In 1802 Albert Mathieu-Favier began telling people a story.
Imagine, he said, a tunnel that dives under the sea that separates France from England. It will be lit by oil lamps, and big enough for a horse-drawn carriage to pass through. Here, he said, is an island where the drivers will change horses. Here, he added, is the second tunnel that will carry away groundwater.
It was a crazy story.
And so everyone continued to make the trip by boat.
Later, people started to travel between the countries in a conveyance that had also started as an outlandish story: flying machines!
But Mathieu-Favier’s story never entirely faded away.
When I was three years old, people started talking seriously about the Channel Tunnel, this time for a train.
In 1990, when I was 18, the story first told by a Napoleonic-era French mining engineer had become a reality, as an English engineer reached through a gap in the rubble, under the sea, half way between France and England, and handed his French counterpart a cuddly toy version of Britain’s most famous fictional immigrant: Paddington Bear.
Stories FTW
Everything our civilization has ever produced,
started as an idea,
took root as a story, and
became reality when someone told the story well enough to convince a lot of people to make it real.
The world needs people who are curious.
The world needs people who can create characters, and situations, and worlds that we want to make real.
What you do is not frivolous.
And it’s not easy.
It’s hard to do alone.
If November looks like it might be a hard month for you (and December, and January), it’s worth finding a place that is a refuge.
Next week I’m opening up membership in the StoryADay Superstars for the next six months, because we need to be together.
I’ll have some more information (and some really nice bonuses) for you over the next few days.
If you want to know more, sign up here
You’ll get a free “Creative Commute” lesson and worksheet, and I’ll know I should send you more information about the program.
Let’s keep writing through whatever life throws at us!
To ease eye strain, experts recommend that every 20 minutes we focus our eyes on something further away than our screens–ideally at least 20ft away– for at least 20 seconds.
As a trained historian, I feel the same way about the news: current events are thisclose. It wouldn’t hurt us to make a concerted effort to look away, periodically.
Fortunately fiction offers the perfect respite.
Today, why not step away from this place and time and read some Tolstoy or JM Coetzee, Nnedi Okorafor or Haruki Murakami, Kiran Desai or Ian Rankin.
Whether you’re voting in the US elections, or watching from abroad, or couldn’t care less about politics in a country you’re not in, this is a great time to remind yourself of the importance of writing.
Shrinking (Apple TV), from the people who brought you Ted Lasso, and with a similar sensibility (Content warning: a dead wife/mother killed by a drunk driver.)
The Dish – a quiet movie from 2000, starring Sam Neil, about a vital Apollo-era satellite dish in an Australian sheep paddock!
What would you recommend, for people looking to appreciate art and take a break from the here and now? Leave a comment.
Keep writing,
Julie
P. S. If you want to focus on your writing, stay tuned for a super-special offer coming this week, that will help you improve your writing and stick with it over the long term (what?! I know!!) Want to be among the first to know?
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Julie from StoryADay here with the podcast. This week I’m thinking about how we read and how we write and how the two are intermingled. I went on a bit of a rant with the StoryADay Superstars this week because the next edition of The Best American Short Stories of the year is just about to come out.
It’s going to be in my inbox on Tuesday. Physical inbox that is. And this is the 2023 edition. The 2024 edition is coming out, which will be full of literary fiction’s best stories as judged by last year, Min Jin Lee. This year it’s going to be Lauren Groff choosing the stories and I have a bit of a love hate relationship with this collection and I’m going to tell you why in a minute. But I’ll be reading it. One of the things that really struck me this week is that we do need to read short stories if we’re going to write them.
And not everybody likes to read short stories, but here’s where my rant about this particular collection comes in. This is my collection. collection I like to rant about. You may have other collections, anthologies, stories that you’ve been told you ought to love that you would like to rant about. The rant I have about this collection is that this is one particular type of short story.
This is a collection of literary fiction. These are the kinds of stories that people write when they take an MFA. program, a master of fine arts and creative writing. The people who write them for the most part are in that same world. They teach at universities, they study literature, they love to pick apart other people’s stories.
It’s art. It’s not commercial fiction. Some of it is enjoyable, but it’s not written the same way that a Marvel blockbuster is written, to entertain the masses. The problem I have with that, not anything to do with the art, the quality of the stories, anyone’s right to write that way, I have no problem with any of that.
The problem I have is that this collection is the most prominent collection of short stories that you will find in a bookstore, if it has any collections of short stories at all. And, many of you may have had the experience I had when I first moved to this country and picked up this collection of short stories probably in 1998, I think that’s the earliest one I have, is 1998, and I picked up that collection and I read it and I didn’t really like very many of the stories.
Because they weren’t written for me. to entertain the way that short stories I grew up reading from a collection more like this, the annual world’s best SF, which were really, science fiction, which were pulp, which were written to entertain. There were magazines of short romance fiction that came out weekly, My Weekly and things like that, which came out in Britain, which I had read short fiction that was commercial and written to entertain.
And these Artistic, beautiful, literary pieces in here written by people considering the nature of humanity and Oftentimes miserable about things that didn’t seem that important to me. Didn’t entertain me and I thought, as you may have thought, Maybe I just don’t like short stories anymore. Maybe I just don’t like short stories.
And the problem I have with this being one of the very few exemplars of short fiction in the world, in bookstores, in mass production, is that a lot of people pick this up thinking, oh, I should read short stories. I’ve been told I should write short stories because they help me master my craft, or I should read short stories because that’s what we read at school, and that’s what I was told was good, good for my brain, good for my soul, good for being part of the literary conversation.
And they pick up this one collection that’s available, and if it’s not to their taste, it’s very easy to rule out the whole form. That would be like listening to one rap song, and it not being particularly to your taste, and then ruling out the whole of hip hop. Listening to one Bach fugue. And saying, I don’t like classical music, when you’ve got Sibelius, and Debussy, and Tchaikovsky, and Madrigals, and all kinds of other instrumental music to choose from.
This collection is the one that everyone reaches for, especially when they get serious about writing. And I will read it. And I’ll read through them all. And I will find four. stories out of the 20 in there that I either feel something about, or that I admire, or that I want to pick apart and figure out how they did that, or that I say, oh I need to read more by that author.
I love short stories and that’s the most I ever find in this collection. There’s maybe one or two authors who I’ll then go and say, They might seek out their other short fiction, I might give them a shot as a novelist. Quite often it doesn’t always work out when short story writers make the transition to novel writing.
It doesn’t always go well, because they like writing short stories but there’s not the same market for short stories. It’s hard to make a living as a fiction writer as it is, and short fiction is even harder to make a living at. So most people transition to writing novels whether they want to or not. So I’ll go and I’ll find some authors from this collection who I like and I might follow them but I might not because I might not actually like the kind of stuff they’re doing if they’re in this very literary tradition which I admire but can sometimes leave me a little cold.
And usually with writers I find that I love the language but I’m also interested in their message and if somebody has a very bleak or bitter or down outlook, I’m less likely to want to read their stuff than if they’ve got a bit of a wink and a nudge and a optimism about humanity. Nothing about the quality of the writing in here.
A lot of literary fiction tends to be a little bleak, trauma informed. And it’s not always what I’m looking for. My point to you is that, if you want to write, Or if you just enjoy reading short stories, do not think that this is the gold standard. The best American short stories or, if you’re somewhere else and there’s a British short stories edition, there’s the Penn Faulkner awards, there’s all of these things that serve to support short story writers because they’re not writing commercial fiction and they can’t really be supported except by literary organizations and awards.
And yes, we should absolutely be supporting art for art’s sake. No argument from me there. But if you’re picking up those collections and reading them and thinking, Ugh, this isn’t for me. That doesn’t mean that you’re not meant to be a writer. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. It doesn’t mean that you can’t appreciate good writing.
You just may have got to the point in your life where you’re like, I don’t want to read this stuff anymore. I don’t want to read things that I don’t enjoy. Except occasionally I might want to read something to help me understand what the state of the art is.
That’s the next point I want to make. The state of the art in your industry is something that you do need to know. So if you’re writing science fiction and fantasy, get whatever the updated equivalent of this book is. This is the
1989 version of the annual World’s Best SF. And this is a collection of the kinds of stories that were winning Nebulas and Hugos back in 1989. There are updated versions of these, there are digital collections of everything that’s been nominated for prizes in the science fiction and fantasy world. I imagine that there’s similar stuff for everyone. Romance. I’m not sure how much short romance there is out there. I imagine that there’s I know that there’s stuff for mysteries and thrillers. And there’s probably stuff for spy novels. There’s probably something coming for romanticy. There’s certainly anthologies of all of these things.
And we do need to be reading in our Genre, because there are genre expectations which your readers are looking for. If I write a science fiction and fantasy story and make it heavily introspective and concentrating only on beautiful language and don’t include a lot of science fiction or spaceships or futuristic anything.
I’m going to be disappointing the science fiction writers. They may appreciate the beautiful language, but they’ve come for the science in my science fiction. And so there are norms and tropes in every industry, every area of the industry, every genre. And if you want to write short fiction, A, it’s good to know how short fiction differs from novels, which we all read.
And you only really figure that out by reading lots of it. But you don’t have to read stuff that’s not the norm in the genre or mood that you want to be writing in. Where do you find this stuff? You find it in lists of prize winners. If you’re in science fiction and fantasy, there’s things like the Nebulas and the Hugos, which always put out long lists, as well as the short list, as well as the winners.
There are anthologies both the monthly type and the ones that collect the best of a particular. Something with a particular theme, or something with particular types of writers, something wrapped around a particular mood. You can find those kinds of things. There are podcasts, which are, audio periodicals.
Things like Escape Pod, and they have Pseudopod, and various other things in that family, which deal with different types of genres. There are collections like this massive book behind me here, which is the big book of science fiction. There’s the art of the short story. There’s a Halloween one here.
There’s the Oxford book about the American short story. There are all kinds of collections of stories that you can pick up. And you don’t have to love them all. But you do have to familiarise yourself with the norms both because you want to know what readers are expecting and because having that kind of knowledge in your head when you sit down to write makes it so much easier.
I sat down to write a story this week, and I knew I wanted my opening scene to be A bunch of space colonists who’d gone down in a shuttle to a planet. Something had gone wrong, they were stranded, and now they have to get out of this situation. And I knew that I had read a story, once upon a time, that was quite like this.
Similar scenario it’s not A groundbreaking scenario, if we go out to colonize the universe or planets, or if we travel anywhere, at some point somebody’s going to get stuck. There’s going to be a crash, there’s going to be an obstacle. If I’m writing a story, there has to be an obstacle, otherwise it’s not a story, it’s just me writing about people on a planet, or on a journey.
