This story is definitely not bound by the rules of “rising action”, or “character arcs”…
Often, when I talk about how to write a short story, I get caught up in talking about traditional, narrative tales that might be structured in a similar way to a novel.
But one of the things I love about short fiction is its ability to transcend that and be so much more (or less-but-more, perhaps).
This story, A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf, is a lovely example of that. Continue reading “[Reading Room] A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf”
In keeping with this month’s theme of “Publication”, this prompt comes from a market that is actively looking for short stories right now!
This is the (long) short story that was the basis for the movie Arrival, a movie I loved. Continue reading “[Reading Room] Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang”
This month is all about publishing; how, why, and why not.
I don’t talk much about publishing at StoryADay because the focus has always been on creativity. However, seven years in, I think we could stand to talk a little about what might be your ‘what next’.
(Please excuse the slightly tremulous voice this week. Throat surgery last week has left me a little wobbly, but I’ll be back to full strength soon!)
Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Did you live up to your commitment from last month? Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month.
And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
Download your SWAGr Tracking Sheet now, to keep track of your commitments this month
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Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months
So, what will you accomplish this month? Leave your comment below (use the drop-down option to subscribe to the comments and receive lovely, encouraging notifications from fellow StADa SWAGr-ers!)
(Next check-in, 1st of the month. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2016 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. (I’m really proud of last year’s collection!) Give a little, get a little 
Click here. Now only $2.99
Last week I talked about reading and writing stories with divided storylines that come together at the end.
The example I gave, Shakedown by Elizabeth Gonzalez, had a fairly traditional narrative structure. While it wasn’t clear how the two storylines would interact, at first, it was an easy-to-read story.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] Your Mama’s Adventures In Parenting by Mary Robinette Kowal”
Yesterday I reviewed Shakedown by Elizabeth Gonzalez, a story that doesn’t seem to be able to make its mind up whether it wants to be about the renovation of an old steam train, or about a fiesty old man in a Pennsylvania mountain town. It’s a wonderful example of a quiet climax: no car chases or bullets flying, but a satisfying story climax nonetheless. Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Sleight of Hand”
(Incidentally, this is a great way to discover new writers: Continue reading “[Reading Room] Shakedown by Elizabeth Gonzalez”
Let’s be honest: fame and fortune would be nice, but it’s not really the reason we write, is it?
We write because we need to. It should be enough but sometimes we want more. This post will lead you through three ways to get yourself closer to your image of ‘writing success’.
Continue reading “Get The Results You Want, For Your Writing”
In James Blish’s Surface Tension (which I reviewed recently), the author took the idea of space travel and did something a bit different with it: instead of humans arriving on a new planet and terraforming it to suit themselves, they genetically-engineer versions of humanity that would thrive on the planet.
Now that’s what I call ‘subverting reader expectations’. But it’s still a satisfying story that sticks to the rules of an off-planet adventure story (lots of ‘wonder’ and new environments, inter-personal conflict, conflict with the environment, bad guys, a struggle to unite the ‘good’ forces and to survive. Even a little romance.)
Write a story that subverts reader expectations but still works in genre Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Turn A Trope Upside Down”
Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing. Continue reading “SWAGr – Accountability for Feb 2017”
Happy January!
This month’s theme has been ‘Practice’ (as in setting up and maintaining a healthy writing practice).
Here’s what you might have missed:
The January 2017 episodes covered:
Sometimes it’s hard to write, or hard to get started, or hard to remember why we put ourselves through this! That’s when you need to assemble your cheerleaders…In this episode I talk about what my cheerleaders have done for me lately and how you might get some of your own.
Surface Tension is a science fiction story originally published in 1952 and so qualifies as being either from (or near) the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of science fiction. (I found it in The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer.)
Fear not, this is not all heros saving damsels in distress and wearing silly outfits in space. It is very different from anything I’d ever read from that era, and from most sci-fi that I’ve read from later eras. Continue reading “[Reading Room] Surface Tension by James Blish”
I’ve always been impressed with how much fiction StoryADay friend and participant Alexis A. Hunter pushes out into the world: over 50 short stories in publications like Apex, Shimmer and Cricket.
