This post is the second of two. Check out last week’s prompt or stay here to go straight to the part where you steal a story from someone else!
This prompt is part of a two-part prompt. Last week we wrote stories for other writers to steal from. This week we’re doing the stealing.
The Prompt
Look through the links from last week and find a story with a character, premise, setting or ‘what if’ that you think you can steal and build on. Write that story.
Tips
Don’t worry if the story is less than perfect. As long as it has one appealing feature (character, setting or premise), let the rest go. Just finish it and post it.
Think of this like the kernel of a piece of open source software (like WordPress, on which this site is built). Someone came up with the original nugget and you’re building on it
Post the story somewhere and provide a link to it. Post it in the comments here if you don’t have a blog of your own.
Feel free to take the story off in a completely different direct or into a different genre.
The Rules:
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story (or a link) in the comments.
Leave a link to your story and say which story it’s based on
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: Steal A Story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a Steal A Story! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
See my story – and write your own, today: Steal A Story at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
In “Vanilla Bright Like Eminem” by Michel Faber, a father sits with his family on a train, traveling through Scotland. A passing mention of the inadequate overhead luggage racks drew me into a story that ended with me blinking furiously and which I know I’ll remember for a long, long time.
Faber didn’t describe the gorgeous scenery whisking past the window. He didn’t spend any time at all describing the train (only that their bags were on a seat because they were too big for the overhead rack), but just that detail made the setting seem real for me (I’ve traveled on a lot of Scottish trains).
This story also featured an interesting trick I haven’t come across too often: the flash forward. Rather than tell the story in flash back, the story just unfolds and then gives us a glimpse of the future. It’s more than a gimmick though. It really works.
Wow, it didn’t take long for Apple to respond to Samsung’s latest innovation…
With today’s announcement about the Galaxy 5 phone, I couldn’t resist posting a bonus writing prompt.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Douglas Adams’ writing. I remember laughing along when Marvin, the Paranoid Android, was plunged deeper into despair by a ‘door with personality’, which stopped to tell him how happy it was to open for him. In the early 1980s this seemed like the height of farce. Who would ever come up with something like that?!
Twenty years later I put some trash in a mall food court and the trashcan said, “Thank you”!!
Seventeen years ago I wrote a story in which something very much like Google Glass was the going out of fashion in favor of similarly equipped contact lenses or, better yet, retinal implants. Last year we started to move into the futuristic era I’d written about.
Yesterday, the latest Samsung phone was released and is equipped with technology that can tell when you take your eyes off the screen (apparently it’ll pause your video for you, and I’m sure someone will come up with an even more awesome application for that in due course).
The Prompt
Write A Good Old Fashioned Paranoid 1950s Futuristic Story About The Rise of Technology/Surveillance/Man vs. Machine
Tips
You don’t have to actually be paranoid. You are free to point out the positives.
Take one technology, extrapolate it and think about the implications for daily life (e.g. if we really all did have flying cars by now what would our physical world look like? Not like it does now, with as many roads as we have. See The Boston Big Dig for inspiration as to how a city could look without roads. This was an elevated highway when I lived there in the mid 90s)
Show the small, everyday ways technology affects one character, one family, one event.
Share
If you like this prompt, would you do me a favor and share it? (by email, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest!)
This post is the first of two. Come back next week to steal a story from someone else!
This prompt is part of a two-part prompt. This week we’re writing a story that we won’t mind someone stealing. Next week we’re going to look at someone else’s story and steal their character, setting, premise or twist, and write our own story (a kind of derivative work).
The Prompt
Write a quick story with one strong feature: an appealing (or loathsome character), a great setting, a fabulous twist, an intriguing ‘what if’. Plan to allow someone else to steal from/be inspired by this story
Tips
Don’t worry if the story is less than perfect. As long as it has one appealing feature (character, setting or premise), let the rest go. Just finish it and post it.
Don’t try to write something you’re so proud of that you’ll be loathe to let it go.
Think of this like the kernel of a piece of open source software (like WordPress, on which this site is built). Someone came up with the original nugget, then let everyone else into the sandbox to play with it. Are you more mature than a four year old or will you get annoyed if someone else builds on top of your sandcastle?
Post the story somewhere and provide a link to it. Post it in the comments here if you don’t have a blog of your own.
Come back next week, read the links/stories and create a story based on someone else’s.
The Rules:
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story (or a link) in the comments.
Leave a link to your story and say which story it’s based on
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: Open Source Story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is an Open Source Story! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
See my story – and write your own, today: Open Source Story at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
I would not use the word ‘enjoy’ to describe what I did at yoga class this morning.
I didn’t even manage to love the relaxation part at the end this week (the promise of which is what keeps me coming back).
I wobbled my way down the stairs (really, who puts an exercise class up a flight and a half of stairs?!) and started to wonder if my three month fling with exercise had maybe run its course (ha!). I wondered if it had been worth dragging myself out of bed instead of rolling over, as I had so dearly wanted to.
And then, as I splashed through the puddles towards my car, turning my collar up against the driving rain, I started to notice something. My body felt good. It felt strong. The endorphins were doing their thing. The class had been a slog, but the rest of my day felt suddenly manageable. Shoulders back, head up, I grinned into the cloudy sky and jingled my keys in my pocket.
Warrior Pose
Why does it always take us so long to learn (and re-learn, and re-re-learn) that the things that are hard, the things that are scary, the things that we just-don’t-wanna-do-waaaaah turn out to be the things that make us stronger, braver and more able to live life with our heads held high and our shoulders back?
