I approached this humorous piece with a doubtful look. Satire is so hard to pull off and I often find stories published in McSweeneys miss the mark for me.
Not this one though.
In This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction, Rebecca Sherm takes on two of the biggest genres to storm the internet: erotica and fan fiction. And she blends it with This Old House! Talk about your Fifty Shades of Grey!
Sherm uses the language of erotic fan fiction and ladles on the innuendo, but never crosses the line into crudity (or, actually, erotica). That tension is what makes the piece so entertaining.
Jim Shepard turned up in my RSS feeds this week because blog were reporting on Joshua Ferris hailing him as the Best Writing Teacher Ev-ah.
The name rang a bell in the back of my head and I strongly suspected he was the author of a story I’d heard on Selected Shorts. A story I had been really impressed by. Sure enough it was I’d also heard the author interviewed and been impressed by him. (I thought of trying to get him to come and do an interview here. Now I know he’s a Big Deal, but I’ll still try).
Anyhoo, I bought a collection of his stories, Like You’d Understand, Anyway.
This first story in the collection is an absolutely haunting account of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Told from the perspective of a bureaucrat, it gives insights into the workings of a Soviet family and the Soviet governmental style, all while taking an unflinching look at what exposure to that kind of radiation does to a body.
And yet, there is a lightness and humanity in the story that is really hard to explain.
All I know is that I couldn’t get this story out of my head for days.
My Facebook feed and RSS reader are full of posts from angst-ridden parents who already—three days in—hate their stupid Elf On The Shelf[1. A craze that took off a couple of years ago and is like the Tooth Fairy crossed with an advent calendar, and a nightmare for parents].
People seem to be held hostage to this thing at the same time that they are plagued[2. thanks to Pinterest postings from uber-mommies] by a sense of inadequacy and overwhelm.
The Prompt
Imagine a character who is trapped in a situation beyond their control for a finite amount of time. Write their story.
Tips
What is the situation and why is it so torturous for THIS particular character?
How do they react on Day 1. How does that change by Day 15?
What is the crisis point? What brings things to a head?
What hilarious (or terrifying) events happen at the climax?
What fallout does this have for the character and the people around him/her?
What lessons are learned at the end? What vows are made?
Think about something that drives YOU crazy. Create a character who is also driven crazy by this thing, but make them more extreme. Amplify everything. Make the lows lower than they ever get for you. Make the highs higher.
It’s that time again: Serious Writer’s Accountability Group Check In!
But before we get to that, a quick request: if you like StoryADay and find it useful, could you help me spread the word by nominating it for the annual Write To Done Best Websites For Authors list? Thanks!
You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!
Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.
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.)
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
Complete a draft of a story – Ashley
Write 1 blog post a week – Cris
Write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.” – Julie
Read a new short story every day.” – Julie
Track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing – Alex
Revise two short stories and research possible markets – Jeannie
Schedule “me time” to recharge my creative juices – Jeannie
Finish one of my other short stories and send it out – Maureen
Write at least 500 words a day on any project – Maureen
Write 1,500 words a day on my book. On weekends … write 2,500 words a day – Jeffrey
Writing the synopsis for my novel – Misa
Finish one story draft each month – Carol
So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:
(Next check-in, Jan 1, 2015. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2014 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. Give a little, get a little 🙂 Click here.
Ever fancied going on a Writer’s Retreat? I wanted to let you know about a lovely retreat organized by Charlotte Rains Dixon, who was nice enough to host me on her blog a while ago.
The retreat is next summer in the south of France (a beautiful region I visited years ago). I’ll be interviewing Charlotte about the retreat here at StoryADay.org, but if you’re interested don’t miss the discount that’s on offer until the end of Dec.
Need a little inspiration? Here are the Top Ten articles and blogs posts I’ve found over the past month, to help you power through writing problems, get more creative and hone your craft.
Where my freelance writing clients come from – Want to make a little money writing? It’s not easy but with determination and focus you can do it. The Urban Muse shares a look behind the curtain.
Write a story about a character who is, in the moment the story takes place, completely overwhelmed.
Tips
This story can be dramatic, comedic, or both!
Perhaps your character is, oh I don’t know, preparing for a big family holiday on top of all their normal commitments. How do they feel? What are their triggers?