In 2017, she has committed to writing a new short story every month.
That sounded like my kind of challenge, so I asked her more about it. Continue reading “Write 12 Stories This Year – A Challenge From Alexis A. Hunter”
This episode is a companion piece to this blog post:
https://storyaday.org/stay-excited.
Be sure to check it out for more details and to find all the exercises I talk about in the podcast.
To stick to our good intentions and create good writing practices, we have to stay excited about our writing. Meeting a word count goal or an hours-in-chair goal isn’t always enough of an incentive to break through our resistance to sitting down and creating something out of nothing, every day.
So, in this article, I’m offering you some alternative ways to get yourself jazzed about your writing practice.
Photo: Stuart Dootson
Of course, being me, I’m going to recommend you incorporate short stories into your writing practice, but you can use these ideas even when you’re working on a scene in a longer work.
I’m going to show you how you can stay excited about your writing practice by:
I’m also going to give you one foolproof way to make sure you finish your stories, every time.
And then I’m going to invite you to make a very specific commitment to your writing this year—if it seems right for you—one with built-in accountability and support.
Continue reading “Stay Excited About Your Writing This Year”
Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Did you live up to your commitment from last month? Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month. Continue reading “SWAGr – Accountability for Jan 2017”
This time next year, you could be staring at a list of achievements that are directly related to the goals that matter to you…
Listen to the podcast episode that goes along with this post:
I love the idea of a fresh start, don’t you?
It doesn’t matter when it happens (New Year, the first day of spring, the start of a new academic year), I’m always ready with my list of “this time it’ll be different” resolutions.
You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?
I’m excited to follow through on my plans for about three days.
Then I start to force myself to stick to the new regime.
Then I start to miss a day here or there…
…and suddenly it’s June and I’m flipping through my journal and I find that massive, guilt-inducing list of Things I’m Going To Do Differently This Year, and my shoulders slump, and I spend the next three weeks in a slump, wondering why I can’t get anything done.
Sound familiar?
Hopefully, you’ve been doing something looking back at 2016, making note of all the places where you did wonderfully things.
Now it’s time to look forward to building on them next year. This ‘look forward’ to 2017 offers some strategies for making the most of your writing time, setting P.A.C.E goals, and staying on track throughout the year.
Here are the worksheets I reference in this podcast, to help you plan for a successful 2017:
And here’s a detailed article about how to set exciting goals and actually achieve them, this time!
Today’s writing prompt is ripped straight from my 6th Grader’s homework folder, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant.
I’m steeped in (as well as 6th Grade homework) Lisa Cron’s fabulous latest book Story Genius, in which she makes the compelling point that you cannot begin to tell your character’s story until you know about their past.
It’s a delightfully obvious (and surprisingly overlooked) observation that ought to be front and center in every writing class. So here we go.
Interview a character from one of your stories. Find out as much as you can about their past and what formed the character they possess on Page One of their story.
Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Interrogate A Character”Here are the stories I’m going to read this month.
Feel free to read along, or make your own list (post some suggestions or links to your list in the comments, maybe?)
I’ll post some reviews, if I like any of them, and report back on my progress in Jan’s SWAGr post.
DECEMBER READING LIST Continue reading “My December Short Story Reading List”
Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Did you live up to your commitment from last month? Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month.
And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
****
Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months
So, what will you accomplish this month? Leave your comment below (use the drop-down option to subscribe to the comments and receive lovely, encouraging notifications from fellow StADa SWAGr-ers!)
(Next check-in, 1st of the month. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2016 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. (I’m really proud of this year’s collection!) Give a little, get a little Click here. Now only $2.99
NB: if you haven’t posted before, or if you include two or more links, you’ll go into the moderation queue. I’ll get to you, don’t worry!
Thank you so much to all the people who responded to my ‘what does short story writing do for you’ survey last issue.
Not all of the quotes made it into the Writer’s Digest Magazine article (coming March/April 2017), but they all informed it and made it better.
I’ll be making an online extra to go along with the article, which will include quotes from almost everyone I talked to during my research, so stay tuned for that and again, THANK YOU!