Sitting down to write can be scary. Pushing through the soggy middle of a story can be hard. It can hurt. It can bore us. We can want to do anything else in the world other than the hard thing.
And then we get to the end of a writing session, or the end of a story, and we can’t imagine anything (ANYTHING) that we would rather have been doing than writing.
So, as you sit down to write today, channel my yoga teacher who reminds us every week,
“This is your time.”
This is your time. Shoulders down, head up, keep breathing, and write.
What about you? Are you writing regularly? Do you find it easy to reach that point where your writing endorphins starts to flow? Or are you still struggling to get out of bed? What do you think would make the difference to you?
If you’re worried about the business side of writing — about the point of doing this thing in an uncertain publishing future — I recommend this TED talk by Amanda Palmer. She’s talking about the music industry, but mostly she’s talking about art and connection, and it applies to writers as much as it applies to musicians. And it’s inspiring.
It’s easy to raise objections to writing fiction in the second person point of view (“You do this, you do that and then you feel …”). The most obvious objection is that it reads like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel. It’s hard to pull off.
But this morning I was listening to an interview with a writer who found a fascinating way into the POV: his novel, “How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia”, is written as a self-help book. (It’s a great interview, full of all kinds of good stuff. Have a listen.)
The writer, Mohsin Hamid, sounds like such a nice guy that I hope he won’t mind us stealing his idea for this weeks’ writing exercise:
The Prompt
Write a second-person fiction tale as if it was a self-help book/article.
Tips
Think of all the ‘How To Write” articles you’ve read over the years. Have some fun with them
It doesn’t have to be ‘self help’, it can be aping any type of non-fiction that lends itself to second person.
You can often find this kind of writing at McSweeney’s. It isn’t always obvious that you might apply the label ‘fiction’, but it certainly is.
People have been writing about robots for a long time and fans of Science Fiction will instantly know what I’m talking about if I mention Isaac Asimov and his three laws of Robotics.
Twenty years ago I couldn’t have asked those of you who are not fans of Science Fiction to write a robot story unless you were writing about heavy industry.
Ten years ago, you could have written about the Mars rover or those funnily little circular robots that were starting to sweep our floors (and sweep for mines in the military).
Today you could write a story about your grandmother, being brought her medicine and being entertained by her own robot butler and only be on the edges of speculative fiction, according to this report from the BBC: Robot Designed To Care For The Elderly.
Reading this article gave me the strongest sense that I was living in an Asimov story (or very shortly might be)
The Prompt
Write a story featuring one of the everyday robotic technologies available to us today
Tips
You can make it, like early sci-fi, an exploration of humanity’s relationship with machines and what that means. Or you can simply use the robot as a primary or secondary character.
Perhaps your robots are sentient but it would be also interesting to see how living with highly-efficient, highly-programmed machines that are NOT sentient affects your characters’ actions.
I’m all for big dreams and Big Hairy Audacious Goals (A term coined by Jim Collins in “Built To Last”: ) After all, I’m the one who set herself the goal of completing a short story every day in May!) but not all goals are appropriate at every stage in our development.
What Is Success?
Maybe you will get published in Granta or Ellery Queen or McSweeneys one day. But if you’re still grappling with so-so feedback from your writers’ group perhaps today is not that day. That doesn’t mean you can’t shoot for a closer target. Perhaps you can submit to a smaller-circulation market, a newer publication that hasn’t attracted as much attention yet, a regional contest or anthology.
Or maybe you don’t need to ‘be published’ at all right now.
Reasons Not To Publish
Perhaps your version of success is ‘good feedback from my friends’. Perhaps you want to put together a collection of your stories and have it bound by a print on-demand publishing service to leave to your heirs.
Perhaps you can dedicate the next year to writing and revising rather than submitting stories, freeing yourself from the pressure of thinking about ‘success’ in terms of ‘acceptances’. File your stories chronologically and, at the end of the year, look back and see how far they have come. Then—and this is crucial—review your progress and decide what your next set of goals should be. Base your decision on where-my-writing-is-now rather than where-I-wish-it-was.
Reaching and Stretching
Whatever you decide to focus on, try to set your expectations at a level just a little beyond your current abilities. Give yourself something to strive for, but don’t set yourself you up for failure.
Having Said All That…
– Don’t let your inner critic obscure all that is good about your writing.
– Don’t let fear hold you back from finding out if your writing really IS ready for the big leagues.
– Don’t be timid in the face of challenge.
– Do set yourself ‘stretch’ goals that push you to improve.
– Do allow yourself to dream about your perfect reader, curled up in a comfy chair somewhere, transfixed by your stories, feeling the same joy you feel when you read a really great story.
– Do work hard towards your goal of being the best writer you can be.
– Do keep writing.
This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here or buy the ebookand help support StoryADay May:
What does it mean to you? Shortest month? Leap year? Darkness and winter? Summer in the southern hemisphere?
Write A February Story
Tips
What might “February” mean to an old woman? A young man? A kid whose birthday is in Feb?
Might you write a story with a sentence for each day in February? A 28-sentence story? (or maybe 29)
What unexpected stories could you tell, with a theme of “February”?
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
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: February #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is February! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
See my story – and write your own, today: February at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
I’m dying to hear your responses to this one, so please do wade in with any comments.
Q. Who Is Your Writing Hero And Why?
I know it’s a hard question to answer.