Give the character a moment of crisis that forms the kicking-off point for the plot of the story. Then think about how he/she would react on a good day, and how differently they react under stress. Show us that reaction.
Brainstorm three or four things that could be the tipping point for your stressed character and choose your favorite.
Start right at the tipping point and then make things much, much worse: if your character is planning for Thanksgiving dinner, let her always-better-then-her sister call to say she’s inviting a food critic as her date. Then break your main character’s oven. Then let Grandma get a surprise pass from the nursing home, and have her turn up in full foul-mouthed-rebellion-mode; give your character hives; there should probably be a point at which the police turn up…that kind of thing 🙂
(I know this seems early to some of you but here in the US “The Holidays” start with Thanksgiving which happens in November — even earlier for Canadians — and continue right through until we all heave a collective sigh on Jan 2 — or the 6th if you’re Eastern Orthodox Christian.
Yikes, that’s a long time to have your daily (writing) routine interrupted.
So here’s a re-blog of a popular post chock full of strategies to get you through the winter holiday season without losing your mind or becoming a curmudgeonly recluse. How To Write Through The Holidays
Following up on the recent theme of emotional writing prompts, here’s one that’s good for a laugh.
smile! by Lin Pernille Photography LLC, on Flickr
The Prompt
Write A Story That Features Laughter
Tips
Laughter can be cleansing, hysterical (in a bad way), nervous, comradely, cruel. Pick one, or cram as many as possible into one story.
Think about the physicality of laughter at the moment it happens.
Think about the emotions the memory of the laughter (happy or cruel) elicits later.
Use the moment of laughter as a plot device. It is the start or the end of something. It is some place/time/state your character wants to get back to or escape from.
If you’re showing laughter-following-a-joke, take a tip from Joss Whedon’s Firefly. He has a couple of scenes where he skips the joke and cuts straight to the characters laughing uproariously at whatever was said just off camera. That saves the audience from having to analyze the joke (“was it really that funny?”) and allows them to watch how the laughing characters react and interact. It allows for the sense of catharsis from the laughter without having to share the writer’s sense of humor. (Watch for the dinner scene in the episode Out Of Gas, around the 5:00 min mark).
It’s that time again: Serious Writer’s Accountability Group Check In!
This is the first time we’re “meeting” on the first of the month and that’s how it’s going to go from now on.
You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!
Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.
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.)
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
Write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.” – Julie
Read a new short story every day.” – Julie
Track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing – Alex
Decide on a project and outline before November 1st – Jeannie
Revise two short stories and research possible markets – Jeannie
Expand a couple of writing exercises into short stories – Jeannie
Schedule “me time” to recharge my creative juices during November – Jeannie
Finish one of my other short stories and send it out – Maureen
Write at least 500 words a day on any project – Maureen
Finish the next large chunk of script I’m writing for a webcomic – Maureen
Finish the last chapter of a multichapter fanfiction (don’t judge me) – Maureen
Soak myself in inspiration for my NaNo novel – Maureen
Write 1,500 words a day on my book. On weekends … write 2,500 words a day – Jeffrey
So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:
(Next check-in, Dec 1, 2014. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you’re warming up for NaNoWriMo, you could do worse than write a few short stories. How about a collection of ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2014? Yes? Click here.
Continuing a trend from last week and the week before, here’s another prompt that leads you into plot via your main character’s emotion.
Rage Wallpaper by Thoth God of Knowledge, on Flickr
The Prompt
Write A Story That Features Anger
Tips
You can start your story with an angry outburst then spend the rest of it unpacking what prompted the rage, or exploring the consequences of one person’s rage for all the characters around them.
You can build up to a big, angry finish — showing your character giving in to something they’ve been fighting all the way through the story.
Think about how you have experienced anger in your own life — both in yourself and observing it in others.
Try to get inside the head of someone who has a very different ‘anger vector’ than yourself. (If you’re a ‘push me for weeks until I explode’ person, think about writing a character who is a ‘rage and forget it’ sort).
Remember there is such a thing as righteous anger.
To avoid the story becoming too intense, use the concept of the opposite emotion to show that your character(s) is/are capable of other emotions too. (What is the opposite of anger? Depends on the type of anger, doesn’t it? It might be charm, or humor, or kindness, or gentleness.
How can you tell a story that includes one character containing two opposing attributes. Think about what a character like that wants and go from there).