But if there’s no obstacles to their goals, then it’s not, there’s nothing for the story to do. So I pulled down the Big Book of Science Fiction edited by Anne and Jeff Van Dammere because I knew that in there I had read a story and I happened to remember in this case that it was Surface Tension by James Blish, which is going to go in, my story is going to go in a completely different direction from where that story goes, which is a great story and you should read it, by the way, if you like science fiction.
Fascinating story. But I was curious. What does a really good story that has stayed with me for years, living somewhere in the back of my brain, how does a story like that open? What needs to go into an opening of Colony Ship Crashing on a Planet in order to hook me as a reader? So I went back and I read the opening page of Surface Tension by James Blish and I was surprised by how quickly I had all the information I needed to know.
It was a very spare opening with lots of conversation, the characters were set up in very brief interactions among the characters. I had the sense of the setting, I had the sense of the stakes in very few lines. And I don’t know about you, but I tend to overwrite a little. Because I’m a discovery writer and I’m writing to find out who are these people and what does it look like and blah, blah, blah.
And looking at that story, I was thinking, okay, so if I want to write like James Blish, I’m going to write this very spare. I don’t think I’m going to do that, but. Even folding in my preferences for, the level of description I want to do and all that kind of stuff and stake setting, I looked at that and I was like, okay, so in these first few lines, I need to establish all this stuff and it’s okay to leave out these things until later, because, this story that has been stuck in my head for years didn’t tell me Very much about the rest of the crew.
It didn’t tell me very much about the setting. It didn’t set up how they were going to tackle this problem. I was completely surprised on about, halfway down page two, when their solution for the problem was nothing like I thought it was going to be.
Even though I’d read the story I’d forgotten what their solution was going to be. None of that needed to be in the opening paragraphs and I was still hooked because I was sufficiently interested in the characters and their circumstances. So that reassured me as I set out to write my story that I could leave some stuff out.
There were certain things I wanted to include. But everything didn’t have to go into the open, which in turn allowed me to make progress on my story. And it’s going to go in a completely different direction, and it’s going to be nothing like the story that I used as a touchstone, as a reference. But I know I’m on the right track if I open my story in such a way that people know some of the same things that I knew reading Surface Tension by James Blish.
And this is why I encourage you to read widely in the form that you’re writing. If you’re writing romance novels that are in a series that are regency where there are seven sisters and they all need to get married, make sure you’ve read a lot of those, right? Read a lot of those. And you don’t have to be afraid that you’re going to be copying because there are certain.
norms that you need to use and your way of expressing that your preferences, your values, your life lessons are going to be going into those stories. So I just don’t even worry about people saying, Oh, I’ve read something like this before. Yeah, you have, but you haven’t read this before. And people who like particular types of stories and genres, they’re going to be annoyed at you if you’re lazy.
If you write a time travel story and you don’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem with time travel in that if you go back in time and you kill your own grandfather, you don’t exist. You’ve gotta acknowledge those things or write around them or, make it clear that’s not what this kind of story is about.
Don’t just be oblivious of all of the norms in your field. But you do get to use the same kinds of setups because we are humans and we go through life and we are born, we grow, we make friends, we fall out with people, we fall in love, we have children, we get jobs, we die. And amongst all of that there are some common experiences.
So you’re never going to write original. And it can be handy to have stories in your head that serve as touchstones for you. Like when I pulled down that story and looked at how does he open a story about a ship crashing and the survivors have to do something about it. You know I could pull that one down, I could pull down, there’s a C.
S. Lewis story I’m thinking of that has a similar kind of thing. Obviously Ray Bradbury’s got his Martian Chronicles, which is not so much about people crashing, but it is about people isolated on a planet. There’s the Martian, I’m on a Mars kick apparently because I’m thinking about Ken Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and, the challenges of being in an extremely alien environment.
Those are all things that I could pull off the shelf and look at and think, how am I going to handle this thing, that thing? So reading widely is not optional, because we learn from reading, we get inspired by reading. But it’s also really handy to just have that mental library. It’s not You need to remember every story you ever wrote and I happened to remember the name of this story and think I want to write a story today.
I wanted to start this way. I remember this story and I remember who wrote it and which book it was in, right? And so I went and found it. You don’t even need that. You need to just know that there, you need to be familiar enough with these types of stories that you can either look them up or you can pull them from your mental memory bank and go okay, how does this work?
I am going to encourage you to read widely in whatever area you want to write. And if you don’t like this collection, the Best American Short Stories of whichever year, if you generally find that buying and reading this is a waste of your time because you don’t like these stories, There is nothing wrong with that, you do not need to read them, unless you want to get published in Ploughshares, or Zyzeva, or the Sewanee Review, or one of these publications that they pull from.
Then you need to read this, and you need to figure out what these authors are doing that gets them published in those publications. If these do nothing for you and leave you cold, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve got different tastes. You can read them. I read them largely because the writing itself generally provokes a reaction in me.
Sometimes it’s good and I go, oh, how did they do that? And sometimes it makes me go, oh my goodness, I can’t believe somebody thought this was good. Either way, I tend to have a strong reaction and that’s a good thing. Any collection that you read, you’re not going to like everything in it. And you’re going to wonder why the editors selected this story or that story.
If you are in a good place, your reaction is likely to spur you to write something because you’re going to go if that could get published, then I’m going to write something better.
Speaking of which, I’m reading stories from this week’s Story of a Critique Week, and I am. enjoying a lot of very good writing. There’s some stuff that people are asking questions like, I don’t know if this works, and this is really first draft y, and I’m not sure, and there’s some stuff that I’m reading and going, Dang, this is good, this is close to ready.
I’m not quite sure what to say about this. But every meeting that we have, and we had one this morning, people discuss the stories, and the author invariably says, I don’t know what to That’s really helpful. Thanks for pointing out that part that wasn’t quite working. I knew it wasn’t, but I wasn’t sure.
And then everybody smiles and goes, yeah, you thought you were going to get away with that. You’re not, you have to clarify that part. And sometimes people say I knew something wasn’t working, but I wasn’t sure what, and Two or three people in the critique group have been able to say, You lost me here, or I was confused about this, or that seemed to come out of the blue.
And then the writer goes, Ah, got it, I understand. So showing your work to other people is really helpful. And next time I run a critique group, week here at Story A Day, which if you’re listening to this in real time will be February. I generally do them in February, June and October. I encourage you to look out for that, just to get fresh eyes on your writing.
Because if you do want to get published in one of these collections or anywhere, having people who will read your work and do the critical questioning of it that you are too close to it to do is very helpful. I, in the interest of reading a lot, I tend to go through phases where I read a lot and phases where I write a lot.
And then when I’m writing I tend to be pulling and like just getting inspiration from stories I’ve read previously. I have noticed that January tends to be a time when I settle down with a bunch of short story collections and read a bunch. And I’m doing it now as well, largely because This short story collection comes out now and a lot of the prize winners for next year are being publicised.
Things that probably will win prizes next year are being published or hyped or submitted to things so it’s quite easy to find long lists of short stories at this time of year. So I’m going to be doing a lot more reading. So I’m going to be reviving my reading room section at the Story A Day blog. I don’t love reading stories.
I’m thinking I have to write a report on this, so I only post stories that I’ve read that I really liked and have something that I think I can share with you as writers that is useful. So if you come over to the blog and look out for the reading room section you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I’m going to be doing that again. I’m really currently trying to resist the idea of starting a book club around short stories and short story anthologies. I really want to do it but I’m trying to figure out how to fit that in. Because I do a lot of stuff around here already. But I do think it’s so important that we read and discuss what we’re reading and what’s going on.
talking, speaking to us. We do it in the superstars group within that critique week and if you apply and join us just for critique week you’ll get that. I do think there’s a need for us to do it even more. So I’m currently resisting the idea of starting a book club but that usually means that I’m figuring out a way to get over my objections.
So watch out for that and if you’re interested, in that kind of thing, like maybe once a month turning up and talking about a bunch of short stories that we’ve read that month. Send me an email julietstoryaday. org and let me know you’d be interested. It won’t be free because I need to eat but it might be something that’s useful for us to do because as you’ve just heard me talking for 26 minutes it’s really important to read short stories if you want to write them.
And if you don’t think you like short stories, I bet there are short stories out there that you do oh, I meant to go off on a rant about not reading just classic stories or studying classic stories because they’re not what’s getting published now, but that’s essentially what I want to say. Don’t just read classic stories because they’re free and because everybody talks about them.
Yes, they’re part of the tradition, but they’re not what’s getting published now, and I don’t think they would get published now because tastes change. So if I run a book club, it won’t be on classic stories in general. It’ll be on what’s publishing now. That’s what I have for you this week. This podcast has been a little, the timing has been a little sporadic in terms of how many episodes I’m releasing at the moment.
That’s a function of summertime. Summertime has ended, so I’ve also got some interviews lined up. for the next few months. So there’s a new sort of season of this podcast coming and I think you’re going to be hearing from more guests because I don’t want you just hearing from me.
I have lots to say but I’ve said a lot of it. There are 300 episodes of this thing. I’ve said a lot of it. I’m learning more stuff all the time but I think it’s interesting to get guests in here to talk to you as well. So keep an eye out for that. Share the podcast if you’re enjoying it and most of all, Keep writing.
I’m sitting here at my desk: time to write, a story to work on, all my tools on my desk.
And I’m stuck.
(Actually I’m not stuck anymore, and that’s why I’m writing this: so that when you find yourself in this situation, you might remember what I’m about to tell you and get yourself unstuck too.)
Sometimes blocks are about our fears (“I’m not good enough”) or our frustrations (“I’ll never get published, so what’s the point?”) – both of which are lies, by the way.
But sometimes it really is about the story not working.
The first thing to know about this is that EVERYONE experiences this. Novices, experienced writers, and award-winning writers. Every writer starts stories that get away from them a bit.
The trick is to know what to try when it happens.
The second trick is to keep going, when it’s hard.
Today i’m going to try to help a bit with the first trick, by walking you through what’s going on with my story.
The Idea
I had this idea for an advance party of colonists to land on a planet they’re planning to settle, only to crash on the way down.
Of course, they discover that the planet isn’t everything they thought it was, and they start to experience some strange side effects of being there.
The Plot
In my search for ‘what happens next’, I decided their quest would be to travel for three days across different hostile environments, to reach the rescue ship’s extraction point.
The Problem
As I wrote the set up to the story, I had a character wake from a medically-induced coma to discover that her crewmates were on the planet and already experiencing the weird side-effects of being there.
Then I was going to force them to trek across the planet for three days.