I mean, there are writers I have loved for almost as long as I could read. There are other writers whose careers I admire. There are other writers who are so bad and yet so successful that they give me hope (any time I’m feeling discouraged about my writing, I reach for one of their books and remind myself that if they have 22 books in the world, surely my first draft isn’t as far from “publishable” as it feels right now!)
So what writers do you you emulate? How? Why? Or do you reject the whole idea of writing heroes? Let me know:
After that you can start worrying about critiques and editors and agents and publishing and publicity.
But all of that is secondary to the writing. To become better at writing you must sit down and spin tales, craft stories, put words on the page.
The world is awash in articles, books and courses on how to manage the business of a writer’s life. You can find all the advice you will ever need and more on how to make time to write, how to write when you don’t have time, how to write better, and on how to find critique partners, find agents, find your audience.
The more important question is: Can you find the will to sit down and put words on the page day after day after day?
This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here or buy the ebookand help support StoryADay May:
A story about a paedophile priest in Ireland? My heart sank at the mere thought. Not really my usual cup of tea.
However, I’d heard enough about Colm Tóibín to be curious. I hadn’t read any of his work, so when this story popped up on the Selected Shorts Podcast, I decided to give it a try (albeit with my finger poised over the ‘skip’ button).
I’m so glad I did.
The story centers around Molly, a septuginarian mother-of-three, who has that traditional symbol of respectability, “a priest in the family.” Not that she shows any great reverence for the idea — or the church.
Molly, modern enough to be learning to email her grandchildren and with a social life better than that of her grown daughters, lives in a village in Ireland, the kind where your neighbours know more about you than you do yourself. Which, in this case, turns out to be true.
Tóibín goes into the excruciating details of Molly’s day and routine — something that would irritate me if handled by a less deft-writer, but which instead spun a web of suspense and reality that made the quiet end to the story pack such a punch.
I’m not a fan of stories where ‘nothing happens’. In this story you may have to watch carefully for the somethings that happen, but they’re there. The story is as restrained as its main character, and just as impressive.
I often find myself growing impatient with ‘literary’ stories, but this is an excellent example of how to write a quiet, literary story without losing readers who love a great character and a good ending.
Just a quick tip, today, from my own writing experience.
Today I was writing a story for Five Minute Fridays[1. Yeah, I love a challenge. So what?!]. I wrote my first sentence and then a second.
As soon as I tried to write a third sentence I realized I had already written my last line. I had the essence of the story in those first two sentences. I had simply arrived at the end too soon.
So I put my cursor in between the two sentences and filled in the rest of the story.
Having the last line — the destination — already in place made it so much easier to stay on track in the middle.
Why not try this as an exercise?
Write “Once upon a time there was a _________”
Then write “And in the end_________”
Then go back and fill in the middle.
If you like what you wrote, leave a comment so we can come and have a look.
If you’re a self-starter, consider the feedback you’ve had and plug those terms (“realistic dialogue”, “character deveopment”) into a search engine. Seek out insightful blogs and articles to help you improve those areas in which you are weak.
Read blogs by successful writers who are further along the path to you. Many published writers are extremely generous (if sporadic) in their blog posts. Check out the blogs (and their archives) by Neil Gaiman, Jane Espensen, and more.
Commit to reading about writing over the long term, and dismiss the urge it raises in you to whine “I’ll never be able to…” or “I’ll never be as good as…”. If you do keep reading and listening for months and years, you’ll find that you’ll learn more and despair less.
Don’t be afraid to specialize. Don’t take a generalized ‘short story writing’ class if you’ve come to realize that what you need help with is dialogue.
Likewise don’t be afraid to reach outside your specialty. If you see an interesting drama workshop or screenwriting class about “action and suspense”, give it a second look. If you are interested, you’ll get much more out of the class than if you are taking it because you just feel you ought to.
If you like the classroom feel, but can’t get to an online or real-world class, look out for ‘home-study’ workbooks and e-books that are structured on a class format, with weekly (or daily) assignments and lessons. Set yourself a deadline and, better yet, see if you can get a writing friend to go through the course with you, to simulate that in-class experience.
CopyCat Writing
This is one of the most popular segments of the I, WRITER Course that I run each year before StoryADay May.
During the Renaissance — the great flowering of European art and culture during the 16th and 17th centuries — great artists and artisans enrolled apprentices to train with them. The apprentices learned the principles of their craft not by creating their own unique works but by painstakingly copying the works and style of their masters.
We can do this in writing too (just as long as we don’t attempt to get any of our trainee copycat work published. That’s a plagiarism scandal just waiting to erupt!).
Take a story by a writer you really, really admire — preferably a short short story that won’t take for ever to reproduce. Analyze it in minute detail: from word choice to sentence length. Now, choose a different setting and different characters with different dreams from that of the originals, and write a copycat story, following the exact structure and tone of the original.
(If you want more details about this, and examples to follow, consider signing up for the I, WRITER Course I run several times a year.
Keep Learning
Nowt hat you have some great sources for how to learn from the greats, there is one final thing to realize:
You are never going to be finished.
You will grow and change as a writer as long as you keep doing…and every stage is going to require more learning, more inspiration and new heroes.
Commit to learning about your craft for as long as you are doing it, and you’ll be firmly on the path taken by all your writing heroes.
This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here or buy the ebookand help support StoryADay May:
Today’s prompt is a whole scenario with a named character and a tricky situation. Your job is to decide who this character is and how they will ultimately react. I’m really curious to see how different people deal with this, so please do post either the story or a link to your version in the comments, if you’re OK with posting it online.