What kind of language will you use? Animal metaphors? Short, choppy sentences? Dialogue? How will you avoid clichés?
Do you ever struggle with motivation? Lord knows, I do. [1. Let’s face facts: I’m the kind of person who needed to launch an annual month-long, world-wide challenge to get me back to writing short stories!]
It’s October. The mornings are dark. The novelty of the kids being back at school has turned into the grind of early breakfasts and fights over homework. I’m having trouble writing new words, or sticking to a healthy eating plan. Frankly, even the breakfast dishes are looking like a bit like Mount Everest right now…and I feel just as likely to conquer either.
(OK, this is the strangest opening I’ve ever written to a pep talk. Let’s hope things pick up from here, eh?)
How To Move Forward?
So: bad week.
But this morning I got an email that changed my perspective.
A few years ago, a friend sent me a $25 gift certificate for Kiva.org. (Bear with me.)
If you don’t know: Kiva is a micro-lending program that works with people all over the world, to help fund their businesses and entrepreneurial ideas. You choose and person and project and contribute towards their goal. They pay you back gradually.
This morning I got an email about my two most recent loans. Chin, in Cambodia, is a 61 year old mother of five. She’s using her loan to build a latrine for her family because her house has none [2. If that’s not enough to make me stop and count my blessings, I really AM a lost cause!]. Her first repayment came in this morning.
Do you see what I got?
$1.04
All she paid to me was a measly $1.04.
But she’ll keep paying my $1.04 regularly until she has paid off the entire $25 that was my portion of the loan.
Her total loan amount is $750. That must seem like a Mount Everest of a number (or at least Phnom Aural). But she’s paying just under $32 every month for 26 months to pay all her funders. By paying that small amount ($1.04 of which comes to me) she will pay off all her debts. Dollar by dollar, she’ll get there.
Are You Paying Your Creative Debts?
Think of all the ways we borrow from our creative lives. We put off writing to do laundry, to do our day jobs, to be nice to our family and friends, to give to charity, to do anything but invest in our art.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth coming back to the desk if we can’t give ourselves a big payday. It doesn’t seem worth it when we’re only adding a couple of hundred words at a time, or writing our Morning Pages.
But if we just follow Chin’s example and keep chipping away, day after day, month after month, we will achieve the impossible. Chin will pay off her $750 loan. We will create a life that includes our art. We may even create some art that touches other people.
What could you do today if you didn’t have to finish $750’s worth of writing all at once?
What if you only had to write $1.04’s worth of it?
Could you manage that much?
And could you come back and write $1.04’s worth tomorrow? And the day after that? And do the same next week?
Even on your worst day you could manage that, couldn’t you?
Incidentally, my loans? Look at the default & delinquency rates:
Women living hard lives in Peru, Cambodia, Mexico and US have all committed to investing in bettering their lives. And they have not quit. They have never even shown up late.
Take a tiny bite out of your creative debt today
Write a Drabble (100 word story)
Write a haiku
Read a short story (check out the Tuesday Reading Room series for some suggestions)
Sketch out the ending to a story you’ve left hanging
Write a sensuous description of something in the world of one of your unfinished stories (how does it smell, taste, feel, make your character feel?)
Write three pages of stream-of-consciousness blah-blah, to warm up your writing muscles (rip up the pages when you’re finished)
Take the plunge and submit that finished story to a contest or publication (who cares if it doesn’t win? All judgement is subjective, but you gain something valuable simply by putting it out there!)
Let me know what you did — or plan to do — in the comments. Heaven knows I’ll need the inspiration next time I hit a slump!
This email is an example of how to NOT get a guest post at StoryADay. And I’ll tell you why.
Here’s what I received:
——
Message Body:
Hello!
I was stumbling upon the internet when I found your blog and after looking into few posts that you have published recently I can say that the quality of content is very powerful.
I am a blogger who writes on similar topics. I have some content which you’ll be interested in. Currently I can offer you the article with infographics named: XXXX XXXX XXXX. I would like to publish on your blog as a guest contributor, mainly because you have wider audience which might be interested in similar subject.
Please let me know if it is possible for you and I will send you my piece for review purposes.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
——
Here are the things that got it sent to my spam folder.
There is no greeting. It’s not hard to find my name on this site. Use it.
