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.
Want to bore your readers and ensure they never get past your first paragraph? Write your opening as it were stage directions: describe a character or a room or the light or the hills…
YAWN!
It’s a familiar trap and we do it for a good reason — we’re trying to create an atmosphere or paint a picture in the reader’s head. The problem, from a reader’s perspective, is that we haven’t given them a reason to care about the pretty picture we’re painting.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve seen to combat this problem is to start your scene as close to the action as possible (and by ‘action’ I mean ‘conflict’, and by ‘conflict’ I mean ‘the thing that’s going to torment/delight your character and therefore your reader, until the story is finished.)
How Quentin Tarantino Slapped Me in The Face
Buy this as a t-shirt at Threadless.com
Reservoir Dogs is a deeply unpleasant, unsettling movie, but when I went to see it in the theaters I came out stunned, not just by the gore, but also by the masterful storytelling. And it started right from the opening.
The opening scene takes place in a diner. No, there’s no ‘action’ in the scene but the conversation sets up all the characters (including a discussion about tipping). The meal is over, we’re entering the scene at the last possible minute, right before the interesting stuff happens and the characters reveal themselves. We feel that the characters existed, knew things, had lives, before we started to observe them.
Immediately after the credits, we jump to the interior of a car where, clearly, something has gone wrong. Mr Orange has been shot and Mr White and he are racing away from somewhere. Granted, Reservoir Dogs ‘cheats’ a little because the rest of the movie is told in flashbacks, but for our purposes, this scene illustrates my point. This scene could have started with the crime going wrong. It could have started with Mr Orange injured and being dragged to the car. But it doesn’t. They’re in the car. He’s sure he’s dying. Mr White appears to be helping him (quite tenderly, for a foul-mouthed criminal…). Horrifying as the scene is, you are fascinated. It’s hard to resist finding out what is going on.
And all because we walk in to the story when the action has already started. This is something we, as writers, need to do in our stories.
The Prompt
Write a heist story, but start it as late in the action as you possibly can.
Tips
You don’t have to go all Reservoir Dogs. You can write a gentle, comedy ‘heist’ where no-one is really in peril (a little old lady trying to make off with a pie from one of those rotating cases in a diner, armed only with a crochet hook…)
Try not to use ‘flashbacks’. Instead, start the scene when it’s getting interesting (when the crook is confronted? When the pursuit is in full flight?)
Make sure your readers know, early on, what’s at stake, and gradually unfold the reasons for your main character’s actions as the story goes on.
You can make the criminal sympathetic by giving them a good reason for attempting robbery, or you can make someone else the hero.
Keep putting obstacles in your protagonist’s way.
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 about openings #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
See my story – and write your own, today: openings! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
Don’t miss my heist story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
After four rounds of StoryADay, three NaNoWriMos and several decades of being in various stages of writerly success, avoidance, denial and productivity, I think I’m finally getting the hang of treating my writing as a job…
After four rounds of StoryADay, three NaNoWriMos and several decades of being in various stages of writerly success, avoidance, denial and productivity, I think I’m finally getting the hang of treating my writing as a job.
Pursuing The Craft
I’ve developed a three-pronged approach to this ‘course’ I’m taking in writing. I’m sharing it because if you aren’t doing all of these things, you will want to add them to your writing life. And because if I’ve missed something, I’d love you to share it in the comments.
Commitment
If you vow to write a certain amount every day, or at the same time every day, or to finishing a thing by a certain date, that’s commitment. You’re not just messing around. You’re practising your craft. Whether or not you start off each writing session in the mood, you write when you said you would. You’re taking it seriously.
That in itself is a big step.
But better than that, if you really writing, committing, finishing, you will be learning and improving and progressing towards a point where you can be proud of what you write.
Study
Learn from other writers.
This is a lesson I resisted for a long time. Let’s face it I don’t like to be told what to do. And in a way, it is dangerous to read about what other writers do, unless you read voraciously. Read, listen to podcasts and interviews, take it all in.