The Prompt
Lorina Dorsey is nice. Always has been. Which is probably why she’s 52, unmarried and still teaching 5th Grade at the same school after 29 years, she thinks, wryly. She sometimes wonders if people think her weak. If they only knew the strength it took to…but no.
As our story starts, Lorina, is returning to work after the shattering business of burying her widowed mother. Lorina has no siblings. Walking into the school where she has taught fifth grade for 29 years, she sees that the door to Dr Tatchell’s office is closed. She can, nevertheless, hear voices. Dr Tatchell is roaring at someone. It’ll be that nice young Mr Santiago, getting some ‘professional development’ from Tatchell, no doubt. Only the timid, like her, stayed here longer than a semester.
Rounding the corner, Lorina sees a heap of coats on the floor outside her room. She tuts. Nothing bothers her more than sloppiness. Reaching down to pluck the coats off the ground, she is startled to find Andrew Smeel, the smallest boy in her class, curled up underneath them, sobbing. With some coaxing he tells her that he’d been involved in a scuffle with the other boys yesterday and the substitute had sent them all to Dr. Tatchell. At this point, Andrew curls up in a ball and refuses to say any more.
Lorina is standing, looking down at an 11 year old boy, curled into a fetal position outside her door. She turns to see Mr. Santiago stumbling towards her, white-faced. Her mother is dead. All she has is this school. Her eyes bore into the door of the Principal’s office. She takes one step.
Write Lorina’s story.
Tips
Feel free to change the gender or ethnicity of the characters, as well as the period if it helps.
Start anywhere. Use the backstory explicitly or, better yet, simply use it to inform the choices you make for Lorina.
Ask yourself what Lorina wants, what she’s capable of, what you can show the readers to make them suspect she’s capable of anything.
Will you write this realistically, or take a flight of fancy?
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
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: Lorina’s Story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a scenario! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
See my story – and write your own, today: Lorina’s Story at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
“Heart of a Champion” takes the reader from the opening credits to the close of an old (fictional) Lassie serial.
It is fascinating tutorial for those of us who have absorbed most of our ‘short stories’ in the form of TV shows or webisodes or through other visual media. It demonstrates quite nimbly, how to move from a visual image to the written word. It’d be worth reading for that alone, even if it wasn’t beautifully written and laugh-out-loud funny, too.
Another great feature of this story is that it parodies a much-loved show but goes beyond simple goofing around with the predictability of the TV show. The author thinks hard about the question of ‘what if it didn’t have to end the way it always had to end?’. He comments, subtly on what the show said about the characters who sleep-walked their way through it and the society that it was created by and that it reflected.
If you are heavily influenced by movies or TV shows, read this story, then write a story that contains similarly cinematic images.
If you are attempting a parody, take a close look at what this story does to do more than simply turn into a ‘skit’ and instead become a whole, novel piece of art.
If you want your writing to improve, it’s always a good idea to set a piece aside for a while and come back to it later.
But sometime, not even a month’s Time Out in the dusty recesses of your hard-drive is enough to separate your story from your hopes for it, and the only way to get some perspective is to show it to someone else.
The real benefit is not just in plucking up the courage to show your writing to another soul (though that’s powerful). It’s in knowing how to listen to and act upon their feedback.
How Not To Take Feedback
Recently, at my Real-World Writers’ Group’s critique session, I listened as a high-energy, opinionated novelist read out a sample of her novel, which was similarly high-energy and opinionated. It was also funny and well-crafted and she was clearly at the stage where she needed feedback only on errors, omissions and clarity. So we waded in: “You said she was standing on the other side of the minivan so how did he see her?”, “Oh, I do that hobby and there’s a detail you missed.”
It was good stuff and just what she needed. But every time someone offered a critique or asked a question, the writer cut them off with a defense of why she had written it that way and prefaced most of her comebacks with, “Well, what you don’t understand is…”.
I started to wonder a, why she had come to the group, and b, how she ever hoped to get this promising manuscript published if she was unwilling to take feedback. (I had a sudden vision of her trying to follow all her readers home from the bookstore, calling out “Now, don’t forget, when I say that Marianne is biting her lip, that means she’s happy, not that she’s nervous. And the dog is symbolic. Symbolic!!”)
If It’s Not On The Page, It’s Not In The Story
If readers ask you for clarity about a story detail, a character or an event, it means something is missing. Listen to them, make notes and then go away and figure out a way to include more information or clues right there on the page.
If your story has too little (or just as likely: too much) of something, remember that this is not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean you stink as a writer. It doesn’t mean you’ll never be any good. It just means you have some more (re)writing to do. And that now you know what you have to do.
Rejecting Feedback
Just as important as listening to and acting on feedback, is the ability to decide you’re not going to act on it.
I like to write stories with twists at the end. I like science fiction. I like humor. So I took along a funny (I hoped), twisty, vaguely-sci-fi story to my writers’ group’s critique night recently. I was pleased to get a few laughs and some smiles, but I also noticed that one of the women in the group was smiling extremely politely and blinking a lot. I gave her an encouraging look and took a deep breath. When she prefaced her remarks with,
“I’ve never read any science fiction and I really prefer slice-of-life stories…” I knew what was coming next. She didn’t get it and had no clue what had happened at the end of my story.
