The Prompt

Write a story that starts with your character in one place. Then they go through a series of events or experiences that leads them to a moment where everything changes for them.

Then let us follow them back through a series of events that mirror those that happened before, and show us how the world looks different to the character now.

Things To Consider

I’m suggesting this structure because it offers one way to create a clear path through the ‘muddy middle’ of a story.

The best illustration I can give you for this, is the Hans Christian Anderson story ‘The Ugly Duckling’. Here’s how that story goes:

• The Duckling starts off in a farmyard with his loving mother but siblings who reject him, but he doesn’t give up. He goes off into the world to seek his place. He leaves home determined to find his place in the world, and wild ducks are mean to him
• He goes to a farmyard where some of the animals are so mean to him he has to leave He goes to a peasant’s house and is chased by the children.
• He goes to the river, and sees the swans who are so beautiful he is willing to risk his life to go and tell them how gorgeous they are, even if they peck him to death for his audacity.
• They say: dude, look in the mirror. He’s a swan!
• He heads out and some children see him and throw bread and cake into the water, talking about how beautiful he is, balancing out the other children’s action.
• If I were rewriting this story, I’d be tempted to take the duckling on another journey, back past the peasant’s house and the farmyard, and to his home, reversing the initial journey and allowing him to see the word anew.

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The Prompt

Write a story about a character who is engaged in a contest that matters very much to them. You may or may not reveal the result, at the end. Your choice.

Things To Consider

A lot of writers struggle with ending a short story.

This comes down to one of a few problems

1. They don’t know when the story is ‘over’
2. They are afraid of tying things up too neatly in a bow and seeming cheesy

The solution to problem #1 is to figure out what the central point of your story really is.

It’s easy to keep writing, introducing new characters and new situations, but at some point you have to start making decision and shutting down your characters’ options, driving them down a funnel towards the ending. (I know, I know, making decisions is hard. But that’s what we’re doing, as writers: making a series of decisions for all of our characters. No wonder this is exhausting work!!)

When you know the point of your story, you can decide how to end it.

For example,

Winning And Winning Some More: in many movies about sports teams, especially underdogs, the team is engaged in a final contest. For a moment it seems like all is lost, until they rally and then, at the final buzzer, someone throws/hits/kicks/lobs a ball that lands exactly where it needs to, to put them over the top for a win.

This is a neat, happy, and rather cliched ending, but you can pull it off if the reader is invested in the characters and their success.

Similarly, romance stories end with the main couple getting together, but the inevitability of this ‘neat’ ending, doesn’t spoil the ride because we are rooting for each character to get out of their own way and let themselves accept love.

Failing (but also winning): SPOILER ALERT, the end of the Star Wars universe movie Rogue One is far from a traditionally happy ending, but it was a deeply satisfying ending. The characters we cared about made a huge sacrifice for the greater good, and along the way resolved a bunch of their personal demons.

If this movie had ended with everyone escaping to live happy, uncomplicated lives, I would have thrown my popcorn at the screen.

The Unresolved Ending: More SPOILER ALERT: in the finale of the long-running series Angel, the main characters have overcome a lot of squabbling to come back together as a team. They face the final conflict against terrible odds: cornered at the end of an alley facing down a bunch of demons. They’ve got out of this kind of situation before, but this one seems particularly dire.

Because this was the last time we were ever going to hang out with these characters the stakes were particularly high. Instead of creating a neat ending that would satisfy some viewers and enrage others, the writers had the characters rally as a team one last time, grin at each other and charge into the fight…at which point the end credits rolled. It was satisfying because the larger story of the series been wrapped up, but the final outcome was left to our imaginations.

Further Reading:

Three Ways to End a Story

The StoryADay Podcast episode 145: Ending Strong

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The Prompt

The characters in your story today are stuck and need to work together to escape

Things To Consider

If character is the emotional heart of a story, conflict is the engine of the plot. Conflict doesn’t have to be something huge and traumatic.

It can be as simple as a disagreement about whether the coffee should be decaf or whether the person suggesting that is a monster caffeinated.

Every conflict is an opportunity to explore the motivation and values of your characters, and to point up the differences between them.

This is another great opportunity to take characters from another work-in-progress and dig deeper by putting them into a story.

One of the things that can easily get lost in a novel—especially after we fall in love with our characters—is conflict. We can spend so much time exploring their inner lives that we forget to torture them just a little bit.