Secondly, the favor: if you enjoy StoryADay.org and have a moment today, please consider nominating it (and other writing sites you love) for a Writers Digest Magazine 101 Best Websites for Writers listing.
If you’d like to nominate any site, you have to do it today, because the deadline is Dec 1. You can email writersdigest@fwcommunity.com (mailto:writersdigest@fwcommunity.com) and tell the the name of the site, it’s address and (optionally) why you like it.
You could send something like
“Hi, I’d like to nominate StoryADay (storyaday.org) as one of your 101 Best Websites for writers. It has helped me become more creative/ find a community online/ write more than ever.
Thanks!”
My first website for writers, the 21st Century Publishing Update (back in 2002, when the century was young), landed on the list and I’ve been itching to get StoryADay on there too, to spread the word about our fabulous little community.
If you haven’t discovered the StoryADay podcast yet, now’s the perfect time.
The current episode is all about Looking Back over your writing year and pulling out some achievements to help power you up for a new year of writing challenges and opportunities.
It includes ways that you can dig out those achievements from your murky memory of a year overshadowed by celebrity deaths and global crises; and shares some reasons for doing the exercise along with my examples of what I thought was worth of note, from my own writing year.
The next episode (in two weeks) will talk about Looking Forward to next year and will offer some concrete strategies on how to stop your writing becoming another casualty on your New Year’s Resolution list (abandoned, lonely and shivering by Jan 15 along with your good intentions for diet and exercise. Oh yes, we’ve all done it!)
To listen to this week’s episode, go here
To subscribe, paste this address into your favorite podcast-listening-software (it might be iTunes or maybe you’re more complicated than that), and have new episodes delivered automatically to your phone/computer/neural implant (it’s coming, don’t you doubt it).
http://storyaday.libsyn.com/rss
On the first of every month, a group of us ‘meet’ in the comments of that month’s Serious Writers’ Accountability Group post (we’re serious, not sombre) and leave commitments to our writing life, and look back over our past month’s progress.
If you aren’t receiving updates about this group, sign up for the mailing list and add yourself to the SWAGr group.
This month I’m encouraging everyone to do a Big Look Back at the entire year, and also to make commitments to your writing for the upcoming month: December. It can get overlooked in all the “Planning For Holidays And Making Resolutions For Next Year” nonsense, so hop on over tomorrow and make sure you set some writing goals for poor, neglected December. They don’t have to be big goals: just enough to keep you moving forwards.
And that’s it. That’s all I’ve got for now.
Except to say that I went to the Writer Unboxed Unconference last month and atteneded some mind-blowing sessions and met some amazing people. I’ll be sharing more of what I learned over the next few months in podcasts and blog posts, so stay tuned.
And…
Keep writing,
Julie
P.S. Remember to keep your energy high and get some rest this month. If you need more tips, check out last month’s podcast about energy for writing
Today’s episode is all about looking back at your year and capturing the achievements in your writing life that can help power you forward into your next year of writing.
Includes
WHY it’s good to track your achievements
HOW to remember what you’ve achieved
EXAMPLES of the kind of things you might list
RECOMMENDED READING for further thoughts on motivation
LINKS mentioned in the podcast
writers.digest@fwcommunity.com (to nominate StoryADay.org or another favorite blog for a Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers listing)
Motivation For Creative People by Mark McGuinness (AF)
How Do You Want Your Novel to Change the World? by Julia Monroe Martin at WriterUnboxed.com
You may also want to listen to the follow-up episode: Looking Forward: Setting & Meeting Goals For Your Best Writing Year Ever or check out the accompanying post (with worksheets!) How To Set Exciting Writing Goals for Next Year — And Actually Meet Them This Time!
November is here and whether you’re facing NaNoWriMo or just the change of seasons, it’s a great time to think about energy in your writing life.
Energy is the theme for November at StoryADay.org and I start out this week with a plea for physical activity (walking, specifically) and will be writing about this and other ‘energy’ issues through the month.
This episode also includes a writing prompt and some theft. Settle in…
Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Did you live up to your commitment from last month? Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month.