Of course I was disappointed. And of course I wondered if I should make the twist in the tail more obvious. But I also happened to have another person in the group who knew exactly the kind of story this was supposed to be and who enjoyed those kinds of stories. That feedback was, naturally, very different.
I was interested in the feedback of the more ‘general fiction’ reader, but I gave more weight to the critique of the group’s lone sci-fi fan with the great sense of humor who thinks the ending was skating on just the right side of ‘predictable’.
Listen. Take notes. Consider the source. Go with your gut.
How To Find Critique Partners
If you’ve read this far and are thinking “well, that’s all very well, but how do I find these thoughtful, insightful critique partners?” here are a few idea.
Connect With Other Writers
Readers are wonderful people (I’m one of them), but if you pass a story to the most avid reader who doesn’t write, you’ll likely end up with a fairly unhelpful critique: I liked it/Hmm, it didn’t really work for me.
Avid readers know when something works, but they don’t tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the technique behind good writing: character arcs, if/then cycles, opposing characteristics. And why should they?
Finding Writers To Connect With
Writer Unboxed – This blog has spawned a friendly and passionate writers’ group at their Facebook site. Most of the writers are novelists but many write short stories too. Join the conversation, make some writer friends and see where it takes you.
Meetup.com – I found a fabulous writers’ group in my area through Meetup. Check the listings and see what other people say about the group. In my experience a great facilitator makes all the difference, so see if you can send a private message to some members to see what they think of the group’s leadership and make-up. Also, try to find a group where at least some writers are fans of the genres you write in.
Backspace – A serious writing organization for serious writers. There’s a subscription fee to join the group, which tends to weed out the dilettantes. I’m not a member but several people I respect have raved to me about the forums.
StoryADay.org — leave a comment here on this article saying what you write and that you’d like to form a critique group. If there’s enough interest I’ll set something up in our very own forums and get things rolling.
This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here or buy the ebookand help support StoryADay May:
Supreme Court Justice and life-long overachiever, Sonia Sotomayor was a C-student until she decided she wanted to do better. Disregarding questions of talent and opportunity and what was expected of her, she simply went to the top kid in her fifth grade class how she got all those gold stars. And then Sotomayor listened as the girl taught her how she took notes, studied and used tricks to trigger her memory. From then on, Sotomayor was a straight-A student.
Until she reached Princeton and a professor gave her a C.
Once again, she asked for help, listened to the answer and then (and this is crucial) took action to correct her defects. She spent her summer at a bookstore, teaching herself remedial grammar. Each year she faced a different challenge and worked with her professors to overcome them[1. This story comes from a couple of interview with Justice Sotomayor by NPR’s Nina Totenburg. You can find them here and here].
And now she’s a justice in the highest court in the US, where telling a compelling story and choosing the right words are perhaps more important than in any other job but that of a writer.
Believe That You Can Improve
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking writing can’t be taught. Of course it can.
Every time you read a great book you’re learning how to write. Every time some great author talks about writing, you pick up a thing or two.
True, Sonia Sotomayor was not striving to write great literature, but she was willing to learn from people who knew more than she did. We must be willing to do the same.
Examining Your Writing Will Not Scare Away Your Muse
We’ve all experienced that magical moment when everything is flowing and it seems like the words are coming to us from some mystical well. We can start to believe that if we look too closely at what’s going on we’ll blow the whole thing.
But if you’re to make any progress, you must discover and internalize a simple truth that makes all the difference between the ‘wannabe’ writer and the seriously satisfied writer:
You must be willing to believe that writing can be taught.
And when I say ‘taught’ I simply mean that more experienced writers than yourself can share tips and techniques that help you find the fastest path from ‘beginner’ to ‘accomplished’.
Even more importantly, you must believe that you can absorb these lessons and put them into practice.
Sonia Sotomayor (no matter what you think of her judicial views on any subject) demonstrated an attitude and a pattern of behavior we should be racing to copy. If you’re not writing brilliantly now, figure out what you’re doing wrong and what you need to do to change it. Then work on making those changes.
This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here or buy the ebookand help support StoryADay May:
Every writer with any measure of skill will, at some point, worry that their writing isn’t good enough
Happily, you can find any number of articles and books telling us why you shouldn’t worry about it, how to break through the blocks it causes, how to ignore other people’s subjective opinions, and how to deal with rejection.
But what if your writing really isn’t good enough?
What if your stories are always being rejected?
What if your critique partners always have tons of notes for you, or worse, nothing but a blank stare?
It may mean your writing really isn’t good enough and you need to do two things:
– Work on your skills and become a better writer
– Adjust your expectations[1. You’ll notice I don’t offer ‘give up’ as a choice. You can’t. You’re a writer. You might as well accept that and drop the fantasy that you can quit whenever you want to. You can’t, so instead, work at it and set your expectations appropriately]
Stay tuned for the next few days for a StoryADay.org series on What To Do If Your Writing Just Isn’t Good Enough. In this series I’ll show you how to harness the same tools that took a poor girl from Brooklyn to the highest court in the US, how to learn like a Renaissance master, and how to feel great about your writing again.
This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here:
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
“What’s that girl? Timmy’s stuck in the old well?”
We all have TV shows that we love even though they are formulaic, populated by ‘character types’ rather than characters, and a real guilty pleasure. And we keep watching them, even if we don’t always admit our deep, abiding love for them to our more sophisticated friends.
So why do we watch? Because on some level they satisfy a need for escapism, heroism, humour, idealism. They may even have moments of brilliance that keep us coming back for more.
