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).
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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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.
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Blink and you’ll miss this storytelling opportunity
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
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Write a Hermit Crab story – that is a story which is told in another form. Write a story about a character who has just received some unexpectedly good news.
Things To Consider
For years, here at StoryADay I used this prompt without knowing that someone had given a name to it: the hermit crab.
The hermit crab is a crab that remains a crab while making its home in any outer container seems like the perfect name for the type of story I want you to write today. Not quite sure what I mean yet? Well, I’m talking about stories that emerge from things like a series of crossword clues or from a series of footnotes, or a series of interview responses , a recipe, the questions in a quiz, or an academic review paper (complete with footnotes).
Today I’m promoting you to write a story about a character receiving good news because often, when reaching for the dramatic, we immediately think of negative disruptions to a life.
But that often leads us to write a story that’s more of a downer than we really wanted to write.
Good news can be dramatic and disruptive too (I remember shaking after seeing my degree results and after seeing a positive pregnancy test. Both of those things were dramatic in the moment, and had a dramatic impact on the rest of my life, for sure!
Even smaller things like a successful audition for a local amateur dramatic production, or hearing ‘yes’ to any kind of request, can be a profound and interesting moment in a character’s life.
What good news will you give your character today? Remember to come back and post your ‘victory dance’ letting us know what you wrote about and how went.
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Such useful Iand terrible) advice. How to actually do it? Read on!
The Prompt
Write a story outline and argument, where one character enters the space, and once character leaves at the end. Write the outline like this: [Name] is in [place] doing [verb], [Name 2] comes in in, obviously [in this mood]; then this happened, then [Name] said; then [Name 2] said; then this happened…and so on. Look for the moments of highest impact (drama, humor, action) and rewrite those moments, showing as much of the action as you can. Then polish the ‘telling’ parts of the story to make them a little smoother.
Things To Consider
“Show, Don’t Tell” is useful advice for reminding authors that readers want to be ‘in the moment’ with the characters, but if every moment of our stories is written like that it would exhaust your readers.
Our job, as writers, is to direct the reader’s attention to important moments (and sometimes away from them, if you’re trying to surprise them or keep a mystery going). “Showing” is really useful for that.
“Telling” is great when you want to speed up the action or misdirect the reader.
Let me give you an example from Shirley Jackson’s classic story, The Lottery
The first part of this paragraph is very much in the narrator’s voice, telling us what’s happening.
Then, Jackson slows us down and takes us into the moment by following the actions of Bobby Martin:
“The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix—the villagers pronounced this name “Dellacroy”—eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys.”
Notice how the details become more specific as she moves into painting the picture for us. We can feel the stones, see the pile, picture the boys ‘guarding’ it. The ‘important’ part of this paragraph is not that the children are off school or that they are talking about school.
The important part it that they are gathering stones, so that’s where Jackson directs our attention, by using much more descriptive language than before. This is what I want you to do for a select few piece of your story, today.
When I say “polish up the ‘telling’ parts of the story”, I mean take the places where you wrote “And then [x] happened” and make them just a little more conversational or literary. (“She ran to the door” not “she stepped carefully across the shiny oak floor towards the closed French doors, careful to avoid the specific planks that she knew, through long practice, would reveal her presence with a telltale squeak underfoot.”)
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Write a story about a character with a big decision to make. Write it in a point of view you don’t often use.
Things To Consider
I’m giving your character a big decision to make. You get to decide how much backstory the reader needs (and when they need to know it), but I will make a plea for NOT starting your story with any of that information. Start us in the middle of the action: during a conversation, or as they enter a new room. (need more on openings? Review this)
On Point of View
Many of us default to a particular point of view in our writing — “I don’t know what to say.” (First person), or “She didn’t know what to say.” (third person). Today, I want you to write in a point of view you don’t often use, or that you find awkward. (Yes, I’m asking you to get comfortable with discomfort!)
Each point of view brings with it restrictions and possibilities. If you frequently write in the same point of view you may be limiting yourself and run into trouble when a particular story idea seems to call for a different ‘voice’.