At first you’re going to get depressed because all the writers you love are doing it differently from how you do it. You’re going to try to write 2000 words a day, every day, like Stephen King or you’re going to think you can’t finish a book without a writer’s retreat in Taos, New Mexico. And then maybe you’ll find that your writing method is frighteningly close to that of that jackass writer whose books you wouldn’t read if they were the last words on earth.
But the more you listen, the more you’ll realize it doesn’t matter. You’ll find your own way and you can try out tips from other writers. Discard them if they don’t work. Hoard them if they do. And you’ll start to realize that all writers have slumps, all writers find the middle difficult, all writers think they’re writing garbage at some point in the first draft. And all the successful writers keep going anyway. They finish. They send their work out there. They move on and write the next thing.
Showing your work to your mother or your spouse is all very well (and a necessary stage to give you the courage to move on to the next bit). But a biased reader-review is nothing to the power of a review from another writer.
Get out into the world and find yourself some other writers. (Try Meetup.com for real-world writers groups in your area — I found an awesome group this way. Hang out in the Writer Unboxed community on Facebook, or at one of the billion other online communities (including this one!)
There is nothing like hanging out with other writers to help boost your confidence in your writing and in your decision to embrace this writing thing that pulls at you. Suddenly, you are not alone, and that feels great.
Even better, their feedback will come at you from a different angle. They won’t say your writing is ‘nice’ or ‘fine’. They’ll talk about character arcs and shading and plot archetypes, and you will learn from all the things they’ve read and learned as they study their craft.
—
How about you? Are you writing if and when the muse strikes or are you laying traps for her by writing every day, studying up on the craft and hanging out with other writers? What else are you doing to develop your writing career?
So, were you furiously writing all through November? C’mon, I know you guys. You can’t resist a challenge and NaNoWriMo is the granddaddy of them all.
Well, if you were, I hope it went well. If you weren’t, well that just means you’ll have all the more creative energy for the inevitable New Year’s Resolution writing you’ll be doing in January!
What’s New At StoryADay.org?
The bonus StoryADay September went quite well, and I met some great new folks during it, but I think I’m probably going to go back to only hosting StoryADay during May from now on. I’d like to get us all together for a few events during the year (how about a Google Hangout short story slam? Or a weekend intensive?) so let me know what you’d like to see happening over at StoryADay.org when it’s not May.
A New Tool For You
It’s coming to the end of the year, so I put together a new tool to help you review your progress during the year and capture some ideas for next year. It’s the StoryADay “My Writing Year” quick planner and you can download a free copy here.
(It’s a worksheet for people who don’t like worksheets, and a list-maker for people who aren’t linear thinkers. I think you’ll like it!)
A Quick Thought On Revision
How do you approach revision? Do you go through the whole story at once and try to catch everything that’s not working, from line 1 to the final word? Or do you make several passes, starting with one aspect of the story and only then looking for others? Do you start with the copyedit or end with it?
If you’re having trouble getting to grips with the revision process it may be because your ‘process’ is a little too scattershot. If this sounds like you, stay tuned for a series of articles coming in the next month or two. I’ll be focusing on revision and a new, non-scary approach that’s going to make a lot of sense to you. So dig out a few old stories and get ready to polish them up with me.
Books For Your Holiday Wish Lists
I’ve read some great books this year and, since I know you all are sick of people buying you notebooks for whatever holiday you celebrate, I thought I’d share some of my favorites for you to add to your wish lists.
(These are all Amazon Affliliate links and any purchases you make through them help support StoryADay.org. You are, of course, free to request these books from your favourite neighbourhood indie bookstore, chain or audio book purveyor)
Keep Writing
And that’s all I have for you this time. What ever else you do this month, make some time to write a story or two, won’t you? They don’t have to be long, but write something. If you do, tweet them, or link back to them from the Write On Wednesday posts at StoryADay.org and I promise I’ll come over and read them.