(For me, it’s Star Trek, Murder She Wrote and almost anything featuring Robin Hood or King Arthur).
We know the hero is (almost) always going to win. We know none of the major recurring characters are going to die. We know the bad guy will get what he deserves — even if it’s only the frowning disapproval of the hero.
THE PROMPT
Write An Affectionate Parody/Spoof of Your Favourite Formulaic Show
Tips
*If you need inspiration, track down a copy of “Heart of A Champion” by T. C. Boyle, a wonderful parody of the Lassie stories.
*Don’t be lazy. Don’t just reach for inappropriate romance or make the characters stupid. (Check out Jon Scalzi’s “Redshirts” as an example. It starts as a fairly unimaginative parody of the action scenes in “Star Trek” (you know, the ones where the no-name ensign in a red shirt goes on an away mission and gets eaten by pink slime to prove that the landing party faces some peril) but moves on to a more thoughtful and affectionate examination of science fiction tropes.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
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: Affectionate Spoofing #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Affectionate Spoofing! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
See my story – and write your own, today: Affectionate Spoof at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
Prompt: Write a story in the present tense from a limited third person perspective
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
Wolf Hall: A Novel, by Hilary Mantel, is a strange, disorienting read. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but finally I realised what was keeping me off balance: the book is written in the present tense and from a limited perspective: that of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to King Henry VIII. Everything we learn comes either from Thomas’s direct experience or from things he has heard from other people. Sometime he is reminiscing, sometimes observing in the moment, but the present tense keeps the whole experience very immediate.
The Prompt
Write a story in the present tense, from a limited third person perspective
Tips
In Wolf Hall it is sometimes hard to follow what is going on, because of course, the main character’s thoughts don’t pause to explain. He thinks of one person, who reminds him of another, and the reader has to trust that — at some point — it will be explained who these people are. or what that place was, and it will all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Don’t be afraid to confuse the reader, especially on your first draft. Leave out more than you put in.
Here is an excerpt from the novel to help you see how the author tells the story from Thomas Cromwell’s perspective:
Monday morning the dukes are back. Their instructions are to turn out the occupants this very day, because the king wants to send in his own builders and furnishers and get the palace ready to hand over to the Lady Anne, who needs a London house of her own.
He’s [Cromwell] prepared to stand and ague the point: have I missed something? This palace belongs to the archdiocese of York. When was Lady Ann made an archbishop?
But the tide of men flooding in by the water stairs is sweeping them away. The two dukes have made themselves scarce, and there’s nobody to argue with. What a terrible sight, someone says: Master Cromwell balked of a fight. And now the cardinal’s ready to go, but where? Over his customary scarlet, he is wearing a traveling cloak that belongs to someone else; they are confiscating his wardrobe piece by piece, so he has to grab what he can. It is autumn, and though he is a big man he feels the cold.
See? It’s a bit confusing, not always knowing who ‘he’ is, but once the reader settles into the style, it becomes enjoyable, puzzling out what Thomas Cromwell is thinking, what he is observing and what he is admitting (to himself and others). Don’t be afraid give your readers this pleasure.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
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: Inner Thoughts #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Inner Thoughts! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
See my story – and write your own, today: Inner Thoughts at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
Consider the poor golfer. A cheap set of clubs costs $250, and he quickly finds himself tweaking his collection of clubs (a nice new 3-wood for $179, anyone?). Country club dues are rarely less than a couple of thousand a year. Writing, by comparison, is a cheap gig, but that doesn’t mean you should invest nothing! Let’s talk about how you’ll invest time in your writing this year…
Writing is cheap.
All it takes is your brain and some way of recording your creations.
Writing’s low-cost-of-entry makes it the perfect low-risk creative activity …and therein lies the danger.
If you are investing nothing in your writing, what’s to stop you giving up when it gets hard?
I’m here today to make a case that you should consider investing more in your writing this year than you have before.
How To Invest In Your Writing
It might mean you buy more books on the craft of writing.
It might mean hiring a babysitter or a cleaning service from time to time, or negotiating chore-swaps with family members to buy yourself more time to write.
It might simply mean that you spend your time more wisely: actually writing instead of watching TV or browsing writing blogs (a-hem).
It might mean you join a writer’s group, or take an online course, or attend a writer’s conference.
My Writing Investments 2012 – A Case Study
Writing is my hobby, my avocation and my job. And even I don’t spend that much on it.
I consider last year a big year for writing expenditures:
25+ books related to writing, StoryADay (plus well-written books I wanted to read for the joy of it) ($250+ and yes, I could have used the library!)
Writer’s Digest Writers’ Conference in NYC – to develop craft and network ($600+ with travel and accommodation)
Attended BookExpoAmerica to network ($200+ with travel)
Joined ML Writer’s Group (and paid my dues) to hang out with other writers, learn from them, share with them. ($25/year plus cost of dinner at monthly meeting.)
Bought notebooks that I enjoy writing in and quadrille paper that I can plan things out on. ($50?)
Bought apps to help with note-keeping and planning ($10-20)
Hosting for StoryADay.org (I consider StoryADay and the people who hang out there, part of my writing development. So thanks for being part of it!) ($100)
Business cards for StoryADay.org ($25)
Entry fees for three or four writing competitions ($5-20 each)
Used WorldCat to find local college libraries with books I needed for research (free).
Participated more in an online writers’ community I find fruitful (free).
My outlays were less than $2000 for the year.