To make it interesting/realistic, I had an advance party of five people – one for each important function of the shuttle trip to the surface.
And this is where I made my first mistake: even though one of them doesn’t do much (for story reasons), that’s a lot of people to manage in a short story. I had barely introduced them all and I was pushing the 1000 word limit.
For a story that I was planning to bring in around 4000 words, I hadn’t left myself much room for the actual story!
The Resistance
Steven Pressfield famously says that “resistance’ in writers is/feels like an external force, pushing on us and trying to prevent us from doing our creative work.
So when I stalled at the point where I had to make my characters get up and begin their trek, I considered that:
Was I having internal resistance?
And my answer was:
Nope.
I was just doing it wrong.
I was stalled because I was overwhelmed by the prospect of coming up with several different environments on the planet that would cause obstacles to getting to the rendezvous point, guiding five distinct personalities through it with enough peril and banter to keep readers interested, and then come up with a final climax and resolution…all in the number of words a short story affords.
The Answer
I realized I was brainstorming a plan for a novella at the very least, not a short story,
Throw in a subplot about the geopolitical reasons they were there, or the secret sabotage efforts of one of the crew, maybe a romance, and I was working towards a novel!
(Note: I wasn’t outlining as such, but, having reached a sticking point, I was brainstorming what needed to come next.)
Short stories are short.
Which means the central idea they address has to stay smaller in scale than our imaginations are capable of making it.
I had to rein myself in.
If I wanted to keep the five characters and if I wanted this to be a short story not a novella–and I did–I probably needed to shrink the scale of the problem.
The New Idea
At this point, a new idea began to form:
What if the story is not about their trek across the planet, encountering obstacles? What if I bring the obstacles to them, and all they have to do is survive?
That way, I avoid having to come up with new settings, as well as coming up with ways to address the passage of time, and several different types of peril.
Show The Most Interesting Parts
This led me to another ‘aha’:
I had already come up with an intriguing idea: that the planet was affecting them all differently.
I had not, however, shown the reader any of that.
In other words, I had put all the most interesting parts in backstory and conversations:
“Oh, yeah, by the way, while you were asleep, all these weird things happened. Look, let me show you the aftermath.”
Yawn!
That was me – the writer – telling myself the story.
What if I showed the reader that weird and wonderful stuff as it was happening?
Now I was starting to get excited about the story again.
I was thinking on a scale that would work in short fiction.
I didn’t have to come up with a whole bunch of new ideas
I immediately started thinking of fun ways to show what I had already described in my opening 1000 words, that would allow me to tell a whole story without overloading the reader with new settings and adventures.
Starting Again Without Starting Again
When a story stalls, it is oh, so tempting to throw it out and go with the shiny new idea that presents itself.
But by digging into what I know a short story is and should be, I found my way back to the thing that excited me about this story in the first place.
So sure, I had a lot of ideas that I’m discarding.
Sure, I have to go back to the beginning and write it completely differently.
But now I get to play around with the ideas I already came up with instead of overwhelming myself—and potential readers—with too many new ideas.
And I have a story idea (the trek across the planet) that I can use at another time.
Give It A Try
Want to diagnose your ‘stuck’ story and find a cure?
Download a worksheet to help you ask yourself smart questions and unstick your story.
Show, Don’t Tell during the One-Story Challenge, AND don’t be afraid of marketing your writing!
This week’s StoryADay podcast is about loving your writing and sharing the love! Yes, there is stuff about marketing your writing in here, but don’t let that put you off.
[00:00:00] Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon, Julie, from StoryADay here. And I have a couple of things I want to talk to you about this week. Both of which are topics of conversation in the story of the community. And the first one. Is to do with getting the writing done and the craft of doing the writing.
[00:00:21] And I’m going to talk to you about that and the second things a little bit about marketing your work, because there are so many people in this community who’ve been writing for awhile. Now, storyADay May has generated a lot of content. And it’s been running for 15 years and people who started writing before it even started.
[00:00:40] And who’ve been consistently coming back and writing every year. They have generated a lot of material. They’ve learned a lot. They’ve got some great stuff and a lot of them are at the stage of getting their work out into the world. A lot of people who are getting their work out into the world are drawn to this community because of how seriously we take the writing,
[00:00:58] and I suspect the, how seriously we don’t take ourselves, it’s probably a bit of a draw as well. So when talk about both of those things today, but I’m not going to go too long, so let’s get to it.
[00:01:09] First of all. As I record this, it is September and I want to make a plea. If you haven’t jumped into the one story challenge yet this month. It is not too late. We spent the first week drafting a new story for people to play with.
[00:01:27] You could bring a story you’ve already got, and you could review the materials I provided in week one in no time at all. Generate a new story. If you need to, or bring something that you’ve already been working on. This week, we’re getting into the Show, don’t tell lessons of the challenge. So my promise with this one story challenge was that we would take the whole month to work on a single story. You could start from scratch and write the story.
[00:01:54] Then we would delve into this one particular craft technique that gets talked about all the time and drives people crazy. It’s really effective. It’s really powerful, but it’s become one of those. Things that people see and things that people beat you over the head with in critique groups, if you’re not showing you’re telling and what does that even mean?
[00:02:17] So that’s what we’re talking about in the one story challenge. We’re going from the first week where we’ve been drafting stories to. This week where we’re looking at what. Is really meant. By show don’t tell so on Sunday, I’m going to release that lesson. And if you haven’t jumped into the challenge yet, this is perfect timing.
[00:02:38] Jump into the challenge. It is currently priced at $30 for the month and it will never be this price. Again, I tell you that because I’ll be able to get a ton of work into it, and I’m really proud of it. And as I go through this I’m trying to make sure that the information is clear and doled out in a way that is bite size, fun size. And that you get to go through it. While also having a life. While also having obligations and maybe you’ve got kids going back to school.
[00:03:07] Maybe you’ve got parents who need driven to medical appointments. Maybe you’ve got birthday parties coming up, whatever. It is that you have going on in your life. I’ve developed this challenge, which is very unlike story a day may, which is very like, hit the ground running and writes already everyday. This is a kinder, gentler challenge.
[00:03:24] This week we’re going into what really is. Show don’t tell anyway. And we’re doing exercises that will let you take parts of your story and try out different. Versions of show don’t tell because there’s lots of ways that you can apply that advice. Within a story. And there are places where you shouldn’t apply that advice.
[00:03:49] So we’re talking about that this, the first part of that this week, w we’ll try things out, And the opening or in a scene in the middle, I’m not giving away any spoilers, but that’s what we’re going to be working on this week. Every day. There’ll be an exercise that we’ll let you tweak and play with this technique and see. What it can do for your story and what you like about it and what you dislike about it.
[00:04:09] And just be able to talk about it, defend your work in critique groups in a more confident manner. Because it does get overused next week, we will look at more holistically at the whole story. Not next week. The third week of September. We’ll look more holistically at the whole story. And we will look at ways to see. What proportion of showing and telling you should be doing.
[00:04:34] And we are looking at this from a short story perspective. So although these skills. Can. Amplify and be used in a novel quite often, I find that in writing classes, techniques, when they are talked about from a novelist point of view, Don’t miniaturize. So we’re starting. From the point of view of a short story writer and saying, yeah, but how could I do this in a short story? And so that’s really what we’re going to be looking at the third week of September. And everything that we learn in practice can of course be expanded.
[00:05:10] And I think that’s a little easier than trying to shrink things down and take novel techniques. And. And make them work for short fiction. So that’s what’s going on in the one story challenge.
[00:05:30] And the fourth week. Is going to be, when I focus on helping people get the story really finished, but also on one other thing that everyone needs to do, if they’re going to.
[00:05:45] Do this for the long haul. If you are going to make consistent progress, there is a way to, there’s a thing you need to do. At the end of projects. Which will make it more likely that you’re going to keep working without feeling burned out and stay excited about the project that you just finished, actually finished projects.
[00:06:08] All of that can suck. So we’re going to talk about that in week four of the one story challenge as well. So if that sounds good, come over to story. A date.org forward slash one story challenge. Nope, that’s not right. One story, sign up. I’ll put the link in the notes. There’s hyphens in between those words. I will put that into the show notes so that you can come over and join us because you probably have a story already that you can use.
[00:06:34] You can jump in and use these techniques on. So if you weren’t with us for week one, It doesn’t matter, you can review that material, but bring a story that you’ve already started. When I first run a workshop. Like this that’s exactly what I encouraged people to do was to bring a story that was already. In progress.
[00:06:52] So nothing lost. If you haven’t joined us for week one, you’ll still have access to those materials, but you will get the show. Don’t tell lesson this week, then next week you’ll get the. The making a scene. Version of the next step of that. And then the week four will be all about putting the story to bed. And staying enthusiastic about it.
[00:07:13] So hopefully I’ve intrigued you, but not giving away too much because I want you to join us. I don’t want you to just think about it, don’t just think, oh, I’ll learn that later. Because take talk, Time’s moving on. Life keeps passing us by. And if you start today, you’re going to be so much better in two years than if you start in two years.
[00:07:31] So you’re not.
[00:07:35] You’re not standing still.
[00:07:40] I hate to say this. But if you’re not writing. You’re getting rusty. So I put together these challenges to stop you from suffering the feet that I suffered after years of not writing. Creatively. And discovering that it was so hard to get going again. So I put together all these challenges to give you little ways to get back to your rating. Because it makes you happy.
[00:08:02] It makes you more who you are. So anyway, enough about that, you’ve heard me say that stuff before.
[00:08:07] Marketing
[00:08:07] Let’s talk, marketing everyone’s favorite topic. One of the things that’s come up in the StoryADay Superstars group. Is the idea of doing author newsletters. So we’ve been talking a lot about that. And I’ve been talking a lot to a group of entrepreneur, friends of mine about how to. write. Stories in newsletters and emails and marketing materials, that don’t necessarily involve you exposing your entire personal life. Now. We as writers. Have such a leg up on, on people who are just like, I want to be in business and sell a thing. But they understand they need to do marketing.
[00:08:51] They understand they need an email list. They understand that they need to be posting on social media, engaging their followers and having an avatar and all of that stuff. They understand it, but they don’t necessarily have the writing background to make it work. So it’s a harder lesson for me to teach them.
[00:09:08] But if I tell you. That you can write a short story. About. You know your interaction with the barista today. Or about a D something that happened in history or something that you researched for your novel, you get it, you understand, you could put together like a paragraph about that stuff. You could make it compelling.
