[Write on Wednesday] Bring The Funny

I really enjoyed the short story I posted about yesterday in the Reading Room, and it definitely inspired this weeks’ prompt:

 

The Prompt

Write a flash-fiction story (under 600 words) that takes a familiar trope (zombies, vampires, princesses in distress, twenty-something shopaholics with boy problems, space cowboys…) and have a little fun with it.

 

Tips

You can write long and edit down to 600 words

Don’t try to do too much in such a short story

Do consider having a twist at some point in the story (as with yesterday’s story, where the ‘victim’ was anything but)

 

 

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my fun flash fiction #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is twisty #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash

See my story – and write your own, today: flash fiction!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wowflash

[Tuesday Reading Room] Zombie Psychology by Sarina Dorie

While this short story isn’t perfect [1. Pet peeve: you don’t reach a crescendo. The crescendo is the bit where the volume is increasing.], it is fun and entertaining and had some likes that made me smile and frankly, that’s good enough for me.

Zombie Psychology starts with a great first line, too:

“I’d been expecting my ex-boyfriend to show up sooner or later, and when he did, I knew he’d probably want to eat my brain.”

I mean, really. How can you resist reading on?

 

Clocking in at less than 900 words, this neat story uses lots of zombie tropes without taking them too seriously, but without mocking them either. Zombie fans won’t be annoyed by someone trampling all over their myths, but the non-zombie fans among us won’t be left rolling their eyes.

 

Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, which published this story, is an interesting publication: an online paying market that doesn’t waste it’s budget on design fees, but that offers a great selection of really well-written stories in written and audio formats. It’s open to new fiction from  new writers and seems very well-run. Check it out.

 

[Write On Wednesday] Scary story

Oh, you knew I was going to have to do it:

Halloween

The Prompt

Write A Scary Story For Halloween

You can take some traditionally Halloween-y elements and write about them in a spooky way, or in a funny way, or a tragic way, it’s up to you! Or you can invent some new tropes for the scary story (Hey, Stephen Moffat managed to turn harmless stone statues into one of the creepiest new monsters I’ve encountered in years!!)

Tips

  • Use a Halloween object in an unusual way (perhaps a Jack o’lantern that really grins, or a haunted hayride that goes awry, or something about going around the neighborhood for treats but the kids have tricks played on them instead
  • Turn an every day object or event into something spooky by explaining the ‘real’ story behind it (what’s really happening when you leave a door ajar; where the other socks all really go; why you can never find a pen when you need one…)
  • Re-tell a classic ghost story but update the setting. Here are some classic ghost stories to get you started.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my Halloween short story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about scares #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

See my story – and write your own, today: Scary Story!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

[Write On Wednesday] Playing With Form

Short stories are not mini-novels and they do not have to read as if they were. Part of the great fun of writing short stories is that we are free to tell a tale while breaking free from the tyranny of the three-act structure.

The Prompt

Write a story that does not follow a traditional narrative structure.

Write in diary excerpts or in list form, or as series of log entries, a Twitter conversation, word-association , stream of consciousness, whatever you can come up with.

Want to write a story as a series of letters? Do it! Want to tell the story backwards? Go for it! Feel like writing all-dialogue, or none? Fine!

Tips

  • Yesterday’s post about Neil Gaiman’s story “Orange” shows one intriguing way to do this
  • For inspiration, read Amanda Makepeace’s story “One Hour“, which was written in the form of several Twitter entries posted over the course of one hour.
  • Read this blog entries, which is mostly in the form of a list. Could you write a story that way? (Warning: contains painfully cute images of a baby!)
Bonus question: electronic media, with its insistence that readers be able to resize the text or display a piece on multiple devices, acts as a brake on ‘concrete’ literary forms (think: set fonts and sizes, words forming a shape on the page). Does this bother you?  Do you ever think about the form of the words on the page as you write? Leave a comment below.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story playing with form  #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about form #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

See my story – and write your own, today: Playing With Form #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

[Tuesday Reading Room] Orange by Neil Gaiman


One of the things I love about short stories is the way they can play with form. They are, at their best, unpredictable. “Orange” by Neil Gaiman (which I found in the Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 anthology)  is a perfect illustration.

Written in the form of answers to a police interrogation, the story never actually tells you what those questions were, leaving you to both speculate and laugh out loud at times. It unfolds gradually from the shallow answers given by a teenaged girl about her less-than-perfect homelife, to something much more complex and true. And funny and touching and hopeful and sad.

That the protagonist is answering a interrogation tells you immediately that something has gone wrong and you read in part to find out what. But after a while, as I often find with Neil Gaiman’s writing, you are reading just for the sheer joy of it. His use of language and character are masterful, engaging and accessible.

After reading this story, I immediately called over my precocious nine-year old son and read it again, over his shoulder. Upon finishing, he flipped back to the start to read it again too. It’s like that.

Highly recommended if you feel you’re getting into a rut with your short story writing and need some inspiration for a shake up. Or if you just want to read a fine, well-written short story.

[Weekly Writing Prompt] Alternate History

Fifty years ago this week, the US discovered that the USSR was building nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The two weeks that followed brought the two countries closer to disaster than ever before or since.

Public domain photo from CIA records

The Prompt

Write a story set in an alternate history where the Cuban Missile Crisis turned out differently and someone did launch a strike.

 

Tips

If you want to read up on the actual events, this Wikipedia article seems pretty good. I particularly liked the part (well, not ‘liked’, but you know what I mean) about the Russian submarine, the facts of which were only disclosed in 2002. What if the commander had made a different decision? What if Miami had been hit by a nuclear bomb.

You don’t have to write a Tom-Clancy-style military thriller here. Imagine anything in the alternate history of the world, from a mother trying to find clean water for her kids, to a history lesson for Fourth Graders.

Your story could treat the subject tangentially. It could be the kind of story you normally write, only with a few details in this world different: maybe there are only 49 states now (or maybe there are 52), perhaps Disneyworld was relocated to Pennsylvania “after the big war”…

You don’t have to be too serious. People lived and loved and laughed through the Blitz. People in an alternate timeline after Cuba would have to find ways to do the same, or humanity wouldn’t survive!

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however obliquely you use the ‘want’, it should be there in the character and all their reactions).

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: After Cuba  #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about the Cuban Missile Crisi #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

See my story – and write your own, today: After Cuba #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648