Sneak Peek

at this year’s roster of amazing writers providing writing prompts for StoryADay May 2025.

“How do they do it?”

So many of us think exactly that, when reading stories by writers we admire.

Well, if you’d like a sneak peek in side the brain of a bunch of award-wininng and best-selling authors’ brains, you should sign up for StoryADay May 2025.

This year I’ll be sharing writing prompts from writers who have won Nebula and Hugo awards, been featured in the Best American Short Story collection, been shortlisted for Edgar and Bram Stoker awards, and more.

Be Our Guest

Here are some of the names you’ll see in your inbox this May, when you sign up.

headshots of the authors providing guest prompts for this year's challenge and the words: with writing prompts from P. Djèlí Clark, Mary Robinette Kowal, John Wiswell, Lori Ostlund, Kim Coleman Foote, Sasha Brown, R. S. A Garcia, Jennifer Hudak, Tim Waggoner, Rachel Bolton, Julia Elliot, Kai Lovelace, Anglea Sylvaine, Rich Larson, F. E. Choe,Emma Burnett , Patricia A. Jackson, Allegra Hyde,

P. Djèlí Clark, Mary Robinette Kowal, John Wiswell, Lori Ostlund, Kim Coleman Foote, Sasha Brown, R. S. A Garcia, Jennifer Hudak, Tim Waggoner, Rachel Bolton, Julia Elliot, Kai Lovelace,  Anglea Sylvaine, Rich Larson, F. E. Choe,Emma Burnett , Patricia A. Jackson, Allegra Hyde,  and more.

Past Performance

For a hint of the kinds of prompts guests have given us in the past, here are some that have been popular:

Roxane Gay Wants You To Be Happy

Mary Robinette Kowal  Opens A Portal

Tadzio Koelb Witnesses An Accident

Simon Rich Knows More Than Your Character

Caroline Kim Conjures A Ghost

Pick one and write a practice story this weekend. And don’t forget to sign up for the challenge: https://storyaday.org/signup.

Keep writing,

Julie (signed)

Warm Ups For April

What to write, how to write it, and where to talk about it…

Get ready for StoryADay May with these warm-up tasks in April PLUS: hear about the wonderful writers who have sent us prompts for this year’s challenge sign up at: https://storyaday.org

Continue reading “Warm Ups For April”

Get Started on Settings

Today’s Tiny Task in preparation for StoryADay May is to make another list, this time of places where you might set your story.

Answer these questions quickly, without thinking too hard:

  • List 5 Big-Picture Settings (e.g. Contemporary USA, Mars settlement in the early days, cargo ship in the age of sail, cargo ship in the far future when space travel is relatively routine, fantasy kingdom with dragons…)
  • List 5 Close-Up Settings (e.g. the engine room, an open-plan office, the back of an Uber, the throne room, walking the Yorkshire dales).
  • For each, write down what thrills you about that setting, what possibilities do you see (could be: ‘I don’t have to do any research, or ‘I can mash up Star Trek and The Expanse’ or ‘I finally get to hang out with Heathcliff’)
  • For each, write down one physical detail that springs to mind about your setting
  • For each, write down one detail that might not be so obvious on a first glance.

Circle (or highlight) the three that you think will work best for the fast-drafting world of StoryADay May (hint: the ones that require lots of research might slow you down too much).

P. S. Check out this roster of wonderful writers who have already given us writing prompts for StoryADay May, with more to come!

with writing prompts from guests: P. Djèlí Clark, Mary Robinette Kowal, John Wiswell, Lori Ostlund, Kim Coleman Foote, Sasha Brown, R. S. A Garcia, Jennifer Hudak, Tim Waggoner, Rachel Bolton, Julia Elliot, Kai Lovelace, Anglea Sylvaine, Rich Larson, F. E. Choe,Emma Burnett , Patricia A. Jackson, Allegra Hyde, and more...