All the best,
Julie
P.S. Help Spread The Word?
Way back in 2001 & 2002, when I ran another writers’ website (The 21st Century Publishing Update), I was delighted to find that Writer’s Digest’s editors had listed it as one of their 101 Best Websites for Writers. Well, they’re taking nominations now for the 2013 list and I think our little writing hub here might fit, don’t you? If so, send your nomination of StoryADay.org along to Writers.Digest@fwmedia.com (put “101 Best Websites” in the subject line) as soon as possible. They’re deciding on the list now!
I’m not asking this for my own ego (though, seeing the site on the list WOULD be cool), but the more publicity we get, the more writers join and the more accountability, feedback and fun YOU get to have next May. Send that email now and tell them you’d like to see StoryADay.org included on their 101 Best Websites for Writers list. Thanks!!
I’m a sucker for a time-travel story. It might have something to do with growing up in the UK in the 1970s, where my generation was weaned on Doctor Who, but time travel in all its varieties works for me. Of course, there are lots of quibbles with time travel stories: can you really kill your own grandfather and cease to exist? If you step on a butterfly in prehistoric times will the future change (thank you, Mr. Bradbury)? And most perplexing, why do time travellers always seem to run into the important figures in history, rather than nobodies like you and I?
The Prompt
Write A Time Travel Story That Includes An Explanation Of Why Your Time Traveller Meets An Important Historical Figure
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my time travel #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-wow-timeywimey
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about time travel #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey
See my story – and write your own, today: time travel!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey
Worksheet Alert! I have a new, free worksheet for you! Take a few minutes to look back at what you’ve done this year. Spend a little time patting yourself on the back on this new worksheet for those of us who like lists but aren’t linear thinkers…[read more]
Worksheet Alert! I have a new, free worksheet for you!
We all love the New Year: the retrospectives, the ‘where are they now’s, the ghoul pools, the feeling of starting afresh and of possibilities.
Well, the end of the year is nigh and it’s time to take a look at your writing life. And I have a printable worksheet to help you do just that.
Introducing The StoryADay.org “My Writing Year” Quick Planner
It’s a one-page, 8.5″x11″ printable form without any straight lines — perfect for those of us who like lists but aren’t linear.
(If you’re not using a US printer and paper, you’ll need to check the ‘resize to fit page’ box in your printer options, but it should work out OK.)
Take a few minutes to look back at what you’ve done this year. Spend a little time patting yourself on the back as well as taking note of opportunities missed, or where you could do better next year. Capture where you were and how far you’ve come. Scribble down a few plans for next year.
Imagination and emotion are what keep us from skating through life, forever on the surface, never going deeper and finding out what matters. Stories are all about imagination and emotion.
Why not write?
Isn’t that a better question?
The Storytelling Imperative
We tell stories every day.
All of us.
Even the people you wish wouldn’t.
You know the one, right? The one who starts to tell you about her journey in to wherever you are right now, but has to back up to tell you about what her husband asked her to cook before she left and how the car used to have heated seats but the mechanic messed it up and she’s still trying to get some satisfaction for that but she bets she never will…and you know there is something she is trying to tell you but now you’re standing there with your coffee gone cold and your boss’s increasingly frantic phone calls rerouting to voicemail, and still she doesn’t seem to be able to bring herself to the point of her story. And you can’t walk away because you know she’s building up to a point and you’re too well-bred to lean in and scream into her face, spittle flying, “Get to the freaking point, woman!”, so you stand there, following her down seemingly endless diversions and side roads hoping against hope that one of them will put her back on the road towards the point of her story.
And how do you know there is a point to her story? Because it’s how we communicate. You have a lifetime of experience in this stuff. You know that once someone has set a scene and introduced some characters (“Me, in my car, driving here”) they have entered into a contract with us to provide not just information but a story: something happens, some conclusion is reached, maybe there’s a moral, maybe not, but you both walk away having learned something.