[00:09:30] You know how to do that. You just need, I think remaindered as everyone does that when people talk about marketing and putting yourself out there, It doesn’t have to be all of you. It has to be the things that you notice. The things that come out of your brain, the things that matter to you. In your fiction writing
[00:09:54] your values come through. Your preoccupations come through. Your passions come through. If you think that, there’s the life is a zero sum game, that comes through in all of the choices that your characters make, all of the outcomes of your novels. If you think that by giving you receive then, and that you expand the pie by giving away tasters, then that comes through in your stories, every choice your characters make your protagonist, probably not your antagonist, but your protagonist is going to make those kinds of choices.
[00:10:33] It’s. It’s really hard to hide your values from your fiction. When we talk about being authentic in your marketing it’s not that you have to share pictures of your family or talk about where you went on vacation or talk about your politics or your religion or any of those things, but by sharing things that you’re interested in things that make you laugh, things that make you, go, huh? You will draw people to you who like the stuff that comes out of your brain?
[00:11:07] And I have a very specific reason I’m talking about this this week because it happened to me this week. I’ve been following a writer on Instagram called Elizabeth Wheatley, for a while. And I’ve been following her largely because she does a very silly thing. She has a character. That she has created called Book Goblin. Who she talks to.
[00:11:32] It’s one of those Instagram things where, the same person is playing both characters, but she talks to Book Goblin, Book Goblin is very obsessive about books. And so she’s used Book Goblin to talk about. Controversies that have come up in her zone, which is a fantasy, I think like romance/fantasy and there’s various. Overlapping genres there. But she’s used conversations with Book Goblin to , talk about control of receipts that have popped up.
[00:11:57] She’s used it to talk about her upcoming releases. She’s used it to talk about why you can’t find her books on Amazon or at least not when they’re first released. So anyway, I follow her largely because I saw a Book Goblin sketch and I thought it was funny. And then I started to like all of the stuff that she was posting. And. Eventually, when she announced a new book, I thought, you know what? I have had so much entertainment from her,
[00:12:26] I think that the brain that created a Book Goblin, probably has some other characters in it that I might enjoy. So even though fantasy is not my first love, and that is definitely what she’s writing. I thought, you know what. I’ll give it a try. So the new book coming out, I thought, you know what, I’ll go back to the first book in the series. I will read I’ll by it.
[00:12:48] I’ll read it. And as aforementioned, she doesn’t Promote her books through Amazon, barnes and noble and things like that. She sells them directly from our website, which I can respect. Okay. So I went over to the website. The first book in the series is $7, which is more than you would charge if you were slavishly. following the advice of all the indie author. experts out there who tell you, the first book in the series should be free or it should be 99 cents.
[00:13:14] And then you should put everything on Kindle unlimited so that people can get it. And. There’s so much advice out there and she’s not following any of that. She’s doing her own thing. And so I was like, oh, cool. That’s interesting. What, $7 for a book, but I might not like, but I’ve already been following her for awhile and consumed $7 worth of, value from what she’s given me.
[00:13:36] So I’ll buy the book. And I’ll I probably won’t like it, but I’ll buy the first book and we’ll see.
[00:13:43] I like the book. My instinct that the person who showed up.
[00:13:49] bravely, boldly and authentically on Instagram and created this book, Goblin Character, my instinct that this person probably had other characters in their brain that I would enjoy hanging out with was absolutely spot on. Now, understand. I am not saying, that you need to start recording videos that you need to have a character that you need to do sketches any of that stuff you absolutely do
[00:14:17] not. What I am seeing. Is that if you can find a way to show us a little bit of your author self. That part of you that is. Uniquely you, The part of you that goes down rabbit holes. Researching the weaving methods of Flanders textile merchants staff in the 14 00s. And spends three days reading about warp and weft and dye stuffs. You can share some of that stuff with us.
[00:14:57] You are not going to appeal to everybody. You are going to appeal to people who are out there. Looking for someone who is that type of quirky they don’t even have to be interested in weaving, but they’re looking, people are scrolling through social media and they’re looking for something that makes them feel a connection.
[00:15:19] And if you show that level of authenticity, show your weird, show your obsessions. Don’t tell us about your kids and your holidays and what you had for lunch unless that is your obsession and you don’t mind sharing those things. But if you collect vintage high heels show us those. It doesn’t really matter if it’s connected to what you’re writing, because if I like your brain. I’m probably going to like your stories.
[00:15:50] So that’s my message today. Is that Authenticity willl draw the right people to you, and it will repel the wrong people away from you. And anyway, I really have to go now because I have to find out what’s going on with Amira and Daindreth, and I need to read my book. Book. BOOK!
Write the opening of your story and plan to move past it
We’re starting today by paying off all the hard work you did yesterday, and writing your opening: just up until you’ve shown us the character in the midst of dealing with their problem (possibly the way they always have).
NOTE: at this stage we are not worried about ‘show, don’t tell’. We’ll work on that in a few days.
For today: just draft the story however comes naturally.
You might have too much detail
You might have no detail at all
That’s OK, We’ve got the rest of the month to figure out what you need to do…
Also today, you’ll brainstorm some of the middle of the story. This is the part where most stories stall. But not this week!
P. S. You’ll need about 45 minutes for each day’s tasks. I’ve broken them up into segments so that if you only have a little bit of time, here and there, you can still do everything you need to do!
Too often people start writing before they have more than a simple premise for a story. They have a cool idea, but no clue where to take it. We’re going to work on that part this week, but rest assure, by tomorrow, you’ll have a much better idea of how to develop your cool idea into a real story.
Another problem I often see is that people rush through the first draft of a short story in one sitting (that’s part of the appeal of short stories, right?!), leaving themselves rushing the ending, and not really knowing what the story is about…
A couple of days ago I asked you how you felt about the concept of working on one story during September, with a focus on the idea of ‘show, don’t tell’.
Lots of people loved the idea of spending the month in focused practice, working on one story.
“Love, love, love this idea!” – Christina
“Going deep on technique and taking time to develop a piece sounds wonderful to me.” – Elizabeth
“Yes for the one story idea! “ – Yvonne
“ I have had a hectic summer and really could use some motivation in September to focus on my craft.” -Sukie
“Oh I simply love the idea. Of course I do understand how important it is in a story but yeah, I need a lot of practice.” – Riana
“I love the idea of focusing on a single story over the course of a month” – Daryl
“I love trying to show, not tell, and welcome practice and information! I’m in!” – Melanie
“I somewhat understand but would love the practice.” -Sheila
“ I definitely need more help in showing more than telling.” – Leslie
“ It will be a good exercise in trying to finish and polish one good story.” – Prachi
“It would be great to have the prompts and feedback to guide us instead of letting us wander around.” – Mike
“Any opportunity to improve or develop the skill is very welcome.” – Caroline
“I’m in!” – Neha
Other people had strong feelings about ‘show, don’t tell’, itself:
“The logical part of my brain knows the difference between the two, but the creative part doesn’t always know which would work better while drafting” – Michele
“To be (very) honest, ‘show don’t tell’ is a phrase that gives me the ick…Perhaps re-branding in some way would be useful.” – Katie (btw, I love this suggestion- JD!)
I don’t think I quite understand when it’s better to show or tell. ..82% of the time, I will over-describe…” – Taryn
“I have a love, hate relationship with ‘show don’t tell’ because sometimes telling is the best practice for the scene and other times showing is.” – Taylor (Totally agree – JD)
“Show-don’t-tell has led me to create some agonizingly dull prose..I get the concept but still struggle to find the right balance.” – Shan
“I’m a very verbal person, and showing/not telling doesn’t come easily for me, so I’d really appreciate some examples and tips for how to do it better.” – Elizabeth
“ Sometimes the rule can be used as an unhelpful bludgeon in critique.” – Walter
“I understand ‘Show, don’t tell’, but find it more difficult with shorter word counts. I’d be interested in learning more about how to do that.” – Pat
So here’s what we’re going to do in September:
The One-Story Challenge: Show, Don’t Tell Edition
It’ll work a little bit like the regular StoryADay May challenge, with me providing inspiration and assignments every day, only this time we’ll be working on the same story all month.
In Week 1 we’ll draft a story – fast and messy, just telling ourselves the story.
In Week 2 we’ll dive into what “Show, Don’t Tell” means, and identify place in our stories where each technique would work better.
In Week 3 we’ll practice ‘making a scene’ in those parts of the story where ‘show’ definitely makes the most sense. We’ll think about character, pacing, tension, senses, and refine our ability to speed through the narrative sections that keep readers turning the pages.
In Week 4 we’ll talk about things like revision strategies and other topics that have raised their heads during the early weeks of September.
At the end of the month you’ll have a complete, polished story and a deeper understand of why, when, and how to use ‘show’ and ‘tell’.
(I’m hoping that, by the end of the month we’ll also have come up with a less annoying term to describe what we’re doing, so watch out for that!)
It’ll be a much slower-paced challenge than StoryADay May, so don’t panic if you have ‘back to school’ or other demands on your time. This will fit in around your other obligations, with just a little effort.
Next Steps
I’m still tightening some screws and adjusting some furniture behind the scenes, but I’ll have details about how you can sign up, ready for you, tomorrow*.
In the meantime, leave a comment here, and let me know how you feel about this (if you haven’t already).
Learn the secrets of success from resilient people (and steal some strategies while you’re here),
Sometimes it seems like success comes easily to other people when it feels so elusive to us. But there are secrets to making it more likely you’ll be one of those success stories, and that’s what I’m talking about this week on the StoryADay Podcast. Whether you’re a writer or not, I think you’ll like this one!
[00:00:00] Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon, Julie, from story a day here I am just back from my travels. I got to go to Scotland again last week to visit family for very happy reasons. My parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Congratulations, you guys.
[00:00:14] But I wanted to talk this week about. Something that comes very easily when you’re traveling and you’re in a new environment, which is seeing the wonder in everything, seeing the novelty in everything, seeing the world anew.
[00:00:31] It’s something that is easy to do when you’re away. It’s harder to do when you’re in your everyday routine.
[00:00:38] But I think that’s one of the gifts that we have as writers. We are endlessly curious. And sometimes we just need a little remainder to wake that curiosity up. And. I don’t know about you, but when I’m thinking about. writing a product, for example, writing a story that I want to send to a particular market. Or writing a novel for a particular audience or in a particular genre. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the expectations of the outcome. And to try and live up to our expectations.
[00:01:17] And that can take a lot of the fun. Out of the process of writing.
[00:01:22] Whereas.
[00:01:24] Discovering new stuff is really fun. And I’m going to encourage you to try and get some of the fun back into your writing by introducing some more fun into your life this month, this week, this month. And so for example, Last week, when we arrived at London Heathrow to change for our plane to Glasgow, we discovered when we turned on our phone and all the other phones on the plane beeped as well, Or at least half of them did, that’s our flight to Glasgow had been canceled and in their infinite wisdom, British Airways had decided that, . Telling us that we were going to rebooked on a flight. Two days, hence was an acceptable solution. So after some. Nervous laughter and a consultation with the people who they let us talk to.