My biggest-ticket items were the two trips to NYC for conferences (particularly the Writers’ Digest one.). I could have replicated some of that with a cheaper conference, closer to home, but for me at that particular time this was the right choice and I was fortunate to be able to afford it.
Happily, the return on my investments was HUGE. In the past year I’ve made massive strides in terms of craft, professional development, networking with fellow writers, in output and in simply *seeing myself as a writer* (which is not to be underestimated). I made good connections and set up some new opportunities. I expect at least some of those investments to pay off in really interesting ways this year.
The Cost Of Other Activities – Comparative Case Studies
Now consider the poor golfer. A cheap set of clubs costs $250, and he quickly finds himself tweaking his collection of clubs (a nice new 3-wood for $179, anyone?). Country club dues are rarely less than a couple of thousand a year. Hiring a golf cart for every round might be $40 and some clubs have monthly restaurant minimums (use it or lose it). Even if he plays as a guest he’s looking at $50-$100 per round (or more), plus cart fee and dining costs. And what about lessons? And the cost of hitting the driving range in the winter when the course is snowed out?
My spendy year is starting to look kind of frugal, now!
And what about the ardent football fan? The cheapest tickets to see my local football team are $60 a game (if you can get them). If you’re a Green Bay Packers fan and are lucky enough to have a blood relative who’s willing to sign over their season tickets to you, it’ll set you back $1400 per seat just for the transfer after which you are obliged to buy ten tickets a year (at an average price of $260 per seat per game).
It Isn’t All Or Nothing, Is It?
Of course not.
There are plenty of people who tell you going to games is over-rated. They’re happy to party at home and watch the game on their big-screen TV with a few friends, but even that ain’t free (TV: $800-2000, DirecTV Sunday Ticket subscription $199-300/year, nachos and beer, $200+/year).
Or you could watch the game for the price of a couple of Bud Lights (and maybe a babysitter) at your local bar. But I’m willing to be that the most ardent fan in the bar has, at some point, wondered if they might be happier with a season ticket in their back pocket.
And every writer with a pencil and paper has wondered if things might be easier with a word-processor. Every mystery writer has wondered if there might be tricks they could learn from more experienced writers. Every professional in every field needs instruction if they are to progress.
You Don’t Need Season Tickets (But Going To A Game Or Two Might Be Nice)
You don’t have to spend $4000 a year on tickets to call yourself a Packers fan.
You don’t have to spend thousands on courses and books and conferences to develop your writing.
But at some point you’re probably going to feel the pull to subscribe to a writers’ magazine. Or join a group. Or take a course. Or go to a conference.
Deciding What’s Right For You
When my friend told me she’d been offered the chance of taking over some family season tickets to the Green Bay Packers, she told me about the transfer fees and the ticket prices and the hours-in-the-car-with-kids-there-and-back. Oh and the windchill. My jaw dropped lower and lower and my eyes clearly read “You must be crazy!”.
But that’s because I know nothing about football culture. I’m not from Wisconsin. (I’m not even from the US!). I didn’t know that people sign their babies up to the Packers’ waiting list before they even sign the birth certificate. People deed their place on the waiting list to their heirs in their wills! Season-ticket holders sell unused tickets to other people, and there’s never a shortage of buyers. Oh, and she and her husband are huge fans, who go to games whenever they can.
$1400 a seat for a transfer fee? In that context? She’d be crazy NOT to take on the tickets. I hope my ignorant reaction didn’t color her decision.
Likewise, be careful who you ask for advice when you’re considering traveling thousands of miles and spending hundreds of dollars to attend a conference about writing (which, after all, we all learned to do by the time we were seven, right?).
Another writer may see the value in that. Your golf-playing buddy may not.
Even another writer, at a different stage in their development, may not see the value of the investment you want to make in your writing.
Don’t let anyone derail you.
Likewise, don’t assume that because a conference, or a course, or a book is popular and/or expensive, that it is a ‘must’ for you. My Cheesehead friends had to consider whether, with three small children, the tickets were a sensible investment for them in their real lives not as an abstract idea.
Take some time to think about your goals. Interrogate every opportunity to spend time or money on your craft as it comes along.
Ask yourself:
Does this get me closer to my goal of being a fiction writer? And what kind of fiction?
Does this conference focus too much on trying to ‘be published’ and less on developing my writing?
Have I taken all the classes I can stomach on “better dialogue” and should I be moving on to figuring out how to submit to magazines?
Do you have a good writing friend you can correspond with (like Emily Dickinson) or do you need to join a writers’ group (think: Shelly, Byron, Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Keats!)
How Will You Invest In Your Writing This Year?
What have you been doing to develop your writing and what will you do to step it up this year?
Been writing a few stories here and there? How about committing to a story every month (or even, dare I suggest, a story a day in May?)
Reading only fiction? Why not add some non-fiction, to expand the knowledge you bring to your fiction?
Are you writing and reviewing your work alone? Perhaps its time to join a critique group or sign up for a writers’ conference.
Read enough inspirational blogs and books about writing? Perhaps its time to try something that has a curriculum (a workbook, a group or a course.)
Parting Points
You are allowed to spend time and money on writing. It’s as important to you as football is to people who claim to ‘bleed green’ (or ‘blue’ or ‘orange’ or whatever). And probably cheaper.
You must make your own decisions about what you need in your writing life right now, and pursue those things.
