) you like on the web, ‘pin’ it and add one of its images to a visual pinboard
Pinterest is also a social network: find interesting images and links based on what friends with common interests are ‘pinning’
Images on Pinterest automatically link back to the original page where the images was posted (creating the ‘bookmarking’ part).
As you browse Pinterest it becomes clear that most people are using it to create ‘idea vision boards’ for projects like home-decor and craft projects. But there are plenty of ways for a writer to use Pinterest to, from building a collection of inspirational quotes to building a following as a high-quality ‘pinner’ in a particular niche.
So, how do you use Pinterest? As well as browsing Pinterest and repinning other people’s images, I recommend grabbing the ‘bookmarklet’ and putting it in your browser’s links bar. Then, as you browse the web, ‘pin’ images and arrange them in boards, adding new material to Pinterest.
As with every hot new social network, building a reputation early is key to becoming influential on that network. Allocate some time every day to building quality links and soon you’ll be a Pinterest guru. People are inclined to feel personally invested in the ventures of people they ‘know’, so gathering a large audience on a social network can ultimately lead to sales of your work.
Here are 17 ways you can use Pinterest to inspire and improve your own writing, and build an audience for your work.
1. Create an Ideas board
Never again sit down at your desk and think “I don’t know what to write!”.
Browse the web and ‘pin’ pictures that suggest an intriguing starting point (or climax) for a story.
Browse other people’s boards on Pinterest, always thinking about characters, settings and story.
Lots of people collect and pin posters of inspirational sayings. You can create your own writing related board.
You can also easily create visual version of favourite quotes that you come across while reading.
Fire up your image software
Create a nice background,
Overlay some text in a nice clean, readable and a large enough size that it’ll catch someone’s eye when they are browsing lots of little thumbnails.
Post to a page on your own website.
When people click on the pin (and the repins) they will be brought to you site, so make sure there is something good for them to discover on the page as well as the picture!
To see an example of how I used this technique click here, then click on the image.
5. Build a board full of pictures of your mentors
*Collect pictures of authors: those you love, those you aspire to be like. Look at them for inspiration
I recommend collecting three tiers of mentor. (Some days you won’t be able to stand looking at anything but the bottom rung…)
Writers you know you must be able to equal,
Writers who are more practiced than you, but who you don’t hold in complete awe,
The gods of your writing life. You can’t imagine being like them, but reading their work always inspires you.
6. Collect pictures of beautiful libraries and bookshelves
You’re in this business because you love books and reading, right?. There’s nothing like gazing at a beautiful space filled with books to fill you with dreams of seeing your book among them. (Also, these are popular pictures, often ‘repinned’ by avid readers, and isn’t that your target audience?
Start your own “writing spaces” board on Pinterest by pinning this picture!
7. Collect pictures of authors’ workspaces, for inspiration
There’s nothing like a little solidarity to make you feel you’re not alone in your writing journey. Why not pin some pictures of other writers’ workspaces? Or start your own board with this one ->
8. Collect funny comics or pictures to give yourself a break
9. Create a vision board for your story’s antagonist
Back to the writing! Start working on your antagonist. Collect pictures of
People (mean people, nice people, overbearing parents, sweet grandmothers. Antagonists come in all forms)
Expressions of emotion
Mean-spirited quotes
Places that typify your antagonist or evoke the difficulties your characters get into.
10. Collect beauty
Who says everything in your pinboards has to be connected to writing?
For inspiration – to get you in the creative zone – collect pictures of things that you consider really beautiful. Art and beauty tend to feed each other.
If you only focus on books and writing you’re inviting creative block. Look at all the beauty in the world and art, and feel those creative juices flow again.
11. Collect cover art of books similar to your story
It can be easy to lose your way while writing, and lose the ‘tone’ you were striving for. A quick glance at a board full of the covers of books written the style you’re aiming for can get you right back on track. (Imagine looking at a screen full of hard sci-fi books versus a screen full of historical romance covers. Instant mood-change!)
12. Create a board for pictures of your work ‘in the wild’
If you have already published work, appeal to your fans for pictures of your work out in the real world. (You can do this through Twitter or Facebook or some other social network if you have a following there).
Collect pictures of your book being read, on shelves, on benches, in boxes arriving from Amazon.
Sharing these pictures oing this creates ‘social proof’ that other people are reading your work: a powerful marketing tool to encourage readers to try your work.
13. Create a board for fan art
Sure they’re dinging your copyright, but you’ll create more raving fans with a compliment than a ‘cease & desist’ letter
Best-selling author Neil Gaiman regularly posts links to fan art, and his following is the kind of cultish, raving fans you want to create!
Allowing not-for-profit derivative works gives people a sense of ownership of your characters. They will love them (and you) all the more if you acknowledge them.
14. Create a board about something you really love, whether or not it’s related to writing
Yes, it’s off-topic but there are two very good reasons for doing this:
Readers like to get to know the authors, to get a look behind the scenes
You’re more likly to keep updating a board filled with things you are passionate about, rather than one you think you ought to be doing
15. Don’t go, ahem, overboard with this
One or two off-topic boards are great – they let readers see another side of you. However, if eight out of ten of your Pinterest boards are off-topic, you risk your followers missing the message your’re trying to send (“I write. You might want to read my stuff if you like my taste”.)
16. Create a board of other books like yours
*This might seem counter-intuitive, but you’re not really competing with other authors. If someone is a dedicated reader, they’re always looking for more titles like the ones they love. If you become a valued source of recommendations, they’re going to learn to trust your taste, and are more likely to give your books a try.