Try to focus on the opportunities that this new perspective offers. If you’re shifting from third person omniscient to a limited/first person perspective, really dig into the opportunity to access the characters’ thoughts and emotions. In these more limited perspective there’s no excuse for “Telling Not Showing”. Everything can be written as if we’re riding along on the perspctive-character’s shoulder, experiencing everything with them.
If you’re moving from a limited perspective to a third person omniscient, celebrate the fact that you can now see things from different peoples’ perspectives. The most effective, least confusing way to do this is to have scene breaks between each head hop in the short story. (You probably don’t want to do it more than a couple of times in a short story, but it can be quite fun to have most of the story told one person’s perspective then have a line break and give another character’s perspective as the conclusion of the story revealing a lot about the truth of the situation that, perhaps, the first character didn’t know.)
If you hate moving away from your favorite point of view that’s fine. You don’t ever have to do it again. Sometimes creative failures are essential to teach you what to avoid in future.
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In which I talk about how StoryADay May 2024 is going (spoiler: it’s going great!) and how much fun everyone is having, and the best ways to participate, even if you don’t want to write a story every day.
Chapters
[00:01:08] How Is StoryADay May 2024 going?
[00:01:30] Join The Discussion
[00:02:24] The Challenge Handbook Benefits
[00:04:51] The Experience of StoryADay May in 2024
[00:05:10] Week 1 – Come To Your Desk
[00:05:48] Week 2 – The Elements of Craft
[00:08:03] Week 3 – The Art of the Short Story
[00:09:10] Wish I’d Known Then…Podcast Appearance (Short stories for novelists)
[00:11:15] Fun With Short Stories
[00:12:45] The Benefits of Community & How to be A Good Literary Citizen
[00:17:29] Wish I’d Known Then…podcast – other topics we covered
[00:19:08] Indie vs Traditional Publishing
[00:20:39] If You’re Having Difficulty Writing or Staying Motivated to Write…
Your opening lines are important…that’s why we leave them until last
The Prompt
Write a story that starts when your character enters a new environment with a plan to achieve something that matters to them…and immediately faces an obstacle.
When you have finished writing, go back and put a new opening on your story.
Things To Consider
Have you ever felt unable to start a story even though you want to write today?
You’re not alone.
Often writers get stalled at the start, because we’re aware of how important those opening lines are.
After all, a good opening should:
Introduce the main character
Set the scene (time and place – relative to the reader)
Set the tone.
Hook the reader (ways to do this: intrigue, dialogue, surprise, contradictory information, introduce a mystery, start in the middle of the action, seduce the reader with the language,
Establish the story question or problem
That’s a lot of pressure.
So for today’s story, start writing in the middle of the action. Your character has just arrived somewhere new, in order to pursue something that matters to them, and they run into an obstacle within the first two sentences.
You can do this with dialogue (“Well, that’s a problem.”) or with a little bit of scene setting, “She heaved the ornate oak door open and saw…a solid brick wall.)
Get your character into and out of trouble a couple of times until they have achieved their desire or otherwise changed in a satisfying way.
For added symmetry, end the story with your character leaving the environment they entered at the beginning.
NOW, look at your story and write a new opening for it that hits all five of the points listed above (it won’t take you five sentences to do this. You may be able to repurpose what you’ve written already).
Here are some possible opening line templates:
As [character name] [active verb][setting], they [verbed] a [noun]. [Image]. [Transition]
e.g. As Joanne fled the crowded pub, she lobbed what remained of her lemonade over her shoulder. With one last look over her shoulder she saw it arc through the air–globules caught in the security lights like fireworks–and spray across the faces of her three meathead pursuers, momentarily slowing them down. She put on a burst of speed. How had it come to this?
[Vivid details about something disastrous]. And to think, just [time period] earlier, everything had been going so well…
or
A [profession] in a [setting] doesn’t usually end up with [unexpected result], [conjunction]
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Write a story that starts with your character in one place. Then they go through a series of events or experiences that leads them to a moment where everything changes for them.
Then let us follow them back through a series of events that mirror those that happened before, and show us how the world looks different to the character now.