You — and your stories — are important. Do whatever you can to stalk those stories, capture them, and share them with us. We need them.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
It’s that time of year again. Everyone’s made their New Year Resolutions and they’re all hitting the gym. I admit it. I’m one of them.
As I looked around my Zumba class last night I was struck by what a great setting it would be for a story. All those people from all different walks of life, all with their own stories and their own reasons for being there. And guess what? That’s your prompt today!
The Prompt
Write A Story Based Around A Set Of Characters From A Gym (Class)
Tips
You could write the story from one observer’s perspective, or hop from head to head, following each participant’s thoughts.
Remember the story must have a shape, so inject some tension (someone is worried about something; someone wants someone else to notice them, someone desperately wants no-one to notice them…)
If you don’t have much time, limit this to a single perspective and keep the word count short. Ask yourself what your character wants, before you put pen to paper, then run through the scene in your head. Don’t start writing until you know what happened in the hour before the class (or the first half of the class). Leave all that off the page, and just jump in when something interesting’s about to happen.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
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: TEXT #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/LINK
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is TEXT! #storyaday http://wp.me/LINK
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday LINK
See my story – and write your own, today: TEXT at #WriteOnWed #storyaday LINK
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
Last week I talked about the benefits of writing seasonal stories and yesterday I highlighted a seasonal story over at Six Sentences. Today I’m combining the two, for today’s prompt:
The Prompt
Write A January Story In Six Sentences
Tips
Your story should have something to do with “January”.
It might be set in the month, have something to do with the Roman god Janus (after whom the month was named), or feature a character named January.
Don’t forget that your experience of January is different from that of many others. (hint: even the weather is different in the other hemisphere.)
It doesn’t tackle a particularly novel topic (a New Year’s story about resolutions? Shock!), and it’s not very long (six sentences!) and yet it manages to say a lot and stay fresh.
It’s a great example of how restrictions in length, topic or form, can help transform your writing.
Every year at this time I stumble on holiday-themed stories wherever I look: Christmas mysteries, Hannukah radio anthologies, contests themed on New Year’s. Collection after collection after anthology on seasonal stories. And why?…
Every year at this time I stumble on holiday-themed stories wherever I look: Christmas mysteries, Hannukah radio anthologies, contests themed on New Year’s. Collection after collection after anthology on seasonal stories. And why? Because they make great perennial gifts that publishers and authors can wheel out every year at the same time.
Of course, with the lead-time involved in publishing, if you want to have a hope of submitting a story to a themed anthology, you need to have it ready 6 months to a year before the occasion. So this is the perfect time to write.
The Prompt
Write a Themed Story For The Season
Tips
Pick Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, New Year’s or any other seasonal trope (“The First Snowman of Winter”?), whatever means the most to you.
Write it now and put a reminder in your online calendar telling yourself in June to start revising and submitting the story!
If you’re a self-publisher, plan to give the story away or release it annually
If you’re impatient and can’t imagine waiting a year to do something with a seasonal story, start writing your summer beach story or your Halloween spooky story now. (You’re probably cutting it fine for Valentine’s…)
Use all the stories you’ve accumulated in real life THIS holiday season to fuel your story: the good, the bad and the monumentally irritating!
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:
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is very seasonal #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
See my story – and write your own, today: seasonal stories! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
Don’t miss my seasonal story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
It’s a sci-fi story set on Earth, on the RMS Titanic, to be precise. How can that be a sci-fi/fantasy story? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out.
The story takes place exclusively around a card table on the luxury liner. Four men are playing Bridge and talking in a wide-ranging conversation as people do: they talk about where they’re from, what they’re thinking about, each one interjecting something that a man of his time, class and geographical identity might know something about.
The whole piece is beautifully crafted. Each character has a distinct voice and a careful use of dialogue tags keeps us straight in case there was any confusion.
Since we were talking about openings in last week’s Writing Prompt, I thought I’d quote from the opening of this story. It is very clever and repays the reader for a second reading. It promises one thing, delivers something different and then comes back and plays with us again, so we’re not quite sure where the writer is going.
“Is dangerous, this ice,” said the Russian.
The great frozen mass approached slowly, the steward struggling to push the cart across the threshold of the card room.
“I agree,” said the New Yorker. He shuffled a deck of cards, rather listlessly. “Looks like it’s about to give our steward here a hernia.”
“I only wanted enough to put in my brandy,” said the Texan. “Why’d he bring the whole block?”
“White Star line is very prideful of her service,” said the steward.
“They don’t do anything small on the Titanic,” the New Yorker said. “Not in first class, anyway.”
And then the story moves away from the ice and the Titanic and follows the mens’ conversation as they range all over history, philosophy, linguistics and fantasy. It’s a great discussion in itself, which keeps you reading. (I like stories where I feel like I’m learning something, or remembering something I once knew. I like stories that make me feel clever, don’t you?)
As the discussion continues, it subtly, subtly becomes clear that they are closing in on one topic, that is going to be the point of this story. The author uses repetition and comic relief in a really skillful way, to set up the eventual conclusion.
At the end of this story I sat back and said “Ha!” out loud, in an empty room.
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This post is part of the Becoming A Better Writer series. Find the other parts here or buy the ebook and help support StoryADay May:
Today I was writing a story for Five Minute Fridays[1. Yeah, I love a challenge. So what?!]. I wrote my first sentence and then a second.
![[Tuesday Reading Room] Durak By Anatoly Belilovsky](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Screen-Shot-2012-12-20-at-9.59.59-AM.png)
I found this story in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and I loved it.