The Contract
That’s the deal: I’m telling you a story. It will take you somewhere and give you something to take home with you at the end.
If you break the contract you are either a really bad storyteller and a bore, or you’re a comedian. (Think of why Steven Wright and Henny Youngman are so funny: they set up the expectation of a story and then subvert it. They aren’t wasting our time. They are entertaining us, so we forgive them.)
But back to your narratively-challenged office-mate. She didn’t just say, “Wow, it took me a long time to get here today.” She set the scene. She reeled you in. She has declared that she has a story to tell and you can’t help but stay to find out what happens in the end. (Unless, of course, you’ve heard her stories before.)
Why Write Stories?
If nothing else, to practice. To get better at it. To avoid being the person at a party or in the office corridors that everyone is scrambling to get away from.
By telling stories over and over again, in the safety of your notebook, you begin to see how story structure works: the set up, the missed opportunity, the payoff, the conclusion. You begin to learn how to make characters compelling (whether they are real or fictional). You learn how to pare back on the extraneous detail to keep your reader (or listener) interested.
By telling a lot of stories in a short amount of time, you learn these lessons quickly.
Don’t Wait
Dig in to the writing prompts and commit to writing a handful of stories this month. Then come back here and let us know you got on.
I’m always banging on about journeys: “the character needs to move from one state to another”, “writing is as much about the journey as the destination”…
“Journey” by Steve Loya
Well, enough with the metaphysical. Today we take a character and kick them to the kerb!
The Prompt
Your character takes a journey
Tips
It does have to be a literal journey.
It doesn’t have to be far.
But it can be.
It can also be metaphorical.
This will work best if they really, really want something and the journey is a part of that: promising reward or getting in the way of that ‘want’.
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my story of a journey #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about a journey #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey
See my story – and write your own, today: a journey!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey
The problem with telling people that you write is that they immediately ask unhelpful questions like “have you been published” or “when are we going to see that bestseller, then?” or “have you written anything I might have read?”
They mean to be supportive. They mean to show that they think it’s cool and exciting that you are a teller of tales. But the from the next-door and much-more-foul spawning ground that produces the inner editor, comes the inner critic, who stores up all these comments and replays them to you as criticism that you haven’t done enough fast enough and in who, in so doing, slams the brakes on all your progress. You know you’re not good enough yet, and these people, pushing you onto the stage before you’re ready, can cause a crippling case of stage fright. Don’t let them.
It’s All About Potential
As an adult if you tell people that you play piano or do gymnastics, they just raise their eyebrows and say ‘oh, that’s nice’ and assume it’s a harmless hobby that you do when you’re not doing your ‘real’ job. They might even envy you the time you somehow manage to carve out to keep up these interests.
When you’re a kid, though, tell anyone that you play an instrument or are working on the uneven bars and they immediately start asking you questions about when you’re going to play Carnegie Hall or how long until they see you in the Olympics. Of course, as a kid, all you really want to do is play a piece of music that’s got under your skin and experience the thrill of tumbling through the air. You know how to appreciate that moment when everything comes together and the practice starts to pay off. No kid ever grimly practices tumbles thinking ‘this is for Olympic glory’. Not until some grown-up goes and says the awful words, that is.
At the start of your journey other people see not the joy of creation, but practical potential. It’s a good thing. It’s a great thing. We should think ‘what if?’
-What if I took this seriously?
-What if I shared my stories and other people like them?
-What if I was wildly successful and one of those people in the top 5% of my field?
Wouldn’t that be cool?
Yes. It would. No doubt.
But what if you’re not there yet, not close?
Is it OK to keep practising?
Is it fair to take time away from family and friends to pursue your love of the written word?
Is it right to keep writing even you’re not publishing?
You betcha!