Things To Consider
I’m suggesting this structure because it offers one way to create a clear path through the ‘muddy middle’ of a story.
The best illustration I can give you for this, is the Hans Christian Anderson story ‘The Ugly Duckling’. Here’s how that story goes:
The Duckling starts off in a farmyard with his loving mother but siblings who reject him, but he doesn’t give up. He goes off into the world to seek his place. He leaves home determined to find his place in the world, and wild ducks are mean to him
He goes to a farmyard where some of the animals are so mean to him he has to leave He goes to a peasant’s house and is chased by the children.
He goes to the river, and sees the swans who are so beautiful he is willing to risk his life to go and tell them how gorgeous they are, even if they peck him to death for his audacity.
They say: dude, look in the mirror. He’s a swan!
He heads out and some children see him and throw bread and cake into the water, talking about how beautiful he is, balancing out the other children’s action.
If I were rewriting this story, I’d be tempted to take the duckling on another journey, back past the peasant’s house and the farmyard, and to his home, reversing the initial journey and allowing him to see the word anew.
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Write a story about a character who is engaged in a contest that matters very much to them. You may or may not reveal the result, at the end. Your choice.
Things To Consider
A lot of writers struggle with ending a short story.
This comes down to one of a few problems
They don’t know when the story is ‘over’
They are afraid of tying things up too neatly in a bow and seeming cheesy
The solution to problem #1 is to figure out what the central point of your story really is.
It’s easy to keep writing, introducing new characters and new situations, but at some point you have to start making decision and shutting down your characters’ options, driving them down a funnel towards the ending. (I know, I know, making decisions is hard. But that’s what we’re doing, as writers: making a series of decisions for all of our characters. No wonder this is exhausting work!!)
When you know the point of your story, you can decide how to end it.
For example,
Winning And Winning Some More: in many movies about sports teams, especially underdogs, the team is engaged in a final contest. For a moment it seems like all is lost, until they rally and then, at the final buzzer, someone throws/hits/kicks/lobs a ball that lands exactly where it needs to, to put them over the top for a win.
This is a neat, happy, and rather cliched ending, but you can pull it off if the reader is invested in the characters and their success.
Similarly, romance stories end with the main couple getting together, but the inevitability of this ‘neat’ ending, doesn’t spoil the ride because we are rooting for each character to get out of their own way and let themselves accept love.
Failing (but also winning): SPOILER ALERT, the end of the Star Wars universe movie Rogue One is far from a traditionally happy ending, but it was a deeply satisfying ending. The characters we cared about made a huge sacrifice for the greater good, and along the way resolved a bunch of their personal demons.
If this movie had ended with everyone escaping to live happy, uncomplicated lives, I would have thrown my popcorn at the screen.
The Unresolved Ending: More SPOILER ALERT: in the finale of the long-running series Angel, the main characters have overcome a lot of squabbling to come back together as a team. They face the final conflict against terrible odds: cornered at the end of an alley facing down a bunch of demons. They’ve got out of this kind of situation before, but this one seems particularly dire.
Because this was the last time we were ever going to hang out with these characters the stakes were particularly high. Instead of creating a neat ending that would satisfy some viewers and enrage others, the writers had the characters rally as a team one last time, grin at each other and charge into the fight…at which point the end credits rolled. It was satisfying because the larger story of the series been wrapped up, but the final outcome was left to our imaginations.
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The characters in your story today are stuck and need to work together to escape
Things To Consider
If character is the emotional heart of a story, conflict is the engine of the plot. Conflict doesn’t have to be something huge and traumatic.
It can be as simple as a disagreement about whether the coffee should be decaf or whether the person suggesting that is a monster caffeinated.
Every conflict is an opportunity to explore the motivation and values of your characters, and to point up the differences between them.
This is another great opportunity to take characters from another work-in-progress and dig deeper by putting them into a story.
One of the things that can easily get lost in a novel—especially after we fall in love with our characters—is conflict. We can spend so much time exploring their inner lives that we forget to torture them just a little bit.