[00:02:19] We weren’t allowed to talk to the actual help desk people, but the bouncers who were keeping us away from them. We said, what are we supposed to do? And they laughed and said, you could take a train. And we laughed because what else are you going to do? And said, I actually, you’re right,
[00:02:33] we could. So we did, because apparently you can just jump on the underground at Heathrow and go into the city and catch the train to Glasgow. So we did that. And it was great because we got to then instead of seeing the insides of Terminal Five and the jet way and another airplane and seeing, A little bit of London as we took off.
[00:02:53] And a little bit of Glasgow as we landed. We actually got to troll right through the middle of the country. We went up the west coast from London. We went up the west side of the country, of the UK. So skirting Wales and going through the industrialized north with their, the wonderful old factories and all brick chimneys.
[00:03:13] They’re few and far between though, but you still can see the origins of industrial revolution era towns nestled in river valleys. We got to see the flat pastoral land of the south of England. We got to see the hills of the Lake District, we got to see the forests of the Borders of Scotland. And then all of a sudden there we were, heading into Glasgow. In all its industrial revolution, era majesty and getting off at my, one of my favorite train stations, Glasgow Central, which is near and dear to my heart with soaring roofs, and just a hustle and bustle of people. And so it was a, it wasn’t a terrible outcome for us to have to take that. And as we were whizzing through the countryside.
[00:03:58] Every time I looked out of the window, it was a different landscape. So the reason I was thinking about that is that I was, following along with people who are heading to Glasgow this week for World Con, which is a big science fiction and fantasy convention, and somebody else was taking the train from London to Glasgow. And they posted a picture of their laptop screen on which they were watching the classic SciFi movie, The Matrix, and, Judgey McJudgerson here. I was just in my head I was just screaming, look out the window.
[00:04:29] Obviously you’re welcome to do whatever you want when you’re traveling And if watching The Matrix got them in the mood for their scifi con good for them. But I having just done the trip, I was like, ah, look out the window. You’re missing so much. And it does strike me as ironic actually that they were watching The Matrix and missing The real world going by on the window outside, but that’s, that’s a topic for another day.
[00:04:51] So what is what. What struck me. And then as I spent the next few days, visiting places that were both familiar and unfamiliar to me, because I grew up there. And I’ve been gone for a long time. I was appreciating things that other people weren’t even looking at. I was taking pictures of the purple loose strife, which is everywhere on the verges and the sides of rules on the sand dunes,
[00:05:17] At this time of year. It’s an upright green plant that grows in very dry conditions and it’s it’s a weed basically, and it’s gorgeous this purple flowers that break out everywhere and create great big swaths of purple in the land.
[00:05:32] And I was bending down and taking pictures of the low growing purple heather.
[00:05:37] And I was, listening to the seagulls and not seeing them as a pest because I just don’t see them very often anymore.
[00:05:45] And watching the patterns that the water makes in the edge, the wet edge of the sand as as the tide comes in and out. And as adults, we don’t always get time to stop and appreciate those kinds of things.
[00:06:01] And yet the people who do, people like the poet, Mary Oliver, people, poets in general… one of the reasons that people are drawn. To poetry is because there are people who make the choice to stop and look and observe and make connections between the running water and something in our everyday lives as writers.
[00:06:30] We need to actually create space and time.
[00:06:35] Too. Just be. In the world. And observe.
[00:06:40] And process. And noodle.
[00:06:42] And sometimes that means stepping away from product writing.
[00:06:48] In May, I encourage you to start and complete a story every day to get in the habit of creating complete works, things that can be turned into products, something for someone else to consume.
[00:07:01] But sometimes we just need to practice.
[00:07:03] I’ve been watching a lot of baseball this year. And , we see the players come out onto the field in their nice uniforms and their colorful socks and we see them step up to the plate once, once in a while.
[00:07:18] And then they go and sit down for a bit and it looks like a kind of an easy job, but if you watch what they do before the game, they turn up early. And the drill, they just stand there, whacking balls. They work out in gyms, they practice, sprinting, the practice throwing and catching, different different kinds of Keynes of throws different positions, different. place to try and catch different people out. None of that is on display for the audience. And yet if they didn’t do that work, what did show up at game time would be a sloppy mess. So we need to remember that sometimes going for a walk or a drive, or watching a, documentary or reading a non-fiction book or listening to a conversation someone else’s having in a coffee shop and then creating space to just noodle on that.
[00:08:16] Just doodle, just create little word salads for ourselves that aren’t necessarily part of the product that we are going to put out, is vital. This is a vital part of writing. Adding new words to a manuscript is wonderful. But celebrate the team that you spend
[00:08:39] doing things that feed your writing.
[00:08:42] My theme here at StoryADay this month is Triumph, and I’m going to be talking a lot about things to celebrate, both in your own writing in other people’s writing, in the writing world in general, in the reading world. Because that celebration of all the things that are good and the celebration of things that are curious and unusual and the connections that we can make, celebrating that stuff. Is what keeps us energized.
[00:09:15] It keeps us curious.
[00:09:17] If you can, this week, I am going to encourage you to try and vary your routine. Celebrate this world we live in and this existence we have. We don’t always feel like doing that. There’s plenty of bad in the world, and looking at that is important so that we can challenge it and fight it, but also celebrating the things that make us go, Ooh, Is really important as well.
[00:09:49] So this week I challenge you to very routine and find wonder wherever you are. You don’t need to get on a plane and travel to another country to see your world anew.. Take a new route home from work and really notice your surroundings.
[00:10:07] Go to a different grocery store and try and find all your usual stuff. See what they’ve got this different.
[00:10:14] This Week’s Assignment
[00:10:14] Wind your windows down on the way home and listen. Smell. Feel the air around here. Is it warm? Is it called? What smells can you smell better yet? Get an, a bike and cycle and remind yourself that travel doesn’t always need to be insulated and isolated from the world around you.
[00:10:37] Take off your headphones and listened to the world. As you walk through it.
[00:10:41] If you’re feeling brave, talk to a stranger. You don’t have to have anything interesting to say, ask them about themselves. Try to find out what it is that gets them excited. Try and find that one thing that lights them up. One guy I knew that the thing that lit him up was British empire era. armies And their equipment and their campaigns.
[00:11:03] And although I wasn’t terribly interested in them, it’s so fun to find somebody else’s passion and then step back and watch them late up. And as a writer, you get to watch how it changes their whole physicality when someone is talking about the thing they’re excited about.
[00:11:18] If you don’t want to talk to somebody order a different type of coffee in the coffee shop while you’re there listening to people and then try to describe The taste, the smell, the feel the The heat of it, in words on the page.
[00:11:35] Visit a museum that you have never been to since a school trip took you there, or since your last out of town visitor came.
[00:11:43] If you live in Middleton, Wisconsin, there’s a National Mustard Museum there. Have you been there?
[00:11:48] Another way that you can find wonder is to simply wander the Nonfiction. stacks at your local library and pull a book off the shelf. I did that recently and it was great fun.. It challenged me. And it sparked all kinds of ideas in my head, not entirely related to the content just related to sitting there reading.
[00:12:07] I just grabbed a book. Sat down at a table. And spent 15, 20 minutes leafing through the book, and thinking about the type of person it was intended for the type of person you would have to be to write this book. The type of person who would spend time creating the intricate diagrams that this book was explaining. Just grab any nonfiction book off the stack and leaf through it.
[00:12:35] You’re not attempting to learn anything, you’re attempting to spark your imagination.
[00:12:41] Or simply stop and look, as I did at the weeds. Growing on a free growing patch of earth Somewhere near you right now. How many different types of plants are there. Are there flowers. Are they tiny? Are they huge. How much dirt are they growing in? What kind of insects can you see in there? Are they growing up through the cracks in the pavement, how are they doing that? Are they growing in what used to be a pristine lawn? Why is it no longer pristine? What kinds of insects feed on these flowers? What if you were insect sized, what would you make of these weeds?
[00:13:23] So many questions will start to pop up in your head. Don’t repress any of them. You don’t need to create an, a thing from this. Once you have done this exercise , when you have gone out into the world and trying to find some wonder in it, come over to the blog and leave me a comment.
[00:13:43] I’ll leave the link in the. In the description of the podcast and you can come over. It speeds. It’s just storyaday.org/find-wonder-everywhere is link and leave me a comment and let me know how you find wonder or how you found wonder this week?
[00:13:59] I’m not encouraging you to come up with a different novel idea every day or a different short story idea every day, but just to help you come up with things that spark your imagination and a low you, a little space to play with words.
[00:14:18] If you have a copy of, or are signed up for the story of the challenge handbook from earlier this year. You’ll find 31 of these types of exercises in the warmup section of that. If you haven’t got hold of the challenge handbook, yet you can get that.
[00:14:35] now, at a discounted price. storyaday.org/challenge-handbook. Again, the link’s in the description. If you’re on your phone, open up your podcast app, as long as you’re not not driving and click on this episode and the little information button, and you’ll find the links in there. Click on those, go through and have a look at the handbook.
[00:14:54] So in the handbook, it’s it’s not actually a book, it’s a, an online site where you get videos and exercises from me. And there’s 31 short story prompts, but every one of those has an attached brainstorming exercise, which is directly related to helping you brainstorm the topic of the, Of the prompt, but each one also has a warmup exercise and I encourage you to throughout the year, open those up and pick one at random.
And I always say in those Warm-up exercises, set a timer for five minutes and just free-write and I give you a topic and it’s usually sparked by a memory of yours or a question. And it’s usually related to the topic of that day’s prompt, but you can use these individually any day of the year when you’re feeling like writing, and you don’t know quite what to write, pull up one of these warm-up exercises from the challenge handbook.
[00:15:51] And do this, this play practice. Intentional play, where you dive deeply into a memory or an emotion or an experience or a something you’ve seen or something you’ve touched and guided by me. And then just write, just play with words for five minutes. And I almost guarantee it will take you out of whatever anxiety you have from your daily life, from the project that you’re trying to work on and it will remind you why you love to play with language.
[00:16:33] It’s a commute for you. It’s a mental commute. But it’s also a serious business.
[00:16:39] I start a Story A Day because I was sick of seeing writing exercises, which were exactly this kind of play because they weren’t connected to anything. And I didn’t really understand the importance Of writing snippets about you or a memory from your childhood of going up the stairs or whatever it was.