Much as no-one but a parent really wants to sit through a recital of piano classics played by incompetent seven year olds, and no-one but a coach can see the value in watching tiny children fall off the balance beam and dissolve into tears, no-one really wants to read your terrible, stumbling first attempts at stories, with their flat, croaking characters and their plotless meanderings.
But we still have to write them.
The only way to become better at writing is to write. The only way to write good stories is to write bad ones.
And there are, in fact, people out there who are willing, like parents at a recital and scouts at a gymnastics meet, to take your stumbling, fumbling duckling efforts and help you practice, and practice and practice until you become a graceful swan of a writer. They are called ‘your fellow writers’ and later, your editors. Seek them out. Befriend them. Be kind to each other.
Write a flash-fiction story (under 600 words) that takes a familiar trope (zombies, vampires, princesses in distress, twenty-something shopaholics with boy problems, space cowboys…) and have a little fun with it.
Tips
You can write long and edit down to 600 words
Don’t try to do too much in such a short story
Do consider having a twist at some point in the story (as with yesterday’s story, where the ‘victim’ was anything but)
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my fun flash fiction #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is twisty #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash
See my story – and write your own, today: flash fiction!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wowflash
While this short story isn’t perfect [1. Pet peeve: you don’t reach a crescendo. The crescendo is the bit where the volume is increasing.], it is fun and entertaining and had some likes that made me smile and frankly, that’s good enough for me.
“I’d been expecting my ex-boyfriend to show up sooner or later, and when he did, I knew he’d probably want to eat my brain.”
I mean, really. How can you resist reading on?
Clocking in at less than 900 words, this neat story uses lots of zombie tropes without taking them too seriously, but without mocking them either. Zombie fans won’t be annoyed by someone trampling all over their myths, but the non-zombie fans among us won’t be left rolling their eyes.
Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, which published this story, is an interesting publication: an online paying market that doesn’t waste it’s budget on design fees, but that offers a great selection of really well-written stories in written and audio formats. It’s open to new fiction from new writers and seems very well-run. Check it out.
You can take some traditionally Halloween-y elements and write about them in a spooky way, or in a funny way, or a tragic way, it’s up to you! Or you can invent some new tropes for the scary story (Hey, Stephen Moffat managed to turn harmless stone statues into one of the creepiest new monsters I’ve encountered in years!!)
Tips
Use a Halloween object in an unusual way (perhaps a Jack o’lantern that really grins, or a haunted hayride that goes awry, or something about going around the neighborhood for treats but the kids have tricks played on them instead
Turn an every day object or event into something spooky by explaining the ‘real’ story behind it (what’s really happening when you leave a door ajar; where the other socks all really go; why you can never find a pen when you need one…)
Re-tell a classic ghost story but update the setting. Here are some classic ghost stories to get you started.
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my Halloween short story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about scares #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
See my story – and write your own, today: Scary Story!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
Short stories are not mini-novels and they do not have to read as if they were. Part of the great fun of writing short stories is that we are free to tell a tale while breaking free from the tyranny of the three-act structure.
The Prompt
Write a story that does not follow a traditional narrative structure.
Write in diary excerpts or in list form, or as series of log entries, a Twitter conversation, word-association , stream of consciousness, whatever you can come up with.
Want to write a story as a series of letters? Do it! Want to tell the story backwards? Go for it! Feel like writing all-dialogue, or none? Fine!
Tips
Yesterday’s post about Neil Gaiman’s story “Orange” shows one intriguing way to do this
For inspiration, read Amanda Makepeace’s story “One Hour“, which was written in the form of several Twitter entries posted over the course of one hour.
Read this blog entries, which is mostly in the form of a list. Could you write a story that way? (Warning: contains painfully cute images of a baby!)
Bonus question: electronic media, with its insistence that readers be able to resize the text or display a piece on multiple devices, acts as a brake on ‘concrete’ literary forms (think: set fonts and sizes, words forming a shape on the page). Does this bother you? Do you ever think about the form of the words on the page as you write? Leave a comment below.