“stumbling upon the internet” and “quality of content is very powerful” sound like English-as-a-second-language and, in particular English-spammers-use.
“I am a blogger who writes on similar topics” – still very vague and spammy.
“I can offer you the article with infographics named XXX” — doesn’t tell me what the article will do, teach my people or whether the infographic is something you made yourself or something you’ve ripped off from other people. Doesn’t tell me how long it is or give me any sense of your writing style.
If an article has quotations, I want to know that you’ve read the original source yourself and chosen the quotes as I do with my Tumblr feed (with the exception of my outpouring of quotes the day that Maya Angelou died and I was pulling quotes that other people had posted. Even then I searched for more than one instance of any quote to sort-of-verify it was legit.)
“I would like to publish on your blog as a guest contributor, mainly because you have wider audience which might be interested in similar subject.” You want to post here because I have spent over a decade building up an audience and you want those eyeballs? No. Tell me what my readers will get from your post, not what you’ll get.
There is no signature. Sign your name.
There is no link to anywhere I can see your previous work, or your own blog.
Do not do as the “person” above did. Send me good pitches for great guest articles and I’ll be happy to share my blog’s eyeballs with you. Send me crappy pitches and I won’t reply, and you’ll end up in the spam folder. Sorry.
Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy
Continuing on from last week’s prompt about a character experiencing an emotion, this week we’re focusing on Joy.
joy! by atomicity, on Flickr
The Prompt
Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy
Tips
How to define ‘joy’? I’m going with ‘a momentary experience of intense happiness’, though CS Lewis famously mixed that feeling of happiness with one of ‘longing’ in his definition of joy.
The main character does not have to be the character experiencing the moment of joy. They can be an observer.
How do the characters observing the joy-filled character’s behavior react? Do they reflect the joy? Do they feel bereft because they lack it? Do they envy the other person? Do they show that directly by being sad, or do they bury it and act like a jerk?
Will the joyful moment happen at the beginning of your story and kick off all the events that follow? Will the character be sustained by the fleeting sensation or spend a miserable existence in a futile attempt to recapture it?
Will you build up to the moment of joy at the end of your story (huge climax? Happy ending?)
What does it actually feel like to experience (or witness) joy?
What kind of a character could really use a little joy, and how can you put them in a situation where they experience it? Do they deserve it? Does that matter?
Character is king, in stories, but how can you make your character more realistic? Share an emotion that all of us have experienced. Examine it in the context of what your plot is doing to the character. This is an especially useful skill to work on if your stories tend to be set in fantastic, futuristic or historical settings. We can’t easily identify with Frodo fighting off goblins, but we can feel his pain as he longs for the Shire (and shed a tear when he and Sam face the reality that they probably won’t make it home again).
The Prompt
Write A Story In Which A Character Is Homesick
Tips
Make the homesickness fuel the plot somehow – have the character make a truly stupid decision in reaction to their homesick impulse. Or have them do whatever it takes to overcome it.
Put the homesickness in a surprising context — maybe a soldier finds himself ‘homesick’ for the place he had the worst experience of his life; maybe a 90 year old immigrant smells something that catapults her back to her childhood in a faraway land…
Maybe it’s not your main character who is homesick. Who else could be homesick and how would that affect your protagonist?
Are the people around the homesick character sympathetic? Impatient? Uncomprehending? Oblivious? Why?
Lead the reader through the emotions of homesickness as your character experiences it. Is it an ache in their forearms as they resist the temptation to call their old home phone number and see who answers? Is it a yawning hollow in their belly, as if they’ll never be able to eat enough to fill it? Is it a prickle behind their eyelids and a digging of nails into palms? Think about how you’ve felt when you’ve had that yearning to go home again.
If you’re not managing to conjure up the emotions to mine, try this: go to Google maps. Type in the address of somewhere you went once, for a shining hour or day or year — somewhere that holds special memories for you. Go into Street View. (Look up your first family home, your first school, that place you went on vacation once and had the torrid affair with a local boy…). Look at the light, the sky, the architecture, the sidewalks, the window frames, the shop fronts. What do you feel? What do you notice? What had you forgotten? Use details like this to make your character’s longing for home seem real to a reader.