Use today’s story to make life a little uncomfortable for your character. Sources of conflict to mine:
* Communication difficulties – misunderstandings, talking at cross purposes, someone not saying what they mean, linguistic difficulties…have you ever sat at dinner with your father and your brother and marveled at how they can argue over the minutiae of a how to talk about problem even though they agree on the bigger issue? (Asking for a friend…)
* Conflicting approaches to getting a task done – two characters may both want to escape the ravine they’ve fallen into, but one may want to follow the river until it reaches an outflow while the other wants to scale the cliff and get back on track as soon as possible.
Or, in a more mundane example: you take a wrong turn on the way to a party. You and your companion still both want to get to the party, but whereas your companion wants you to make a u-turn, you’re sure you can find an alternate route if you keep going forwards. Both of you are determined to do it your way. Why does it matter so much to each of you? What does it say about you as a character and about your relationship?
What else is feeding this conflict? What happens when you take that right turn down a quiet street, and how do each of you react to a, the events that greet you and b, the decision that led you there? Can you see how the story begins to emerge as you introduce conflict?)
* Conflicting wants/needs – perhaps one of your characters is less motivated to escape than the other. Why? Are they honest about it with the other character (or themselves) or not? * Lack of resources – conflict doesn’t always have to be interpersonal. It can be about a group of people in conflict with their environment. It’s easy to escape from a locked room if you have a key, harder if it’s barred from the outside.
Don’t forget, however, that it keeps things extra spicy if there is also interpersonal conflict, as stress levels rise.
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Write a story in which your character interacts with three other characters, one who has power over them, one whom they have power over, and one who is on an equal footing with them.
Things To Consider
Character biographies and archetypes are all very well as a starting point, but a person’s character is not fixed, nor does it ever fit one archetype. People are complex and and society even more so.
People show different parts of themselves in different situations. A useful way to decide which aspects of your character to show in a particular scene is to think the power dynamics in that scene. And remember: power can be psychological, physical, or the power of the group.
Our characters react based on who has the most power in an interaction. This dictates which masks they use to fit into a situation (or sometimes, to stand out) or whether they can be raw and vulnerable. Psychological Power
There are a bunch of old sayings like: you can judge a person’s character by what they do when no-one’s looking, or by how they treat ‘the staff’ (which, these days, tends to mean waitstaff, valet parkers, grocery store clerks or anyone they perceive as having less power than them in a given situation).
And this is true to a certain extent that these action reveal a person’s character and values.
But none of these interactions reflect how that character always acts. Nobody always acts as their best or worst self. And few people remain unchanged throughout their lives.
Physical and Social Power
In The Expanse series by James S A Corey one of the most interesting characters is Amos Burton, who is always, phsyically, the most powerful person in the room and the most comfortable with violence as a solution. In a room full of violent thugs, he is absolutely at ease.
Over the course of the series we don’t see his values change, but we do see him learn how to act in different situations, based on his desire to stay with the crew. It doesn’t feel insincere because his actions are not always dictated by his values and that feels very human.
He still has no problem with violence but he knows his captain does. He masks that part of himself because the captain of the ship has power over him, and the collective power of the rest of his crew is greater than his individual power (even though he could beat them all to a pulp if he felt so inclined).
Power Dynamics for Writing
In each scene of a story, in each interaction, we are seeing a snapshot of your characters. How they act in general is not necessarily how they will act in this moment.
But how to decide?
If you’re not sure what to do with a character in a scene, look around.
Who else is in the scene, and how much power does your character have, relative to them?
How does that affect how your character acts?Do they hold themselves differently? Do they speak differently? And how does that affect their mood and actions going into the next scene, where they might interact with someone with a different power relationship.
It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being insincere in any of those situations. Rather, they are operating on a high-level understand of social dynamics. (Being human is complicated!)
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Sometimes contents and anthologies call for stories of a very particular word count. I am often asked if the title counts towards the limit.
It does not.
Therefore, if you’re feeling cheeky, it can be fun to write a story with a ridiculously long title.
In fact, this year I heard of a contest that called for exactly this: a story with a title longer than the body of the story. In this case you may find yourself playing with the premise of a story for a while before you begin to compose the finished article.