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story playing with form #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about form #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
See my story – and write your own, today: Playing With Form #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
One of the things I love about short stories is the way they can play with form. They are, at their best, unpredictable. “Orange” by Neil Gaiman (which I found in the Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 anthology) is a perfect illustration.
Written in the form of answers to a police interrogation, the story never actually tells you what those questions were, leaving you to both speculate and laugh out loud at times. It unfolds gradually from the shallow answers given by a teenaged girl about her less-than-perfect homelife, to something much more complex and true. And funny and touching and hopeful and sad.
That the protagonist is answering a interrogation tells you immediately that something has gone wrong and you read in part to find out what. But after a while, as I often find with Neil Gaiman’s writing, you are reading just for the sheer joy of it. His use of language and character are masterful, engaging and accessible.
After reading this story, I immediately called over my precocious nine-year old son and read it again, over his shoulder. Upon finishing, he flipped back to the start to read it again too. It’s like that.
Highly recommended if you feel you’re getting into a rut with your short story writing and need some inspiration for a shake up. Or if you just want to read a fine, well-written short story.
Fifty years ago this week, the US discovered that the USSR was building nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The two weeks that followed brought the two countries closer to disaster than ever before or since.
Public domain photo from CIA records
The Prompt
Write a story set in an alternate history where the Cuban Missile Crisis turned out differently and someone did launch a strike.
Tips
If you want to read up on the actual events, this Wikipedia article seems pretty good. I particularly liked the part (well, not ‘liked’, but you know what I mean) about the Russian submarine, the facts of which were only disclosed in 2002. What if the commander had made a different decision? What if Miami had been hit by a nuclear bomb.
You don’t have to write a Tom-Clancy-style military thriller here. Imagine anything in the alternate history of the world, from a mother trying to find clean water for her kids, to a history lesson for Fourth Graders.
Your story could treat the subject tangentially. It could be the kind of story you normally write, only with a few details in this world different: maybe there are only 49 states now (or maybe there are 52), perhaps Disneyworld was relocated to Pennsylvania “after the big war”…
You don’t have to be too serious. People lived and loved and laughed through the Blitz. People in an alternate timeline after Cuba would have to find ways to do the same, or humanity wouldn’t survive!
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story (however obliquely you use the ‘want’, it should be there in the character and all their reactions).
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: After Cuba #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about the Cuban Missile Crisi #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
See my story – and write your own, today: After Cuba #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
I’ve been reading a few books recently where a character pours his emotions about his life and everything in it, into his description of where he is.
The authors used the character to write passionate, scathing, vitriolic critiques of the places. Reading them gave me a gleeful, naughty chuckle because I am so darned polite and evenhanded that I could never say that kind of thing about any one, place or thing. But maybe my characters could…
The Prompt
Write a story in which one of your characters rips the setting to shreds.
For inspiration you could take a look at how the various characters look at the locations in Ken Follet’s sprawling Fall of Giants. At one point Billy, going home to the town he has longed for, suddenly finds it “small and drab, and the mountains all around seemed like walls to keep the people in.” [1. Follett, Ken (2011-08-30). Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy (Kindle Locations 15428-15429). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.]
For a more extreme version, (and if you can take some furious-but-funny foul language), have a look at the opening section of A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away by Chris Brookmeier. Keep reading until you get to the bit about Aberdeen. (I will refrain from comment as I have family in Aberdeen. But tell me that writing doesn’t leap off the page!)
At the start of “The Women” the narrator and his newly-widowed father are attending “holiday parties” dictated by the season. It is immediately clear that Andrew, the son, is unhappy with his father’s behavior but rather than baldly state this fact, the author makes Andrew’s feelings plain by showing us not what he thinks as much as what he is noticing.
The narrative style is clever: self-aware first person. Andrew is telling us, the readers, this story in a careful way, as anyone would: trying not to make himself look bad, but bursting all the same to show us his outrage.