It’s just an ordinary a day in the office, when suddenly the boss notices his staff are turning into fish…
This engagingly bizarre and whimsical short story by Stephen Koster reminds me why I love the short story. Short stories let you break all the rules. They are amuse-bouche. They are wonderful places for trying out ideas you could never sustain in a novel (or maybe you could, but a short story is certainly a good place to test out the idea).
As with many of the short stories I read, this one wasn’t perfect, but it was amusing and it split my brain open and filled it with all kinds of ideas, and it inspire me to write. Can’t ask for more than that!
You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!
Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.
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.)
And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
****
Examples of Goals
“I’m going to write every morning from 6-7 AM.”
“I’ll write 250 words a day, minimum.”
“I’ll write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.”
“I’ll write one full story and revise another.”
“I’ll write four stories and submit one story to a publication.”
“I’ll outline that presentation I’ve been putting off working on, and create half of the slides.”
“I’ll track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing.”
“I’ll keep a journal to track my resistance to getting the work done.”
So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:
(Next check-in, Nov 1, 2014. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you’re warming up for NaNoWriMo, you could do worse than write a few short stories. How about a collection of ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2014? Yes? Click here.
Check back in on Nov 1 and let us know how you got on.
NaNoWriMo Is Coming
I know, from previous years, that you lot love a challenge and a huge number of you will be plunging into National Novel Writers’ Month in November.
Results of the 2013 survey
Some Unsolicited NaNo Advice
Outlining – Until I attempted novels, I was a dyed-in-the-wool ‘pantser’ (writing by the seat of your pants). Now, I’m more of a ‘write until I get stuck, outline the next bit, write until I get stuck again’ kind of writer.
If you don’t have a clue about outlining (as I didn’t), I can’t recommend this book highly enough:
Million Dollar Outlines* by Dave Farland. And he actually does sell lots of novels, so his system works, at least for him. I like Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering* too, but it seemed to stall me, more than it helped me. Farland’s book was much better for my style of working. Take a look at them both and I hope one or other helps you. (*Amazon Affiliate links)
Mental Prep – Don’t forget about the free StoryADay Creative Challenge Workbook that you received when you first subscribed to this list. (Don’t know where it is? Get another copy here.)
It’s a kind of ‘guided meditation’ through the mental prep for a big challenge like NaNoWriMo. The workbook helps you:
Get excited about the challenge;
Think about practical ways to increase your odds of success/sticking to it;
Create a customized, personal ‘creative well’ that you can keep coming back to, throughout the challenge, to remind you about what you set out to do.
This is NOT an outlining tool, but rather a roadmap to your own creative goals (with your own personalized key to the pitfalls you want to avoid).
Training Runs – You wouldn’t run a marathon (or even a 5K) without doing a few training runs.
Sitting in a chair typing for 2000 words a day is more mentally and physically draining than you’d expect.
Naturally, I recommend short stories as a great way to warm up for a novel. You can write
Character studies,
Prequel events (that shape your characters/settings/mysteries),
Dialogues that explore the issues and characters in your novel-to-be.
Get writing NOW for November success!
If you’d like to get hold of a pre-made plan of how to get 10 short pieces written before Nov 1, AND support StoryADay at the same time, check out the Warm Up Your Writing Course in the StoryADay shop. It has three weeks’ worth of writing assignments, audio lessons, workbooks, worksheets and handy checklists you can print and adorn with gold stars.
(If you’ve bought this in the past and have any problem accessing/finding your files, drop me a line and I’ll help you out.)
Well, that’s it from me, for now. I hope your October is delightful and filled with stories and Story Sparks. Don’t forget to check in at the Serious Writers’ Accountablity Group page and tell us what you’re up to (get your friends to come along and post too. There’s nothing like a bit of peer pressure!) Tweet This:
I’m making a commitment to my writing this month. Dare to join me? http://bit.ly/SWAGr #amwriting
Keep writing,
JulieP.S. Writer’s Digest is taking nominations now for their 101 Best Websites for Writers. If you’ve enjoyed the StoryADay challenge, the community or the articles here, and would like to help expand StoryADay’s reach would you do me a favor and send an email to Writers.Digest@fwmedia.com with the subject line:”101 Best Websites” and let them know what you love about StoryADay.org? They’re taking nominations until Dec 1. Thanks!
Today I was writing a scene for a longer story in which my fish-out-of-water character comes up against people she has befriended but disagrees with. It’s very difficult for her to do this, and it was so much fun to write, that I’m recommending you try something similar.