17. Create a board that will appeal to a particular interest of your readers
Promoting yourself and your work doesn’t necessarily mean talking about yourself and your writing all the time (in fact, I would argue that talking about yourself and writing shoudl be the least of what you do). Think about what your readers like, and pin those things.
Debbie Macomber, an author who knits and often inclues knitting in her books, could create a board of beautiful kniting patterns, accessories or humor (yes, there is knitting humor!)
Sophie Kinsella might create a board full of images from the latest fashion shows and blogs
If you like to read in the genre you’re writing in, think of the other things that interest you. Chances are your fellow readers in that genre are also interested in some of them. Create an awesome board in that niche and start building followers.
WARNING COPYRIGHT ISSUES
There is a brewing controversy with Pinterest since people are taking and repinning other people’s (possibly copyrighted) images. Also, Pinterest’s terms of service have all kinds of silly things in them that say they can reuse and sell anything pinned on Pinterest. I remember a similar controversy back in the stone age of the intenet when Yahoo took over Geocities. These things usually get sorted out when a few stroppy creatives stand up to the lawyers writing the terms of service. (I’m not downplaying the importance of this issue, but I do believe it will be sorted out by a change in the language in the terms of service). UPDATED 3/24/12: Pinterest has announced an update to its terms that addresses the silly “we can sell your stuff” clause and have announced tools to make reporting of copyright infringement easier. These are good signs that Pinterest is evolving and should survive, and is therefore worth putting time into.
More damaging, however, is the idea of using other people’s work without permission. The consensus so far seems to be that you should only
Pin artwork from the page where it was originally posted (this way, the ‘pin’ leads back to the original site and the original artist gets credit. For extra credit yourself, look at any images on pages and try to make sure that they are not violating someone’s copyright before you give that page more publicity by pinning the image’. If the image is clearly from a professional photographer yet is on a 13 year old’s fan site, with no attribution, you’re probably looking at a copyright violation.)
Create your own artwork
Find images that are marked as being available under the Creative Commons license (for example, you can do an advanced search at Flickr and check the box that says ‘search only within Creative-Commons licensed content”)
So that’s it. Now you have no excuse to say “Oh that Pinterest thing? I don’t know, maybe I’ll get to it later.”
Go now, start pinning!
How are you using Pinterest? I’d love to hear your comments!
I came across this delicious map in an online archive, instantly started thinking about story-writing.
Not only do our stories often start out this way (we can see, maybe as far as Cleveland, but beyond that it is terra incognita), but the whole frontier idea is rich with story possibilities.
The Prompt
Write a story that involves the unknown, the unknowable, a frontier (physical or metaphysical). It could be set any time or place in this world or another universe.Take the idea of that unknown portion of the map from 1714 and find a way to work it into your story’s landscape.
Tips
Don’t worry about your audience and who might read it
Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story about the Unknown: #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-o7
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a cool old map! #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-o7
Don’t even think of telling me you can’t think of anything to write.
Not with a site like Pinterest at your fingertips.
What is Pinterest? It’s a virtual scrapbook where people grab and save images from the web, all neatly categorized and ready for your browsing pleasure. It’s like looking over the shoulder of everyone in the world, but being able to choose only the topics that you’re interested in right now.
This week we’re going to use Pinterest to create the elements of a story that you will write.
The Prompt
First, your setting. Choose a picture of an interior or an outdoor vista, and use that as your setting.
Next, characters. Click here to find the face of your characters in the story. Choose at least two (one can be minor, one should be your major character). If you choose a celebrity, just steal their face for your story. Look at their features, forget about the persona. Use their features in any descriptions in your story.
Now that you have your character and setting, something needs to happen. Browse this eclectic page until a picture jumps out at you, and suggests a question or an event. I found this picture of a teacup and saucer and immediately saw an opportunity for a story — some kind of inter-generational story with the teacup coming down to a young woman from an elderly relative; the story behind it; life lessons; redemption; who knows? But it’s a spark on which to hang a story.
Tips
Don’t worry about your audience and who might read it
Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my Pinterest-inspired short story: #WriteOnWed #storyaday bit.ly/xk1FwJ
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about Pinterest! #storyaday bit.ly/xk1FwJ
Come and write with us: #WriteOnWed #storyaday bit.ly/xk1FwJ
See my story – and write your own, today: #WriteOnWed #storyaday bit.ly/xk1FwJ
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
It’s January: the time of resolutions and fresh starts.
Write a story in which your character is starting over, has a fresh start, or resolves to do something differently from now on.
Tips
Your ‘character’ doesn’t have to be a human. It could be a fresh start for an old building; a story written from the perspective of a newly-laundered curtain flapping on the clothes line; a demon with a quota to fill…go wild.
Write fast, as fast as you can.
Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.The Rules:
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my Starting Over short story: #WriteOnWed #storyaday
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Starting Over: #storyaday
Come and keep your writing resolution with with this week’s prompt: #WriteOnWed #storyaday
See my story – and write your own, today: #WriteOnWed #storyaday
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
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PostSecret
![[Tuesday Reading Room] The Door by E. B. White](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/EB_White_cropped.png)
, Milton Crane (Ed.)] my immediate feeling was one of outrage: here I am reading a story by the author of a book that has generations of writers in terror of writing something the ‘wrong’ way (The Elements of Style by Strunk & White), and it’s all over the place! White is breaking his own rules with flagrant , jaw-dropping abandon!![[Write On Wednesday] – The Ambiguous Protagonist](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/I-eye.jpg)
, a collection of previously-published short stories by Simon Kewin. (Full disclosure, Simon is a former StoryADay participant and co-founder of 
![[Write On Wednesday] How to Use Pinterest To Write A Short Story](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen-shot-2012-02-21-at-8.07.20-PM.png)