Use today’s story to make life a little uncomfortable for your character. Sources of conflict to mine:

* Communication difficulties – misunderstandings, talking at cross purposes, someone not saying what they mean, linguistic difficulties…have you ever sat at dinner with your father and your brother and marveled at how they can argue over the minutiae of a how to talk about problem even though they agree on the bigger issue? (Asking for a friend…)

* Conflicting approaches to getting a task done – two characters may both want to escape the ravine they’ve fallen into, but one may want to follow the river until it reaches an outflow while the other wants to scale the cliff and get back on track as soon as possible.

Or, in a more mundane example: you take a wrong turn on the way to a party. You and your companion still both want to get to the party, but whereas your companion wants you to make a u-turn, you’re sure you can find an alternate route if you keep going forwards. Both of you are determined to do it your way. Why does it matter so much to each of you? What does it say about you as a character and about your relationship?

What else is feeding this conflict? What happens when you take that right turn down a quiet street, and how do each of you react to a, the events that greet you and b, the decision that led you there? Can you see how the story begins to emerge as you introduce conflict?)

* Conflicting wants/needs – perhaps one of your characters is less motivated to escape than the other. Why? Are they honest about it with the other character (or themselves) or not? * Lack of resources – conflict doesn’t always have to be interpersonal. It can be about a group of people in conflict with their environment. It’s easy to escape from a locked room if you have a key, harder if it’s barred from the outside.

Don’t forget, however, that it keeps things extra spicy if there is also interpersonal conflict, as stress levels rise.

Further Reading

A mundane situation 

Conflicting habits: 

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Bonus: if you’re starting to struggle, check out the SOS – Save Our StoryADay Guide now to get back on track

The Prompt

Write a story in which your character interacts with three other characters, one who has power over them, one whom they have power over, and one who is on an equal footing with them.

Things To Consider

Character biographies and archetypes are all very well as a starting point, but a person’s character is not fixed, nor does it ever fit one archetype. People are complex and and society even more so.

People show different parts of themselves in different situations. A useful way to decide which aspects of your character to show in a particular scene is to think the power dynamics in that scene. And remember: power can be psychological, physical, or the power of the group.

Our characters react based on who has the most power in an interaction. This dictates which masks they use to fit into a situation (or sometimes, to stand out) or whether they can be raw and vulnerable. Psychological Power

There are a bunch of old sayings like: you can judge a person’s character by what they do when no-one’s looking, or by how they treat ‘the staff’ (which, these days, tends to mean waitstaff, valet parkers, grocery store clerks or anyone they perceive as having less power than them in a given situation).

And this is true to a certain extent that these action reveal a person’s character and values.

But none of these interactions reflect how that character always acts. Nobody always acts as their best or worst self. And few people remain unchanged throughout their lives.

Physical and Social Power

In The Expanse series by James S A Corey one of the most interesting characters is Amos Burton, who is always, phsyically, the most powerful person in the room and the most comfortable with violence as a solution. In a room full of violent thugs, he is absolutely at ease.

Over the course of the series we don’t see his values change, but we do see him learn how to act in different situations, based on his desire to stay with the crew. It doesn’t feel insincere because his actions are not always dictated by his values and that feels very human.

He still has no problem with violence but he knows his captain does. He masks that part of himself because the captain of the ship has power over him, and the collective power of the rest of his crew is greater than his individual power (even though he could beat them all to a pulp if he felt so inclined).

Power Dynamics for Writing

In each scene of a story, in each interaction, we are seeing a snapshot of your characters. How they act in general is not necessarily how they will act in this moment.

But how to decide?

If you’re not sure what to do with a character in a scene, look around.

Who else is in the scene, and how much power does your character have, relative to them?

How does that affect how your character acts?Do they hold themselves differently? Do they speak differently? And how does that affect their mood and actions going into the next scene, where they might interact with someone with a different power relationship.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being insincere in any of those situations. Rather, they are operating on a high-level understand of social dynamics. (Being human is complicated!)

Further Reading on character:

• Give Your Characters A Voice

• Character Counts (podcast)

• Creating Compelling Characters – StoryADay Essentials Series

• Great Character Writing with Angela Ackerman (podcast)

• How I Met Their Father (or: Characters Are People Too)

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