[00:16:57] And I got frustrated because I would buy a book of those exercises and then I would just be like, okay, so I’m writing, but I’m not really writing anything. So when I started StoryADay May, I was like we’re going to, we’re going to write, but it’s going to be with a purpose.
[00:17:09] We’re gonna write stories. And we’re going to learn to start, get through the middle and finish stories everyday. And that’s been great and it’s absolutely has its place, but this year I decided with the handbook to bring back in some of that warmup work, some of that practice. And you can choose to do the warmup and the brainstorming and the short story on the same day, or you can just dip in and any time that you want to write, you just pull it up, open up one of those warmup exercises and spend a little time experiencing the world. In a way that we don’t get time to do when we’re just charging through it, trying to get all the things done.
[00:17:49] Your gift to the world
[00:17:49] What we do as writers is a gift to other people. We give them the gift of being able to take a little bit of time to slow down and experience the world in a different way in the way that our ancestors experienced it. At that slower pace that everybody says they want but don’t quite know how to give themselves. What we do at writers is generous And
[00:18:15] healing, and it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort. And we might as well enjoy it as much as possible.
[00:18:23] So please this week, take up my challenge of taking some time every day to see the world in a new way, to pay attention to the details, to write those things down, to challenge yourself to play in a productive way with language and practice so that when you sit down to work on a particular project, that will turn into a product that you turn out into the world. You’ve got whole of this material banked inside your heart waiting to come out.
[00:18:58] That’s what I have for you this week. Check out the story at a challenge handbook. If you haven’t already it’s at storyaday.org/challenge-handbook. If you have checked it out already. And you have a copy, do yourself a favor and open it up this week. Pick one of the warmup exercises.
[00:19:17] Maybe do one a day. Maybe do one every three days. Do these exercises in addition to wandering through the world with your eyes wide open, breathing in all the smells and listening to all the sounds and touching all the things. And don’t forget to wash your hands. But most of all, keep writing.
[00:20:18] Thanks for listening. Why not come over to the blog at storyaday. org and check out this week’s writing prompts and articles. And in the meantime, have a great, creative week. And of course, keep writing.
In the wake of the Paris 2024 Olympic games, everyone is talking about the (mostly) good vibes we collectively experienced.
In one story, US gymnasts shared how much better everything felt now that they have ditched the old coaches, who ‘motivated’ them through fear and pain.
And oh look: the team still won gold!
It’s Not Just About The Podium
At every stage, we saw elite athletes congratulating each other (and themselves) on the incredible efforts they were making to be the best at what they do.
I have to imagine those celebrations happen every day—in the gym, at the track, when they successfully bypass the ‘snooze’ button—or those athletes wouldn’t have the resilience, the persistence to get to the finals.
Everyday Triumphs
In the StoryADay Superstars group we have a running thread called “Triumph”. It’s an invitation to catch ourselves doing well, and to share that with others, no matter how great or small.
Here are some recent examples:
“ After feeling like I’d fallen off a writing cliff, I FINALLY wrote a new scene for my novel-in-progress.”
“Got my new website/blog up. Is it the best thing ever? No. And I’ll make improvements later. But I feel it’s good enough for now and that I can Not Think About It for a while.”
“I submitted a story to a local arts council contest in April…I didn’t win… but all of the submitters had their stories printed in a book that will live on the local library shelf! Yay!”
“I received this message this week: We are pleased to announce that we have chosen your poem…for publication in Massachusetts Bards Poetry Anthology 2024.”
It takes a deep breath and a dose of courage for every writer to post their celebrations to this thread, Each post is met with cheers from the other people in the group.
As well as encouraging their peers, each writer who celebrates the wins in their daily life is telling themselves “this matters”.
Each person who stops to celebrate a win, reinforces a good writing habit.
Each person who does this, is building resilience and the odds of their being successful as a writer (whatever their definition of success happens to be.)
Can you think of something worth celebrating in your writing practice recently?
Read a story that inspired you?
Opened your journal and wrote honestly for ten minutes?
Opened an old project and thought “hey, this isn’t half bad?”
Added words to a new project?
Revised an existing project?
Researched a publishing opportunity?
Told someone “I’m a writer”?
Why not take a deep breath, screw up your courage and share your ‘win’ here?
[00:00:00] Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon, Julie, from story a day here I am just back from my travels. I got to go to Scotland again last week to visit family for very happy reasons. My parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Congratulations, you guys.
[00:00:14] But I wanted to talk this week about. Something that comes very easily when you’re traveling and you’re in a new environment, which is seeing the wonder in everything, seeing the novelty in everything, seeing the world anew.
[00:00:31] It’s something that is easy to do when you’re away. It’s harder to do when you’re in your everyday routine.
[00:00:38] But I think that’s one of the gifts that we have as writers. We are endlessly curious. And sometimes we just need a little remainder to wake that curiosity up. And. I don’t know about you, but when I’m thinking about. writing a product, for example, writing a story that I want to send to a particular market. Or writing a novel for a particular audience or in a particular genre. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the expectations of the outcome. And to try and live up to our expectations.
[00:01:17] And that can take a lot of the fun. Out of the process of writing.
[00:01:22] Whereas.
[00:01:24] Discovering new stuff is really fun. And I’m going to encourage you to try and get some of the fun back into your writing by introducing some more fun into your life this month, this week, this month. And so for example, Last week, when we arrived at London Heathrow to change for our plane to Glasgow, we discovered when we turned on our phone and all the other phones on the plane beeped as well, Or at least half of them did, that’s our flight to Glasgow had been canceled and in their infinite wisdom, British Airways had decided that, . Telling us that we were going to rebooked on a flight. Two days, hence was an acceptable solution. So after some. Nervous laughter and a consultation with the people who they let us talk to.
[00:02:19] We weren’t allowed to talk to the actual help desk people, but the bouncers who were keeping us away from them. We said, what are we supposed to do? And they laughed and said, you could take a train. And we laughed because what else are you going to do? And said, I actually, you’re right,
[00:02:33] we could. So we did, because apparently you can just jump on the underground at Heathrow and go into the city and catch the train to Glasgow. So we did that. And it was great because we got to then instead of seeing the insides of Terminal Five and the jet way and another airplane and seeing, A little bit of London as we took off.
[00:02:53] And a little bit of Glasgow as we landed. We actually got to troll right through the middle of the country. We went up the west coast from London. We went up the west side of the country, of the UK. So skirting Wales and going through the industrialized north with their, the wonderful old factories and all brick chimneys.
[00:03:13] They’re few and far between though, but you still can see the origins of industrial revolution era towns nestled in river valleys. We got to see the flat pastoral land of the south of England. We got to see the hills of the Lake District, we got to see the forests of the Borders of Scotland. And then all of a sudden there we were, heading into Glasgow. In all its industrial revolution, era majesty and getting off at my, one of my favorite train stations, Glasgow Central, which is near and dear to my heart with soaring roofs, and just a hustle and bustle of people. And so it was a, it wasn’t a terrible outcome for us to have to take that. And as we were whizzing through the countryside.
[00:03:58] Every time I looked out of the window, it was a different landscape. So the reason I was thinking about that is that I was, following along with people who are heading to Glasgow this week for World Con, which is a big science fiction and fantasy convention, and somebody else was taking the train from London to Glasgow. And they posted a picture of their laptop screen on which they were watching the classic SciFi movie, The Matrix, and, Judgey McJudgerson here. I was just in my head I was just screaming, look out the window.
[00:04:29] Obviously you’re welcome to do whatever you want when you’re traveling And if watching The Matrix got them in the mood for their scifi con good for them. But I having just done the trip, I was like, ah, look out the window. You’re missing so much. And it does strike me as ironic actually that they were watching The Matrix and missing The real world going by on the window outside, but that’s, that’s a topic for another day.
[00:04:51] So what is what. What struck me. And then as I spent the next few days, visiting places that were both familiar and unfamiliar to me, because I grew up there. And I’ve been gone for a long time. I was appreciating things that other people weren’t even looking at. I was taking pictures of the purple loose strife, which is everywhere on the verges and the sides of rules on the sand dunes,
[00:05:17] At this time of year. It’s an upright green plant that grows in very dry conditions and it’s it’s a weed basically, and it’s gorgeous this purple flowers that break out everywhere and create great big swaths of purple in the land.
[00:05:32] And I was bending down and taking pictures of the low growing purple heather.
[00:05:37] And I was, listening to the seagulls and not seeing them as a pest because I just don’t see them very often anymore.
[00:05:45] And watching the patterns that the water makes in the edge, the wet edge of the sand as as the tide comes in and out. And as adults, we don’t always get time to stop and appreciate those kinds of things.
[00:06:01] And yet the people who do, people like the poet, Mary Oliver, people, poets in general… one of the reasons that people are drawn. To poetry is because there are people who make the choice to stop and look and observe and make connections between the running water and something in our everyday lives as writers.
[00:06:30] We need to actually create space and time.
[00:06:35] Too. Just be. In the world. And observe.
[00:06:40] And process. And noodle.
[00:06:42] And sometimes that means stepping away from product writing.
[00:06:48] In May, I encourage you to start and complete a story every day to get in the habit of creating complete works, things that can be turned into products, something for someone else to consume.
[00:07:01] But sometimes we just need to practice.
[00:07:03] I’ve been watching a lot of baseball this year. And , we see the players come out onto the field in their nice uniforms and their colorful socks and we see them step up to the plate once, once in a while.
[00:07:18] And then they go and sit down for a bit and it looks like a kind of an easy job, but if you watch what they do before the game, they turn up early. And the drill, they just stand there, whacking balls. They work out in gyms, they practice, sprinting, the practice throwing and catching, different different kinds of Keynes of throws different positions, different. place to try and catch different people out. None of that is on display for the audience. And yet if they didn’t do that work, what did show up at game time would be a sloppy mess. So we need to remember that sometimes going for a walk or a drive, or watching a, documentary or reading a non-fiction book or listening to a conversation someone else’s having in a coffee shop and then creating space to just noodle on that.
[00:08:16] Just doodle, just create little word salads for ourselves that aren’t necessarily part of the product that we are going to put out, is vital. This is a vital part of writing. Adding new words to a manuscript is wonderful. But celebrate the team that you spend
[00:08:39] doing things that feed your writing.
[00:08:42] My theme here at StoryADay this month is Triumph, and I’m going to be talking a lot about things to celebrate, both in your own writing in other people’s writing, in the writing world in general, in the reading world. Because that celebration of all the things that are good and the celebration of things that are curious and unusual and the connections that we can make, celebrating that stuff. Is what keeps us energized.
[00:09:15] It keeps us curious.
