The Prompt

Start your story at the end. Write about a character who must do something they really, really don’t want to do in order to get out of a sticky situation.

Things To Consider

For readers of a certain age, I can simply cite the opening of the Tobey Macguire Spiderman movie (Falls off a building. Freezeframe, voice over: “Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation…”).

Starting at the moment of peak drama and then jumping back in time to tell the rest of the story is a great and time-honored way of telling a story, and probably the easiest to do on a day like this, when you only have one day to craft the story. S

ome other options for telling a story backwards include literally telling it backwards.

In Courttia Newland’s 2017 story “Reversible”, the narrator shows us the victim of a crime and then tells the story as if it was a film, running in reverse (people back away down the alley and get into cars and reverse away at high speeds).

It’s a clever technique and ends up packing a huge emotional punch as we follow the victim back through his morning and into an average morning. (This is an idea that will take a bit of time to work out, so if you don’t have a lot of time to write today, file this idea away for later!)

Another clever-but-potentially-time-consuming idea, is to tell a palindromic story, in which you tell the story once in one direction and then reverse the direction and tell it again, but in the other direction.

Further Reading:

Here’s an example of a palindromic story and here’s a children’s story that does this very effectively

Here’s a collection where you can read Courttia Newland’s “Reversible”.

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The Prompt

Tell the story of an incident. Then tell it from another point of view. Then tell it a third time from another point of view.

Things To Consider

The great thing about this prompt is that you don’t have to come up with a large and complex plot to start.

Just write an incident (it could be someone observing a traffic accident, or a young mother interacting with her kid).

Then tell the story from someone else’s perspective.

The second versions should add to our understanding of what’s going on (or how people perceive events).

The third perspective tells the same story again but differently.

As with everything in life perspective matters.

One person’s insult is another person’s compliment. Blame can be assigned easily, but when the know more details, the ‘black and white’ of a situation can quickly become grey.

This is a wonderful opportunity to tell a story in a way that encourages readers to check their knee-jerk reaction to events they encounter in the world. You can use any point of view you want.

All three sections could be first person (“I saw an incredible thing today”) or you could play with the various third person perspectives (limited, omniscient) or even venture out in to second person (“You are walking down the street when”, or “We see the car slew towards the old woman and…”)

Further reading

You And Them

The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts – a prompt from Neha Mediratta

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The Prompt

Write a story in which your main character tries to unravel a mystery, but write it as a series of letters, social media updates, or memos – or a mix of forms

Things To Consider

The ‘epistolary novel’ had its moment in the sun in 18th Century British literature.

It was a form that allowed an intimate glance into the thoughts and emotions of characters ‘just like me’, at a time when expressing yourself publicly could be awkward, if not dangerous.

It was a titillating alternative to omniscient narrators and religious or political tracts that circulated more commonly, which, I imagine, accounted for the popularity of the form!

Epistolary writing goes in and out of fashion, but it does always come back around and is really fun to play with.

(My friends and I were obsessed with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend (which really wasn’t a children’s book!).

You might have been moved by the 19th century photo-Blair-Witch-Project that was Bram Stoker’s Dracula – treasure trove of ‘found documents’ from letters and journal entries to newspaper clippings and telegraph messages (pretty cutting edge stuff, in Stoker’s day).

This is another form where short fiction triumphs, because short stories don’t have to play by Big Narrative’s rules.

Further Reading

A one-sided conversation

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The Prompt

Write a story in a cypher: where the first word of each sentence is the REAL message

Things To Consider

It helps to write out the message you’re hiding in the story first.

Then, simply write a story and find a way to start each new sentence with the next word of your hidden message.

You can choose to hide the message in the second or third word of each sentence if you find that easier, or the last word (though I think that would be hard to pull off, unless you like dangling participles).

You can see my tips on a previous iteration of this prompt here

As an alternative to this you might try Grant Faulkner’s prompt from a StoryADay 2022….

When you have finished do something to celebrate. It can be as simple as grinning for five seconds, or doing a little dance (I like a victory dance, myself).

The important thing is to take a moment to revel in the good feelings you get from meeting your goals.

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The Prompt

Write a list of rules that tell a story

Things To Consider

What is a list story and why write a list of rules?

I’m glad you asked.

A list story is literally that: a list of things that, as the audience reads further into it, hints at a bigger narrative taking place outside the words on the page.

Why a list of rules?

Because we all know what that looks like and we all know that the person/people who make the rules have a very distinct agenda that may or may not conflict with the needs/desires of the people the rules seek to control. (And conflict, as you remember, is key to keeping a story interesting)

List stories are one of my favorite forms because they force us to break the way we think about storytelling and they allow us to practice misdirection, two extremely useful skills, as a writer.

But that hting I love the most is that they force us to trust readers, to recruit readers and make them partners in the storytelling experience.

If your story is written solely in the form of a list you have to allow that the reader is going to read between the lines and supply the rest of the story. And this is something we should be doing in our writing all the time.

If you’re writing novels you have vast acres of territory that you can fill with explanations, but should you?

Sometimes readers appreciate it if you let them feel smart because they worked out what was going on, even if they had to, you know, work a little.

The list story is the perfect way to practice this. The example I always recommend for how to do this well is

To Do by Jennifer Egan (the same technique is also used in this darkly comedic scene from the TV show Superstore.)

Note: You do not have to be plotting murder for this prompt to work.

Further Reading

A Catalogue of Complaints

Lists As Stories

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The Prompt

Write a flash fiction story. Limit it to 1000 words. Your character finds and everyday object that changes their understanding of their past.

Things To Consider

Flash fiction emerged as its own form of short story in the 1970s and 80s.

As well as being shorter than the average short story being written at the time, flash fiction required something extra, a ‘flash’ that left an after-image in the mind’s eye. It’s an incredibly useful form for writing when you have an urge to make an impact, and are impatient with all the set up and backstory that you feel you ‘ought to’ provide in a longer story.

Flash fiction tends to

Revolve around a single moment in a character’s life, a single question or realization

Contain compressed, almost poetic language that packs a punch Feels crafted, but not contrived

Here’s my favorite explanation of how to think about Flash Fiction:

“ A novel invites the reader to explore an entire house, down to snooping in the closets; a short story requires that the reader stand outside of an open window to observe what’s going on in a single room; and a short short requires the reader to kneel outside of a locked room and peer in through the keyhole. –

Bruce Holland Rogers The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction

In keeping your story to 1000 words you’ll probably find that your first draft is significantly under or over that number. If it come in under the word count, great! You get to add more sensory detail to the story. If it comes in over, wonderful! You get to practice cutting words and choosing more effective ways of saying what you wrote in the first draft.

(NB You don’t have to do these things today. This might be a task for after the challenge, but makes some notes today, before you move on, so you remember what you were trying to achieve.)

I’m asking you to write today about a character finding an everyday object, because so much of human experience comes from moments like this.

Yes, sometimes it’s great to get swept up in galactic adventures and politics, but even in those stories it’s the small, human moments that let us connect with the characters.

Some examples: Your character finds a picture of their family, with an extra person in it who nobody has ever mentioned. Your character finds a piece of jewelry that had been lost Your character drops a mug and it smashes on the tile floor

The moment with the everyday object can occur at the beginning, middle, or end of your story

Further Reading

The StoryADay Flash Fiction Primer, with links to example stories

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