You may need to get up and pace around or go for a long walk, or, if you happen to read this at the start of the day, mull over it all day before you sit down to write. Sometimes that’s how writing goes.
The title you end up with will probably do the work that’s usually done by the opening paragraphs of a more traditional story: establishing the setting, the tone, the character, their desire and the obstacle to that desire.
The story itself will probably take the form of an ‘answer’ to the puzzle you set up in the story. I’d aim for a title that uses up 2/3 of the total word count, and a ‘story’ that is no more than 1/3 of the words. Here are some examples of short stories pretty long titles, but I think we could take similar ideas and expand them in interesting ways.
My Last Attempt to Explain to You What Happened to the Lion Tamer – Brendan Matthews
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven – Sherman Alexie
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
These are novels, but I hope they’ll give you a sense of what I’m looking for today:
No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again; A Symphonic Novel – Edgardo Vega Yunqué
Or how about this well-known novel that are rarely given its full title?
The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery – Charles Dickens
And my absolute favorite:
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates – Daniel Defoe
Could you write a title like that and a quick one-sentence riposte as the body of the story?
One of my favorite things about short stories is their ability to defy expectations.
See what you can do with this challenge today. Leave a comment and let us know know how you got on. Was this faster than usual? Slower? Fun? Annoying? Join the discussion!
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
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Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
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This is such a ridiculous prompt you can’t possible ‘fail’
The Prompt
Write a word story containing each of these 10 words
Why Misery Consternation Pallor Orchestra Forgive Paper Entry First Grandmother
Things To Consider
I expect many people reading this prompt to have a viscerally negative reaction. “How am I supposed to write anything good with a list of random words?!”
Answer: you’re not.
Today’s prompt is an exercise in coming to your desk, writing something awkward and keeping going away.
There will be many, many days as a writer when you need to write a scene or a story that just isn’t flowing the way you want to.
The ability to keep writing anyway is an essential skill. We all need to practice allowing the first draft to be janky, awkward, a little bit ugly…and finishing it anyway.
It’s easy to say, but harder to do. So today, I’m intentionally setting the bar low. Of course you’re not expected to write a masterpiece with a collection of words I plucked randomly from a book (“The Art of the Short Story”, Dana Gioia & R. S. Gwynn, Pearson Longman, 2006, in case you’re interested).
If you’re not entirely sure how to use a particular word, let one of your characters use (or misuse) it.
Their use of that word—or how they react to being corrected—can more effectively show us the character than any explanatory note from a narrator’s voice. Remember words can be used in metaphorical ways, not just literally.
If you are resisting this prompt, make doubly-sure to give this one a try. In my experience, the prompts people resist are the ones they learn the most from. Sometimes they even end up with stories they love!
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Use the Short Story Framework to help you write a story about a person who lives a life quite like yours but does not behave the way you do
Things To Consider
I hope you kept your copy of the Short Story Framework handy after yesterday’s prompt because we’re going to use it again today, to prove to you that, though it is a framework, it doesn’t have to produce formulaic stories.
Start with a character who lives a life like yours because it will take you less time to invent the surroundings of the story, this way.
Choose a situation that might enrage, frustrate, or delight you.
Give it to a character who seems like you, at first glance, but who reacts in ways you suspect you never would.
This can be an opportunity for you to be delightfully naughty or admirably honorable.
Make sure to disguise yourself a little bit, in case you ever show the story to anyone 😉 Use the short story framework and really dig into the ‘and because of that’ portions, making sure your character reacts in ways that you would not or could not.
What possibilities does that open up? What will be the consequences for your character?
On Keeping The Story Short
Along a highway near my house, some enterprising homeowner once planted a stand of bamboo to shield their yard from the traffic roaring by.
Sadly, nobody had warned the homeowner about bamboo’s insanely aggressive spreading habit.
Now a huge swath of the highway is bordered by a fragile forest of waving stems that ‘escaped’ from the original yard. The bamboo wreaks havoc on the traffic patterns every time Pennsylvania’s harsh winters flatten portions of it with wind storms or heavy snow.