[00:09:17] If you can, this week, I am going to encourage you to try and vary your routine. Celebrate this world we live in and this existence we have. We don’t always feel like doing that. There’s plenty of bad in the world, and looking at that is important so that we can challenge it and fight it, but also celebrating the things that make us go, Ooh, Is really important as well.
[00:09:49] So this week I challenge you to very routine and find wonder wherever you are. You don’t need to get on a plane and travel to another country to see your world anew.. Take a new route home from work and really notice your surroundings.
[00:10:07] Go to a different grocery store and try and find all your usual stuff. See what they’ve got this different.
[00:10:14] This Week’s Assignment
[00:10:14] Wind your windows down on the way home and listen. Smell. Feel the air around here. Is it warm? Is it called? What smells can you smell better yet? Get an, a bike and cycle and remind yourself that travel doesn’t always need to be insulated and isolated from the world around you.
[00:10:37] Take off your headphones and listened to the world. As you walk through it.
[00:10:41] If you’re feeling brave, talk to a stranger. You don’t have to have anything interesting to say, ask them about themselves. Try to find out what it is that gets them excited. Try and find that one thing that lights them up. One guy I knew that the thing that lit him up was British empire era. armies And their equipment and their campaigns.
[00:11:03] And although I wasn’t terribly interested in them, it’s so fun to find somebody else’s passion and then step back and watch them late up. And as a writer, you get to watch how it changes their whole physicality when someone is talking about the thing they’re excited about.
[00:11:18] If you don’t want to talk to somebody order a different type of coffee in the coffee shop while you’re there listening to people and then try to describe The taste, the smell, the feel the The heat of it, in words on the page.
[00:11:35] Visit a museum that you have never been to since a school trip took you there, or since your last out of town visitor came.
[00:11:43] If you live in Middleton, Wisconsin, there’s a National Mustard Museum there. Have you been there?
[00:11:48] Another way that you can find wonder is to simply wander the Nonfiction. stacks at your local library and pull a book off the shelf. I did that recently and it was great fun.. It challenged me. And it sparked all kinds of ideas in my head, not entirely related to the content just related to sitting there reading.
[00:12:07] I just grabbed a book. Sat down at a table. And spent 15, 20 minutes leafing through the book, and thinking about the type of person it was intended for the type of person you would have to be to write this book. The type of person who would spend time creating the intricate diagrams that this book was explaining. Just grab any nonfiction book off the stack and leaf through it.
[00:12:35] You’re not attempting to learn anything, you’re attempting to spark your imagination.
[00:12:41] Or simply stop and look, as I did at the weeds. Growing on a free growing patch of earth Somewhere near you right now. How many different types of plants are there. Are there flowers. Are they tiny? Are they huge. How much dirt are they growing in? What kind of insects can you see in there? Are they growing up through the cracks in the pavement, how are they doing that? Are they growing in what used to be a pristine lawn? Why is it no longer pristine? What kinds of insects feed on these flowers? What if you were insect sized, what would you make of these weeds?
[00:13:23] So many questions will start to pop up in your head. Don’t repress any of them. You don’t need to create an, a thing from this. Once you have done this exercise , when you have gone out into the world and trying to find some wonder in it, come over to the blog and leave me a comment.
[00:13:43] I’ll leave the link in the. In the description of the podcast and you can come over. It speeds. It’s just storyaday.org/find-wonder-everywhere is link and leave me a comment and let me know how you find wonder or how you found wonder this week?
[00:13:59] I’m not encouraging you to come up with a different novel idea every day or a different short story idea every day, but just to help you come up with things that spark your imagination and a low you, a little space to play with words.
[00:14:18] If you have a copy of, or are signed up for the story of the challenge handbook from earlier this year. You’ll find 31 of these types of exercises in the warmup section of that. If you haven’t got hold of the challenge handbook, yet you can get that.
[00:14:35] now, at a discounted price. storyaday.org/challenge-handbook. Again, the link’s in the description. If you’re on your phone, open up your podcast app, as long as you’re not not driving and click on this episode and the little information button, and you’ll find the links in there. Click on those, go through and have a look at the handbook.
[00:14:54] So in the handbook, it’s it’s not actually a book, it’s a, an online site where you get videos and exercises from me. And there’s 31 short story prompts, but every one of those has an attached brainstorming exercise, which is directly related to helping you brainstorm the topic of the, Of the prompt, but each one also has a warmup exercise and I encourage you to throughout the year, open those up and pick one at random.
And I always say in those Warm-up exercises, set a timer for five minutes and just free-write and I give you a topic and it’s usually sparked by a memory of yours or a question. And it’s usually related to the topic of that day’s prompt, but you can use these individually any day of the year when you’re feeling like writing, and you don’t know quite what to write, pull up one of these warm-up exercises from the challenge handbook.
[00:15:51] And do this, this play practice. Intentional play, where you dive deeply into a memory or an emotion or an experience or a something you’ve seen or something you’ve touched and guided by me. And then just write, just play with words for five minutes. And I almost guarantee it will take you out of whatever anxiety you have from your daily life, from the project that you’re trying to work on and it will remind you why you love to play with language.
[00:16:33] It’s a commute for you. It’s a mental commute. But it’s also a serious business.
[00:16:39] I start a Story A Day because I was sick of seeing writing exercises, which were exactly this kind of play because they weren’t connected to anything. And I didn’t really understand the importance Of writing snippets about you or a memory from your childhood of going up the stairs or whatever it was.
[00:16:57] And I got frustrated because I would buy a book of those exercises and then I would just be like, okay, so I’m writing, but I’m not really writing anything. So when I started StoryADay May, I was like we’re going to, we’re going to write, but it’s going to be with a purpose.
[00:17:09] We’re gonna write stories. And we’re going to learn to start, get through the middle and finish stories everyday. And that’s been great and it’s absolutely has its place, but this year I decided with the handbook to bring back in some of that warmup work, some of that practice. And you can choose to do the warmup and the brainstorming and the short story on the same day, or you can just dip in and any time that you want to write, you just pull it up, open up one of those warmup exercises and spend a little time experiencing the world. In a way that we don’t get time to do when we’re just charging through it, trying to get all the things done.
[00:17:49] Your gift to the world
[00:17:49] What we do as writers is a gift to other people. We give them the gift of being able to take a little bit of time to slow down and experience the world in a different way in the way that our ancestors experienced it. At that slower pace that everybody says they want but don’t quite know how to give themselves. What we do at writers is generous And
[00:18:15] healing, and it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort. And we might as well enjoy it as much as possible.
[00:18:23] So please this week, take up my challenge of taking some time every day to see the world in a new way, to pay attention to the details, to write those things down, to challenge yourself to play in a productive way with language and practice so that when you sit down to work on a particular project, that will turn into a product that you turn out into the world. You’ve got whole of this material banked inside your heart waiting to come out.
[00:18:58] That’s what I have for you this week. Check out the story at a challenge handbook. If you haven’t already it’s at storyaday.org/challenge-handbook. If you have checked it out already. And you have a copy, do yourself a favor and open it up this week. Pick one of the warmup exercises.
[00:19:17] Maybe do one a day. Maybe do one every three days. Do these exercises in addition to wandering through the world with your eyes wide open, breathing in all the smells and listening to all the sounds and touching all the things. And don’t forget to wash your hands. But most of all, keep writing.
[00:20:18] Thanks for listening. Why not come over to the blog at storyaday. org and check out this week’s writing prompts and articles. And in the meantime, have a great, creative week. And of course, keep writing.
Last week I spent a bunch of time in Glasgow, for (happy) family reasons.
Because of last-minute airline insanity we ended up traveling the length of the country from London to Glasgow on the train instead of flying over it, as we usually do, and it was glorious.
Every time I looked out of the window, there was a new landscape to examine: now flat and pastoral, now mountains and lakes, now industrial revolution-era towns tucked into river valleys…
This week a lot of writers and sci-fi/fantasy fans are in Glasgow for WorldCon, the big annual conference and i’m following along on social media.
I just saw a post from someone who said they were taking the same 5hr train ride I just took…and were watching The Matrix on their laptop.
I carefully put my phone down and took a deep breath. I try not to shout at strangers on the Internet, but the inside of my head was ringing with the words “Look out of the window!”
Take A Fresh Look At The World
Humans are creatures of habit. We do the things we’ve always done – like staring at our screens on long journeys even when we don’t have to.
As writers our purpose is to make readers experience things they don’t normally experience.
To do that, I believe we need to be constantly curious.
That’s easy when we travel somewhere new.
But you don’t need a big travel budget to find novelty and wonder, not with the right attitude.
This week I challenge you to vary your routine and find the wonder in the place where you are.
Take a new route home from work and really notice your surroundings. Wind the windows down in your car and listen, smell, feel.
Take off your headphones and listen to the world as you walk through it.
Talk to a stranger. Try to find out what gets them excited, then stand back and watch how it changes their whole physicality.
Order a different type of coffee, then try to describe it in words.
There are too many terrible people finding success as writers. Get your writing out there, to counter-balance their suckiness with your amazingness!
In a week when a(nother) rockstar writer is falling from their pedestal, I made a case for the rest of us being brave enough to complete and release our work into the world; to flood the reading public with good options, and not worry about what might happen if we accidentally become successful.
A writing prompt all about character needs, to make your storytelling compelling
Characters need to need something. They need to want something. Otherwise, it’s just a series of things happening to a character…and readers won’t care.
In this episode I share a writing prompt and lesson from my year-long email series, StoryAWeek, which you can start today,all about creating a story in which a character needs something.
I also talk about creating suspense in creative and marketing writing, and about why it’s so important to build a writing practice.
Parties are great for stories because they are great opportunities for characters to come into conflict with each other, their own desires and expectations of society.
They can also be huge fun.
This can be a great opportunity to write a story that could double as the seed for a chapter in a novel-in-progress, if you have one of those on the go.
Bring all your characters together around one dinner table or in one back yard an let them loose on each other.
• What simmering resentments will someone air?
• Who will not confront the person they should confront?
• Whose secret will accidentally be shared by a loose-lipped older sister?
Then, make a note to show up at our StoryADay May 15th Anniversary celebration tonight!
Create a story that is a mashup of everything you’ve learned about your writing tastes, this month. Your character has a run-in with their nemesis.
Things To Consider
What have you learned over this month about the voices, tones, genres, characters, and length that come most easily to you?
What kinds of characters did you like to write about (fish out of water? Someone in a particular profession? Someone at a particular kind of crossroads?).
Pick your favorite type of character today. Don’t worry that you’ve written about them before.
This is about strengthening your skills.