Guest prompters include: P. Djèlí Clark, Mary Robinette Kowal, John Wiswell, Lori Ostlund, Kim Coleman Foote, Sasha Brown, R. S. A Garcia, Jennifer Hudak, Tim Waggoner, Rachel Bolton, Julia Elliot, Kai Lovelace, Anglea Sylvaine, Rich Larson, F. E. Choe,Emma Burnett , Patricia A. Jackson, Allegra Hyde, and more…

DISCUSSION

Did your choices have more to do with your current life, or your current reading tastes?

Story Moods

There are so many decisions to make when you start to write a story.

Narrowing down your choices is a great gift you can give yourself. Today I’m giving you an exercise that will help you narrow down your choices when you sit down to write.

Story Moods

There’s more to story than genre, character, plot, and dialogue, happy or sad endings, and pacing.

There’s also what I call ‘mood’ – whether a story is a romp, spooky, upbeat, thought-provoking, depressing, scary, inspiring, uplifting…

Tiny Task

Today, set at timer for 5 minutes and

  • Write a list of the types of moods you enjoy reading and might want to aim to write, during May.
  • Choose examples (from short stories, novels, TV, movies, music, visual arts) that capture the mood you’re trying to describe
  • Make a few notes about what elements contribute to the mood.

Keep this somewhere safe.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What moods do you gravitate towards? Is there anything you definitely don’t want to be feeling much of, during the challenge? How can you remind yourself not to write stories that trend that way?

RIP NaNoWriMo

I’m taking a moment this morning to mark the passing of NaNoWriMo as an oganization.

Theirs was one of the creativity challenges that inspired me to start StoryADay May for short story writers, in 2010 (NaNo’s 11th year).

(Fun fact: I even got founder Chris Baty’s blessing)

The end has been undignified, but I think NaNoWriMo’s real legacy will linger in the memory of its celebration of everyone’s right to be creative, to write our own entertainment and to do it in our own way.

(Pre-1999, pre-NaNo, pre-YouTube our culture had been one that suffered decades of tight gate-keeping on creativity’s tools of creation and distribution. NaNo was a glorious middle finger to all the people who said only certain types of people should dare to write.)

Its legacy will also be in the many, many writers who taught themselves how to stick with a project during NaNoWriMo and the many books that followed.

The Fall

It’s hard to grow and scale a business, even (especially?) a non-profit one. And it’s hard to run a writers’ organization—we are passionate, opinionated, insecure, clever, thoughtful, and prickly.

The choices the NaNo board made for their community were naieve at first, and disastrous later, but we can still applaud the spirit of encouragement, empowerment and generosity that were at the heart of NaNoWriMo for so long.

All good things, as they say.

What does this mean for other writing challenges?

Candidly, I’ve seen a drop off in participation in StoryADay May, too, though hundreds of people still enthusiastically participate and build that stack of first drafts to polish, and teach themselves how to persevere.

And, in truth, the challenge itself has become less important to the StoryADay writers, as we’ve built a close-knit private community and a looser, casual-acquaintance-type community around my workshops, podcast, and blog.

The StoryADay May challenge is still a highlight of the calendar, a way to take our writing both less and more seriously: more, as we commit to the practice; less as we try to write a ton of stories in one month.

(Perfectionism? Eat my dust!)

So RIP #NaNoWriMo. Writers will always need the kind of encouragement, permission and togetherness you stove for. We’ll continue to find each other, and push each other, and celebrate each other’s wins.

We just might not try to all get along in one place…

Onward

One day StoryADay will end. I will do my best to make it a controlled descent rather than a crash and burn, but that day is not today.

If you’re craving a little time-limited, creative frenzy, consider joining us for the 16th StoryADay May

Sign Up Here

Start Collecting Story Sparks

Writing a story a day for a month is exhilarating…and a little exhausting.

That’s why I send you writing prompts, but the prompt is just the start.

You have to take that idea and develop it into something that interests YOU, and hat can be hard to do every day, when you’re in a time-crunch.

So let’s do some prep this month.

Start Colleting Story Sparks Today

What is a Story Spark?

Read all about it and download your free Story Sparks Catcher here.

Start collecting three Story Sparks a day today, and you’ll have enough details to draw from throughout the whole month of May

Discussion questions: have you used Story Sparks in past challenges? Did they help? What advice do you have?