The Prompt
Write A Story Centered Around An Argument
Tips
Make sure you make it clear what each character wants and what the stakes are for each character in this argument (in my case, my main character desperately wants to fix a mistake she has made that had consequences for her new friends, without getting them in more trouble. They want to help her and she’s determined to go it alone. The new friends variously want to help her because: they like her; they have a lot to lose too; it’s the right thing to do; they’re bored and want adventure; and simply to take advantage of an opportunity to tease a big brother mercilessly. Each character in the argument has a reason to be in it.)
Think about how you FEEL when you’re in an argument. Try to use some of that physicality — but without resorting to cliché. Be outrageous. Make up new metaphors that suit your setting. Have fun with this. You can always edit them out later.
If you want this to be more than a ‘talking heads’ situation, have your characters DO something as they argue: maybe they’re hiking along a dangerous ridge so they must remain in control or they risk plunging over the edge; maybe they’re doing the dishes; maybe they are hiding from the bad guys and the whole argument must be whispered…
Have some fun with this. Let your characters say things you would NEVER say, because you’re such a nice person (you are, aren’t you?)
Fall is coming (at least in my hemisphere). Can you smell it? Do you live somewhere with autumn colors. Have you ever been to a place like that? Have you missed it? Have you never lived somewhere like that and wonder what all the fuss is about.
The Prompt
Write a Story With An Autumn Theme
Tips
You can do bonfires, leaves, Halloween, whatever your local ‘color’ is.
If it’s not autumn where you live, think of this as ‘banking’ a story that you can revise and begin to submit to seasonal markets in the next couple of months. Lead times, people, lead times!
You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!
Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.
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 second Wednesday 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.)
Today’s prompt was suggested by the story I read yesterday, Incognito by Susan M. Lemere.
The Prompt
Write a story in letter form
Tips
Use two or more voices, or let us see only one side of the conversation.
The ‘letters’ can be email exchanges, text messages, Facebook updates, or imaginary hand-written correspondence from sweethearts separated by war, an ocean, feuding parents…whatever makes sense to you.
Try to introduce some mystery, some misunderstanding, or some desire on the part of one of the participants. Frustrate us, tease us, keep us guessing about how it’s going to turn out.
I have a thing for stories written in letter form, so i was well-disposed towards Susan M. Lemere’s charming story Incognito before it even got rolling.
It starts with a teacher interceding on behalf of one of her students who has lost a tooth — literally lost it in the playground grass — and is inconsolable until the teacher promises to write a note to the Tooth Fairy. That would be the end of it, except that the tooth fairy responds. By email. And she has some advice for the teacher, herself.
As the story unfolds we learn more about Katherine, the teacher, and her life, and the changes she needs to make. Will she? Won’t she?
It is a subject that could be dreary or pedestrian, but Susan M. Lemere’s use of language, whimsy and humor keep it from being either of those things. I was, in no time at all, rooting for Katherine and enjoying listening to her voice portraying her various moods.
You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!
Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.
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 second Wednesday 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.)
This prompt is inspired by the book 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith and by the Prairie Home Companion Lake Wobegon stories, both of which tell small (and sometimes tall) tales in sometimes-unrelated episodes, but all of which happen in and around the same setting.
The Prompt
Write a flash fiction piece about a set of characters in which something small and everyday happens. Hint that something else might be about to happen, before the story ends.
Tips
Give the story a strong sense of place. It doesn’t have to be a home town, but make the location feel specific by giving people a set of preconceptions, ways they talk about themselves and outsiders, distinct local expressions (this can be particularly fun if you write sci fi or fantasy, or another kind of speculative fiction.)
Try to end the story as if you were writing a daily or weekly serial. What can you do to make readers want to tune in again tomorrow?
Pretend you’re going to start posting this serial on your blog, where the whole world wide web is competing for your readers’ attention. How entertaining can you make it, to keep your imaginary readers’ attention?
It’s going to be harder to write during the summer months, with boys underfoot and trips to here there and everywhere (bonjour, Bretagne!), so I’m going to spend my summer months feeding the creative monster.
I’ve been finding it hard to write recently, partly because my brain is begin pulled in fifteen different directions. I’m feeding it with information — about education, about fitness, about nutrition, about cognitive behavioural therapies, about music, about all kinds of practical stuff — but I’m not feeding it with the kinds of stories it needs to lift itself out of the everyday world and into the world of stories.