“Before long the women were dropping by our house, and I’d see them late at night drinking coffee in my mother’s kitchen…”
But this is not just the sob story of a young man left doubly orphaned by his mother’s death and his father’s actions after it. The story moves on through the first year of his grieving, of his new life. By the following winter, things have started to change for Andrew.
This is a skillfully told story peopled by some engaging characters — and some realistically flawed. It will stay with me for a long time.
You can find it in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 and it was originally published in narrativemagazine.com
You’ve made it! Congratulations to anyone who wrote at all this month and I’m prostrating myself on the floor before any of you who are sitting down to write your 30th story. Really. I bet you’ve learned a ton this month, right?
The Prompt
Take the story you wrote yesterday (or any day) and rewrite it from the perspective of another character in the story.
Tips
Remember that the only ‘truth’ in a story is the truth as your protagonist sees it — preferably an emotional truth.
Remember that your former protagonist is now only a supporting character. Everything you show about that character should only serve your new protagonist’s point of view (even if you KNOW why the former-protagonist really slapped the old lady, in this version you should probably only show the new protagonist’s perception of that act).
And now:
Thank you so much for coming along on this journey this month.
I’d LOVE to hear about what you’ve learned. If you can take a moment, please send me an email (julie at storyaday dot org) and tell me one thing you discovered on your journey this month. (Perhaps it’s about how or when you work best, perhaps it was about the ideas that came to you, perhaps it was about how to carry on after a bad day…)
If you’re subscribed to the Daily Prompt email, don’t think I’m going to leave you stranded. You should still receive one email a week (on Wednesdays), to keep you writing throughout the rest of the year.
If you want to keep up with the news about the next StoryADay challenge (May 2013) make sure you’re on the Advance Notice List. I send occasional emails to this list, mostly with news about the upcoming challenge.
If you’d like to hear from me occasionally about writing courses, ebooks and other creativity-enhancing goodies, make sure you’re on my Creativity Lab list. It’s an even more infrequent mailing which goes out only when I find a great tool I want to share with you (hint: there’s a big thing coming in October, which will help you keep writing and polishing stories throughout the year). Join the Creativity Lab List here.
And lastly, thanks again for joining in. It give me so much pleasure to see people writing and getting joy from putting in the work!
We’re almost at the end of the month! Congrats to anyone who has written at ALL this month and HUGE, HUGE congrats to those of you who have 28 stories already. Two more and you achieve SuperHero status!
The Prompt
Write a story with more than one character today, so that tomorrow you can rewrite the story from the other character’s point of view.
Tips
Remember that the ‘truth’ of the story is not so much in the details of the events as the details of how the protagonist tells/sees the story.
Writing a story is more than just throwing some characters into a situation and seeing what happens. A good writer builds a whole world around the story of the characters.
This is more than setting: it’s also the soundtrack, the slang people use, the color palette of the rooms, the social hierarchy hinted at…
The Prompt
Spend Some Time Painting A Realistic World Around The Edges of Today’s Story
The most obvious place to find examples of this ‘world-building’ is in science-fiction (especially futuristic or space stories) and fantasy. Each of these genres has to define everything for the reader from social structures to the shape of the vehicles, to the way gravity works in this world (think Harry Potter’s wizarding world and its unconventional public transport, or Star Wars vs. Firefly in how they handled the sound of space ships.)
But every story needs a certain amount of ‘world-building’. In a Hercule Poirot story we are in a world of drawing-rooms and exotic locales, and a certain class strata. In 50 Shades of Grey, we are introduced to a world where certain people define the shape of their relationship with detailed contracts.
Pay attention to the details of your world today.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
Today we’re going to take a look at a character from the perspective of age.
The Prompt
Write About A Character In A Different Age Group
By “different age group” I mean either someone who is not the same age as you or someone of an age that you don’t normally write about. Also, you can decide to write about someone in an age band that no-one ever writes about (well hardly ever. Not ‘never’. It’s a big universe…)
Tips
Get inside the skin of the character
Don’t write ABOUT their age, just let them BE that age
How does their age affect their thoughts, reactions, physicality, the scope of the story setting?
