Today I’m recycling an idea from last year’s StoryADay because it was so much fun:
If you don’t want to do Red, you can do a different fairytale. It doesn’t have to be a straight re-telling either, just use it for inspiration if that’s what works for you.
(As always, this prompt is optional.)
Today’s prompt comes from a line in an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet (from The Harp Weavers)
Use the line or a similar image somewhere in your story.
(As always, this prompt is optional.)
This prompt was inspired by Marta Pelrine-Bacon who posted the other day about writing a story about a character she didn’t like. It’s not something we all do often so today: write a story featuring an unsympathetic main character.
Some tips: give your unsympathetic main character something the reader can identify with or find attractive (think Hannibal Lecter who was fantastically clever and insightful; Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor…)
[Update: Dec 2021: coming back to this prompt, 10+ years later, I was pleased to see that I hadn’t actually stolen this method of adjusting your character’s attractiveness from the Writing Excuses podcast, which, three years later would do a great series of episodes on this kind of thing with a very elegant explanation.)
Today our prompt comes from the lovely people at Gamewright Games and from Rory O’Connor who invented Rory’s Story Cubes.
So here is your prompt:
Do with it what you will!
Go!
(Remember: the prompts are purely optional and only intended to help you if you’re stuck.)
It’s May 8 and we’re working through our second weekend already. I’m guessing the shine might have worn off this challenge a little by now and that you could be struggling.
(It’s not easy to come up with a fresh idea every day!)
So today, give yourself a break. Go back and find a story you’ve already written. Now, tell the story from a different character’s perspective.
Try to make the tone of the story totally different: the length of the sentences, the pacing, the rhythm, even the events, if the second person remembers them differently.
Go!
Did you know that May 7 is “Military Spouses’ Day”? Well it is, and we’re all to stop and appreciate what it takes to be a military spouse.
Hey, I know. While you’re thinking about it…why not write a story featuring, if not a military couple, certainly two people who face challenges including but not limited to: separation, relocation, trauma. Or write something with a tangential connection to something military.
There. Broad enough? 😉
Go!
![[Daily Prompt] – May 11 – Little Red Riding Hood](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Prompt_challenge2011tn.jpeg.webp)