If only someone had told the original homeowner to plant their bamboo in a sunken concrete tub that woud have contained the ravenous rhizomes and stopped the spread!
Likewise, stories we intend to write as short stories have a strong tendency to want to grow into novels. The best way to keep this from happening is to set some firm boundaries around your story idea.
Here are some boundaries that may stop your story from turning into yet another novel-in-progress
* Limit the central incident of the story to one moment in one day in the life of one particular character
* Limit the number of characters who appear ‘on screen’ or who need their relationships to the main characters explained. Two or three characters who appear in the story are plenty.
* Limit the number of locations your story occurs in. The more locations you include, the more description you need, and the longer the story will need to be, and the more distracted the reader will become (remember, short story readers assume every detail is important. If you introduce five locations they will begin to become overwhelmed)
* Choose your details like a minimalist. Choose few, but very specific objects, smells, tastes and sights. Oddly, the more specific you are about a couple of details, the more realistic the story feels (yes, even if it’s happening in an alternate, futuristic, universe!)
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
“What’s the point of writing another story, today?”
In which I discuss the importance of daily writing practice, sharing my own inner resistance to this challenge (yes, even after all these years) and how I ultimately find joy and fulfillment in the writing…and you can too!
Write a story that begins with a character buying tickets at a ticket booth
Things To Consider
Is it really possible to write a short story in 40 minutes?
Yes!
It might not be a fully-drafted short story. It might not be a good short story. Or it might (I’ve certainly seen people turn out a draft that flowed beautifully and needed minimal tweaks to fix. Sometimes racing to the end is exactly what a brain needs!).
However, the point of today’s story is to teach you to push through the messy middle and get to the end, and appreciate how that process makes all the different in your sense of achievement, and your ability to revise the story later.
Spend 5 minutes, using the Short Story Framework. Brainstorm ONLY up to the FIRST “and because of this. Who is your character. What do they want from the ticket booth and is that part of their desire or just something they’re doing while they plan the next part of their story? Where and when is this taking place? What is keeping them from today’s greatest desire? (Remember, their greatest desire really can be ‘a glass of water’ or ‘comfortable shoes”. It doesn’t have to be something life-changing!)
Spend 5 minutes writing the set up you just mapped out. You should have reached the first ‘and because of that’ and allowed them to DO something. • Now turn to the next ‘and because of that’. As you were writing the first part, you likely started to have ideas about what this might contain. Make some quick notes and then…
Spend 25 minutes writing two more complications (“And because of thats”). Remember, everything grows out of character and the logical consequences of the actions they take. Are they making it easier or harder to get to their goal? Are they going consistently in one direction or taking two steps forward and one step back? • During this time you’ll start to have an idea of endings. Pick the one that sounds the most fun to you (fun can be ‘horrific/depressing’!)
At some point during this 25 minutes your writing will begin to flow and you’ll start to understand what this story wants to be. It won’t be perfect yet, but you can make notes about these insights and come back to them, later. • At the end of that 25 minutes, set a timer for 5 more minutes and write your climax and resolution. (You may have to type ‘[transition to ending]’ and move along, if you’re running out of time and haven’t written everything you wanted to write.
Tips for the ending: Do you want it to be a happy ending or a sad ending? If the character achieves their goal, it might be a sad ending, but not necessarily. If the character desired something that was wrong for them, and doesn’t achieve it, that could be a happy ending!
Make sure there is a moment in the story where the character makes a big choice that exemplifies the change that they’re making through this story.
Spend 5 minutes wrapping up the story in a sentence or two, then spend the final 5 minutes thinking about your opening and ending lines. Do they feel like they belong to the same story? Can you tweak them now to hint at the theme?
Then take the rest of the day off! Seriously, it’s really important to celebrate reaching the end of your story and letting yourself off the hook for the rest of the day. You can, of course, work on other creative writing projects if you wish, but sometimes it’s worth savoring the win for a while. You know you’re coming back tomorrow, right?