And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
****
Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months
So, what will you accomplish this month? Leave your comment below (use the drop-down option to subscribe to the comments and receive lovely, encouraging notifications from fellow StADa SWAGr-ers!)
(Next check-in, 1st of the month. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2016 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. (I’m really proud of this year’s collection!) Give a little, get a little Click here. Now only $2.99
Steal the first line of your favorite book and write a totally different story
Go!
This month’s theme here at StoryADay is: Make It Better.
Here’s some recommended reading from around the web on various aspects of making your writing life better.
Here are three articles on how you can make your writing better to read, easier to sell, and impossible to put down.
Confessions of A Slush Pile reader – really useful article on why one reader rejected stories from a publication (even if your’e not submitting stories to publications, this is a great list of ‘what will put your reader to sleep’ and help you improve your writing)
Hunting Down Story Goals Plot holes are deadly to your story, but just as deadly are the other ‘holes’ that you might not be thinking about. This article tells you what they are and offers up a handy, printable template for keeping track of the important details. This might be overkill for short-short stories, but could be really useful for longer short stories, novellas and definitely for those of you working on novels.
It’s A Story, Not Just A List of What HappensIn which I offer up some writing advice gleaned from watching an interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone — of South Park fame, among other things. [quick read]
All writing is not created equal, argues James Scott Bell, while Ruthanne Reid shares advice for not quitting even when you can’t write.
The Five Modes of A Writer’s Life James Scott Bell talks about the five types of writing day you might have (from the inspired ‘flow’ state, to the solid reliable quotas of the “pro”). This is an encouraging article to help you make your commitment to your writing better: understanding that every day is not going to be blissful, really helps you stick to your priorities!
3 Steps to Writing When Life Goes NutsWe all have them: weeks (months?) when life gets away from us and writing seems impossible. This encouraging article from Ruthanne Reid commiserates, then gives you some concrete steps to take, to keep your writing life alive.
Two tools to help you revise without drowning in a vat of your own words (and tears).
The 7DayStory – This email course, that I created with Gabriela Pereira of DIYMFA, takes you through the process of writing, REVISING and releasing a short story in seven days. It’s free and, if you’re looking for a methodical way to work through the revision process, pay particular attention to days 3–6
Climbing Mount Revision, One Step At A Time – The guest post that began the 7DayStory process, by Gabriela Pereira of DIYMFA.com
Critique is a funny thing. If you get lucky, you find a great group and you’re all mature and experienced. If you’re not so lucky, you get newbies or jerks. If you’re thinking of starting a group (or want to make yours better) start by showing them this video: Professor Puppet’s Writing Critique instructions.
This short, funny video by my buddy Gary Zenker, is a great introduction for anyone new to critique, or who needs a refresher Air this video at the start of your group, to set the ground rules in an entertaining way!
How To Ask For — And Act On — FeedbackIf you have other writers willing to read and critique your work it can be really valuable. Here’s are some of the right, and the wrong ways, to deal with feedback.
I hope these evergreen articles will help you Make It Better this month and in the future.
Do you have any tips for things that have made your writing or your writing life better? Share in the comments!
If you want to read more like this, let me send future articles straight to your inbox:
Today’s writing prompt is inspired by a story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, featured in The Best American Short Stories 2016 (http://amzn.to/2elDfUo)
You can read more of my thoughts on this story here: [Reading Room] Apollo by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
You can leave comments about your experiences with this prompt here: [Writing Prompt] Regrets, I’ve Had A Few
And here are some articles to help you as you think about revising your first draft.
Podcast length: 11:15mins. Music by Alan McPike (www.standardstrax.com)
This week’s writing prompt is completely stolen from the first story in the 2016 edition of The Best American Short Stories (edited by Junot Diaz)
In the story, a man visits his elderly parents. A chance remark reminds him of an incident in his childhood where he was clearly in the wrong, and someone else suffered.
Without being heavy handed, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie allows her character to reminisce, taking us through a bright moment in a child’s life, before showing the act the man would later regret. There is very little commentary, just lush scene-painting and evocation.
Write a story inspired by one of your regrets
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