What kind of tone did you most enjoy writing it? Satire? Heartfelt and romantic? Upbeat? Dark? Dreamy? Clipped and spare? None of these are the ‘right’ choice in any objective sense.
There is no ‘best’ tone to write a story in, only the tone that fills you with glee.
What genre did you find yourself coming back to over and over again? Mystery? Speculative? Historical? Romance? Literary? A blend of genres? (Literary Horror? Paranormal Romance? Romance Fantasy?)
Let yourself run wild in that genre today.
What length of story came most naturally to you? 100 words? 1200? 2000?
Aim for that today and spend a few minutes thinking about how much space that gives you for setting the scene, describing characters, introducing plot complications and side characters, description, and all the other details.
It should become clear to you why the common writing advice is ‘get your characters into trouble as quickly as possible’.
Spend a little time thinking before you write, so you don’t have to do it on the page.
(Or, you know, if you’re like me and you think best on the page, write it all out, then cherry pick the ‘real’ start of your story)
Leave a comment and let us know how it went!
Want more help brainstorming this today? Missed a few prompts this month?
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
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Write a story in the point of view you found most satisfying, this month. Your character has just received some news they feel strongly about.
Things To Consider
Remember that each POV (1st person, second, third person limited, omniscient, and all the other flavors…) has its limitation.
In First Person the narrator can never know anything that’s happening outside their view, except through other people telling them about it.
In Third Person you can’t hop around between different characters’ internal lives within the same scene without risking confusing readers (and being jumped on by eager critique partners).
In Omniscient, you can inhabit many characters, which can make harder for readers to empathize with or root for anyone in particular.
Each POV can be helpful in telling different types of stories and you will want to develop your skills with cost of them, but is there one that comes most naturally to you?
Run wild with that, today.
Explore the limitations and opportunities it affords
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Take an opening line from a book you love and rewrite it to create a similar, but different opening for your story
Things To Consider
Getting started can be a huge obstacle to overcome. Faced with the prospect of having to start a new story every day we can start second-guessing our ideas, our style, our ability…All of this makes getting started even harder.
So let’s cheat.
• Go to your bookshelf
• Pull down a book you admire.
• Look at the first paragraph. How does it start? Is it a description of a place? Does something dramatic happen? Does someone talk?
• Look at the structure of the opening and use it for your own stories (this is how apprentices have always learned, they copy their masters’ work, and gradually find their own style). Copy your master-writer’s structure, but insert your own details.
For example, I pulled Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea off the shelf.
Its opening sentence is,
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-wracked North-East sea, is a land famous for wizards.
(Isn’t that a great sentence?)
My story might begin,
The Arcologie Sando, a huge fractured semi-dome that rose up from the rock-strewn desert floor, was famous for producing arcolonists.
OK, hers is still better, but borrowing from the master, gave me a way in to my story.
Go to your bookshelf and steal an opening line from the best. Make it your own, and see where it leads you.
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Towards the end of the challenge, I’m noticing something about the people who are participating in the challenge: they’re getting more comfortable with tretaing the challenge as a support, not a cage.
What kind of support do you need, around your writing life?
Retell a traditional story. I suggest Cinderella, but you may choose another story that’s closer to your heart. Bonus points for working in a story that comes from your particular cultural heritage.
Things To Consider
The simplest thing to do here is retell the story the way you remember it, but in your own words.
At the very least you’ll get a vivid reminder that you cannot help but be original. Your version will be the version only you could have told.
This is an important thing to remember on days when you’re wondering “why bother writing?”. An alternate approach is to tell a ‘twisted fairytale’, one in which you update or improve upon the original, either by changing the setting or changing the outcome (maybe modernizing it).
If you enjoy this exercise and want to add some source material to your bookshelves, check out:
Here’s a different version of the example I used for the 5-Sentence Story Structure from earlier in the challenge.
It’s not a work of genius, but it was written in one day and I did have fun. If I can do this (and share it!) surely you can write something today 😉
Once upon a time there was a lonely orphan named Cindy whose social media self-help gurus had affirmed her yearning to find her place and encouraged her to take up a particular space in the world, as soon as she decided what she really, really wanted from life.
The surprise drop of a local casting call for “The Bachelor”, coming as it did immediately after she had uttered the intention ‘I wish to be find my place and take up space’, seemed a bit on the nose, but, as Cindy said, “It’ll at least be giggle…not that I want to find a husband or anything, just to see a bit of the world, maybe go to a party or two, have a few laughs, meet some more women my age…” But her stepmother and stepsisters had their own plans for the days leading up to the casting call, none of which involved the pretty little orphan girl who cleaned their bathrooms snagging the eye of the casting director. They kept her busy with housework and changed the wifi password in case she had been planning to log on to ASOS and order a pretty outfit with an risky unsecured pay-by-the-month plan from an e-commerce company—which would have been the only way she could have afforded it.
Cindy sighed and resigned herself to watching audition-line updates on Instagram. (It hadn’t taken long to guess that the new wifi password was “UnbelievablyW3althy”.) She blinked back tears as she watched the Uber pull away with her stepmother and sisters inside.
She was just turning to go back inside, when a rustle caught her attention. It came from the hedge that separated their driveway from the neighbor’s. Mrs Phayree, who kept herself to herself, but sometimes waved to Cindy if she saw her out, hanging up washing, slipped through a gap in the hedge carrying a garment bag.
“Hurry, Cindy, this is for you. It was your mother’s. I bought it from the jumble sale your wicked stepmother had when she moved it. I wanted to save it for you. Your parents were good people.”
The old woman sniffed. She thrust the bag into Cindy’s hands and scurried off towards the hedge, calling over her shoulder, “Just make sure you book your Uber home for before midnight when the surge pricing kicks in!”
Cindy closed her mouth and blinked a few times. The garment bag was still in her hands. Taking it into the kitchen, she unzipped it slowly. Something from her mother?
Her hands shook as she drew forth blue silk, with the care previous generations would have reserved for holy relics. It was a jumpsuit, a style so old that had come back around into being fashionable again. Cindy’s breath caught in her throat, and then she did a little jig right there in the kitchen. She checked the oven clock. She had just enough time. She ran upstairs and changed into her mother’s old jumpsuit. Surely this would be the extra piece of luck she needed to find her place in the world.
At the conference center Cindy was stunned by the seemingly endless parade of perfectly-made-up women and girls, preening in hand mirrors and squabbling over places in the line. She looked at the line.
She looked at the little knot of staffers, in leggings and sweatshirts, hanging around behind the producer’s table. They were laughing and bumping elbows and then scurrying off to do tasks that Cindy could only imagine were important to the day’s outcome. “Hey,” scowled a woman behind her.
“The line’s moving. Are you even in this line?”
Cindy muttered something incoherent and edged aside, drawn towards the production crew.
“I could murder a cappuccino,” she heard a headphone-clad young woman’s voice from behind a laptop at the production desk. The coffee shop was only a few steps away. Cindy looked at the line of pretty young things.
She looked at the production crew. With a firm nod to herself, Cindy ran over to the coffee shop and spend the last of her credit balance on two coffees and carried them back towards the woman with the laptop.
“Hi,” she held out the coffee like an offering. “I’m Cindy. Do you have a moment to tell me a little more about what it is you do?”
The woman looked at her, in her silk jumpsuit, and said, “Aren’t you here to audition?”
“Well, I’m pretty busy but you did bring me free coffee, so pull up a chair and let’s chat.”
It turned out that the young woman was the show’s story editor, and she had a budget for an assistant. By the end of the day, Cindy was making plans to follow the production back to California, but not before she popped home to thank Mrs Phayree for her help, because, as Cindy now realized, that was the kind of space she wanted to take up in the world.
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Correct an injustice in a story someone else wrote
Things To Consider
We’re writing fan-fiction today, which is, technically, a derivative work.
There are legal issues around playing in other people’s worlds, for profit, but most artists and creators (and Intellectual Property owners) have learned to be cool with people writing fan fiction for fun.
For example, if you grew up reading a series of novels and felt strongly that the hero ended up with the wrong person as their life partner, take that as the starting-point for your story. Write the story of how they encounter the right person and realize this is their soulmate…and what steps they take to make that happen.
If you loved a particular film but one of your favorite characters is killed off, write a story of how that death was actually a sham and give your favorite character a new adventure, after that moment.
If you watched a long-running TV show and had a ‘head-canon’ idea about what happened to a side character later in life, only to have the show writers bring that character back and give them a different outcome…write your version!
With all of these ideas, you do not have to start the story with backstory about the original. Just put your character in an interesting situation and, at some point in the story you may choose to have them make an allusion to, or offhand comment about the ‘wrong’ that this story is ‘righting’.
Or you may not. Likewise, all of these ideas will be rich with novels’-worth of potential, but what you are trying to write today is a short story. Remember everything you’ve learned about short stories so far:
• Center the story on one incident
• Limit the scope (in characters, settings, time) and choose your details for maximum impact.
• Aim for an emotional impact, not an immersive, novel-like experience.
If you discover that you love writing fan fiction and haven’t yet discovered the site Archive of Our Own (AO3) you might want to check it out. It might, of course, massively distract you from your other writing, so treat it with care 😉
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Write a story in fewer than 250 words. Somewhere in the story use the phrase “the moment everything changed”
Things To Consider
A story in 250 words? Really?
Really!
But you’re going to have to leave a lot out, imply a lot, and trust the reader to fill in the gaps.
When we get down to this kind of word limit it is important to think about the essential elements of a story.
If you are trying to write a story and not just an aphorism or meditation, there are some elements you’ll need:
• A character (or two)
• A situation that conflicts with their wants or needs in some way
• An action that they take or plan to take
• A sense, for the reader, of consequences, and how that will change the reader.
I know, it’s unsubtle of me to ask you to include “the moment everything changed” in the prose, but it’s a great reminder, as you’re shaping the story, that readers like it when something changes in a story, whether it’s the character’s state or simply their understand of the character/situation.
Further Reading
If you’re not familiar with micro fiction, it can be helpful to read a few examples. (Just don’t use up all your writing time, reading!)
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Art inspires art and there’s nothing wrong with borrowing from other creatives, so today you’re going to write the story of a song. You don’t actually have to write the story of the song, of course.
You might:
• Write a response to the song from another character
• Simply use the title and write a story that has nothing to do with the song (don’t worry, you can’t copyright a title. They’re fair game!)
If you choose a song that has a story built in (A Boy Named Sue, or Copacabana, for example—guess who grew up in the 1970s?!) you could choose to tell a story that serves as a prequel or sequel to the story.
I love the idea of a prequel because it should slowly dawn upon the reader that you’re leading into the story/song they already know.
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
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