So I’m going back to the Bradbury Method of creativity-boosting. I did this last summer and it worked like a charm: I read a new story every day (and an essay and a poem as often as I could manage that) and found myself drowning in ideas. I had a burning urge to write; I sketched out ideas for stories; I wrote some of them over the next six months and released them as Kindle ebooks that have sold actual copies and generated actual profits. I have others that are still in various stages of drafting. But more than all that I was happy.
Follow Along?
So that’s what I’m going to do: Read and log as many short stories as I can this summer. I’m logging my activity at my personal reading log and you can do the same.
Your Own Reading Log
I’m using Google Docs to log my reading.
Here’s a copy of the form that you can use yourself if you want to join in and you like Google Docs. Save a copy of this form to your own Google Drive and rename it.
If you click on “Tools/Create New Form you can create a Google form, which i find to be a nice, clean interface for entering info. It’ll update the spreadsheet automatically (no silly little cells to click on).
Here’s a screenshot of my form, for reference.
…and here’s how my ugly-but-useful spreadsheet looks:
Bonus Tip: Create A Handy Shortcut
If you’re an iPhone user, you can follow these steps to get an app-like link on your phone, to make logging your reading easier (I’m a big fan of ‘easy’) Step 1:
Go to your form on in your browser (drive.google.com/)
Then:
Then
Then
How it looks on your phone:
Voilà!
Just make sure you save a copy of this document to your own Google Drive and don’t send me an email requesting permission to edit this copy, OK?
Today’s prompt was inspired by my recent strong reaction against the short story Heat by Joyce Carol Oates.( I hated it.)
The story is set in a past that I presume is similar to the author’s own: a world where ice deliveries still happened and kids spent long summer days largely unsupervised in their dusty country town. Then one day, something happened that no-one in the town will ever forget.
The Prompt
Mine your childhood for an event that you’ll never forget. Create a story based around it.
It painted vivid pictures of the setting that are seared into my brain.
It created realistic portraits of the twin girls around whom the story turns — fun, selfish, nice-nasty, typical preteen girls — and of the protagonist who is both a girl with the twins and an older woman looking back on things.
It wove the story really well through non-linear story-telling. It has suspense, and emotion and is terribly well written.
But.
It’s part of that school of literary stories from the second half of the twentieth century that are unrelentingly grim. Everyone’s a pervert or being hurt by someone or cheating on their spouse or living a life without hope. People are murdered, raped, declared bankrupt, abused, tortured, depressed… It’s fine, I suppose, and good that people can write about these things. I don’t want people to pretend these things don’t happen or isolate victims by not allowing them to share their experiences. But there seems to have been a sense that you couldn’t be a literary (for ‘literary’ read: good) writer unless your world was devoid of hope, humor or heroes.
And I hate that. It’s why I fly to cozy mysteries and space opera and anything where I can find a hero and a bit of relief. [updated: And I totally respect that you might find this kind of writing challenging, rewarding, comforting, or sublimely moving, and may hate my kind of humor-laced frippery-faves. I think I mostly get annoyed by the seeming ubiquity of grimness in “literary” fiction.]
So, I’m glad I read this story because I will come back to it to see just how Ms Oates created that indelible sense of place; and how she made her characters so realistic; and how she wove that story so well. But I’ll never like it. And I never want to write this kind of thing.
What about you? Do you rage against a particular style of writing? Harlequin Romances? Happy endings? What gets you so angry that you feel moved to write something just to prove that stories can be better than that? Let me know in the comments:
Welcome to the first meeting of our monthly Serious Writers Accountability Group (Acronym: SWAGr, because every insecure writer needs a little swagger, don’t you think?)
Writing is a lonely business and, as StoryADay May proves year after year, there’s nothing quite like peer pressure for helping you meet your goals.
Every month I encourage you to come here, leave a comment and tell us what your goals are for this month. Then, next month, check in, tell us how you did and what you’re going to do in the following four weeks. (It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Examples of Goals
“I’m going to write every morning from 6-7 AM.”
“I’ll write 250 words a day, minimum.”
“I’ll write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.”
“I’ll write one full story and revise another.”
“I’ll write four stories and submit one story to a publication.”