How do other characters react to them, and is that affected by their age?
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
This week I’m listening to “Ziggurat” by Stephen O’Connor, which I found on the NPR Selected Shorts podcast. (It’s read by Tim Curry who does a fantastic job. It’s worth a listen. You can find it here.)
It tells the story of what happens when the Minotaur encounters a new arrival in his Labyrinth, a computer-savvy girl who affects him an an entirely unexpected way.
It’s a wonderful example of how to take a hoary old story and make it fresh and relevant and laugh-out-loud funny — without descending into slapstick — and poignant and full of suspense without being a mystery.
The author has a light, deft hand with description. At one point the girl is teaching the Minotaur to play pool (yes, really!) balances a particular brand of pool cue on her foot and the whole thing seems as real as a dank, mythical Labyrinth can seem. When he is leading the girl somewhere (and not, to their mutual surprise, eating her) the imagery is full of eating-imagery (“gnawed through the rocks”, “digested”).
Today (and by the way, Day 25?! You’re still turning up and giving this a shot on Day 25? You amaze me!)…ahem. As I was saying. Today we’re going to try a little cross-dressing, just for fun.
The Prompt
Write A Story From The Perspective of the Opposite Gender
…and if you’re in the habit of writing from the opposite gender’s POV, feel free to take this as an opportunity to write from the perspective of your own gender for a change.
Tips
*Remember that a character of the opposite gender does things other than button up their shirts the ‘wrong’ way.
*Show us some of the interior life
*Change the speech patterns you’re tempted to use (guys don’t generally want to talk things through the way women can)
*Feel free to teach me a lesson by writing a very feminine man or a masculine woman — hey, it’s your story.
*Go more than skin deep.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
Today, if you normally find that your stories come out one way, try to write a different way.
The Prompt
Write Against Your Normal Type
What I mean by this is simply: if your stories are usually sombre, try to force something flippant. If you normally go for comedy, try drama. If you write romance and happy endings, kill off a hero today. If you normally write paranormal stories, today try something rooted firmly in the real world.
It may not work, you may find that it feels awful, or you may discover that you’re much, much better at writing something other than what you THOUGHT you were meant to write.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
Yet more stealing! After stealing from actors on Friday and songrwiters yesterday, today I’m just going to advocate just plain old ripping off your favourite authors today.
The Prompt
Write a Fanfic Story
That’s it. Steal from your favorite writers, screenwriters, people in your writing group, me, whoever.
Tips
Don’t break any ‘rules’ of the world that you are writing in.
Have fun.
Don’t try to get this published. That would be a breach of the original author’s rights. Just have fun with it.
f
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
Today you’re going to do a little more burglary. Yesterday I encouraged you to steal from an actor, today I’m encouraging you to steal from a songwriter [1. Note that if you do this, it’s technically a derivative work and you can get into trouble if you decide to publish. If you want to avoid that, change the names and only ever acknowledge being ‘inspired’ by the song. If the song is an old folk song, and in the public domain, however, you’re in the clear. Publish away!].
The Prompt
Write The Story Of A Song
Tips
There are plenty of ballads out there that tell a story from the Me & Bobby McGhee to Copacabana. Tell the story of the main characters or something that goes on in the periphery.
Other songs conjour a mood but don’t tell you the specifics (“Whiter Shade of Pale” springs to my mind)
Some songs have a strong central character that we might like to follow through another day (Maybe “Born This Way” or “Somebody That I Used To Know”)
Put the song on repeat and try to capture the mood of the song as you write.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
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. At one point Billy, going home to the town he has longed for, suddenly finds it “small and drab, and the mountains all around seemed like walls to keep the people in.” [1. Follett, Ken (2011-08-30). Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy (Kindle Locations 15428-15429). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.]
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