“I’ll outline that presentation I’ve been putting off working on, and create half of the slides.”
“I’ll track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing.”
“I’ll keep a journal to track my resistance to getting the work done.”
So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:
(Next check-in, Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Tell your friends. )
Today’s prompt is inspired by three things. The first was the release this week of a US prisoner of war. It made me think of the many hostage and prison stories I’ve read, where people have lived in tiny cells for years on end and how it changes them. The second is the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in which a woman, trapped in her domestic life, fixates on the wallpaper of her room and always finds something new to see. The third is the essay “Fish” by Robin Sloan, which shares an observation exercise, in which students are asked to observe a dead fish long past the point when it would seem to be interesting.
If you can, read both those stories and then try this prompt.
Write about a person who is forced, by circumstance or outside agency, to observe a limited view for an unlimited time.
Tips
Describe what they see, remembering that their use of language will reflect how they feel about the situation they find themselves in.
How what they see and how they feel about it change over time?
What do they think about when all they to do is look at the same thing over and over again?
How does this change over time?
What does this tell us about the character?
What universal truths might there be in what your character is thinking?
If you get stuck, just start a new paragraph as if some time has passed. Have your character describe the view again, and think about how they might have changed in the intervening time.
Don’t worry if you don’t think this is making a great story. Keep going. You’ll find a way to end it if you let the character speak.
StoryFest is a celebration of StoryADay May and all our hard work.
Nominate your own story (or someone else’s) and it’ll be featured on the front page of StoryADay.org during my birthday weekend: June 14-15, 2014. (Here’s how it looked in 2010)
StoryFest is a chance for us to promote each other’s stories to the wider world by linking to them from Twitter, Facebook, blogs and anywhere else we can post. It takes place over one weekend only, in order to create some urgency, for people to come by and visit now, and not put it off.
Stories aren’t judged by anyone, just featured, so edit up your best story and submit it for some free link-love.
What If I Want To Nominate Someone Else’s StoryADay May 2014 Story?
That’s great! If you read and loved a story by a fellow participant during this year’s challenge, find the link and use the second part of the nominations form to highlight it.
(If it was a story that was published behind a password wall — i.e. not public — you can still give the writer a shout-out, without providing a link to their story.)
How Can I Help Promote StoryFest?
Starting on Friday evening, June 13, start spreading the word about StoryFest to your story-loving friends.
You can use these graphics to promote it, or simply use links. (StoryFest will take over the front page of StoryADay May during this weekend and will later move to [permalink: https://storyaday.org/storyfest-2014]. )
Use the hashtag #storyfest to help us find your social media mentions.
Keep spreading the word all weekend.
Take the opportunity to blog about what you learned during StoryADay and encourage other writers to get creative, like you! Use #storyfest and, if I see your link, I’ll retweet/link to it.
Social Media Starters
Whether you’re posting in a blog, on Twitter, on Facebook or any of those other sharing sites out there, feel free to take any of these starter suggestions or make up your own. Customize them to link to your stories, other people’s stories or just the front of the storyaday.org site. Go wild!
#StoryFest: a celebration of the short story. This weekend, [DATES]. No admission fee: https://storyaday.org
[customize this next one for the genre and link to a specific story] Need a little romance/mystery/time-travel/humor/suspense/sci-fi in your life? Try a short story today: [URL] #StoryFest
Short Stories: bit-sized brain food. Fine one that’s to your taste during #StoryFest: https://storyaday.org
Broaden your horizons with a day trip into someone-else’s world. Read a short story during #StoryFest: https://storyaday.org
Travel the world for free: Read a short story set in [insert location]: [link to specific story] #StoryFest
Ever wanted to time travel? Read a short story [link to a story set not in present day] #StoryFest
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![[Write On Wednesday] Groundhog Day](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/StoryADayWritingPromptFeaturedImage2021_600x338px.jpg)
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![[Reading Room] The Day We Were Fish by Stephen Koster](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2014-10-13-at-8.45.25-AM.png)
It’s 
by Dave Farland. And he actually does sell lots of novels, so his system works, at least for him. I like Larry Brooks’ 
* too, but it seemed to stall me, more than it helped me. Farland’s book was much better for my style of working. Take a look at them both and I hope one or other helps you. (*Amazon Affiliate links)
I hated this story.