Most importantly of all: if you are starting the challenge today, or have ‘missed’ a day, DO NOT GO BACK AND ATTEMPT TO CATCH UP, today. If you have written a story today, you are winning. Enjoy it.
Leave a comment and let us know how it went!
If you enjoyed the brainstorming exercises today, get more like this when you:
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
If you’re getting stuck, consider getting the StoryADay Challenge Handbook It comes with warm-up and brainstorming exercises for each day and each prompt.
The Prompt
Tell a story of an inanimate object in 100 words
Things To Consider
You may want to anthropomorphize the object, giving it a personality and desires and a level of agency that makes sense for your story OR how about telling a story about why it’s important in the life of a character — or more than one character?
(Top tip: if you have a novel on the go, or other stories you have written before, use this as a chance to deepen an existing character’s backstory.
Why do they care about this object and what can it tell you as you write more stories about them?
These details don’t need to turn up in your 100 word story, but probably will inform your future writing.)
100 word stories are a great chance to practice ‘show, don’t tell’, the art of putting the reader in a scene and not over-explaining. Drop us right into the situation and hint at either the problem or the resolution.
Remember: the more specific a detail, the more realistic and universal a story seems. Odd, but true.
A story this small may be easiest to write by describing one moment, but I bet some of you are going to greet that suggestion with a cocked eyebrow and an ‘oh-ho, watch me tell a four-century story in 100 words’. Good for you. I can’t wait to read it 🙂
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Limit your characters to maximize your chances of finishing a sthort story today
The Prompt
Limit your story to two characters. Each wants the same thing, but for different reasons
Things To Consider
Have you ever sat a a dinner table and listened to two relatives argue, only to discover, when you listen carefully, that they’re actually arguing the same point, just from marginally different angles?
(In my experience this happens with fathers and sons a lot. They agree on the big points but nitpick the expression of them to death, until everyone else slinks away from the dinner table and hangs out with mom and her box of wine, in the kitchen).
In this moment of what seems like deep divisions in our politics, if you dig deeper you mostly find that humans want the same things, they just differ about how to get there: we want to feel safe, to have love in our lives, to have some degree of autonomy, to do rewarding work, to make a difference.
But writing a story about such lofty ideas is not terribly compelling, so let’s bring this down to a more mundane level. Perhaps your characters both want a healthy meal but are bickering about whether that means a deep-fried, but vegetarian meal or one that includes grilled meat and seared vegetables.
As they walk and talk and try to pick a restaurant, their conversation might reveal other, deeper problems—or joys—in their relationship. Perhaps your characters are trying to break out of a locked room they’re stuck in.
Both have strong opinions about the best way to do that. This could be a simple puzzle (how will they escape?) or, again, you could reveal more about each character and their relationship to each other, based on the options each puts forward or in the way they physically approach the eventual escape.
I’m asking you to write this story with two characters for a couple of reasons
If you only have one character in a story it can become very passive, with lots of internal though and very little action, which makes it hard to engage a reader and make them care….unless your character has a strong and quirky voice (and we’ll be talking about that later this month);
The energy of a story is conflict. This can be conflict between what a character wants and what they are currently qualified to achieve, but when you introduce a second character you have many more types of conflict available to explore.
Plus, when you have characters interacting physically and verbally, you have built-in action to keep the reader interested and feeling like this is a thing that actually happened, in an actual physical space, and not simply an intellectual exercise or essay that they’re reading.
Other things to think about:
Don’t give us too much backstory. Short stories often work best when grounded in the moment, with only hints about the larger world the characters inhabit.
Give them one problem to deal with or bicker over, and then end the story. Remember, you’re coming back tomorrow to write again, right?
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Tell a story in Five Sentences from an idea you’ve been saving up for when you’re ‘ready’
Things To Consider
I know you’re probably raring to go, ready to write your brilliant, 4,000 New Yorker story that will guarantee your place in the literary pantheon for generations to come…so allow me to reset your expectations just a tad.
This month-long challenge is about reminding yourself that you are a writer, that writing matters to you, and that you can write whenever you want…and that writing is fun! All it takes, to tell a story is five sentences.
Don’t believe me? Try it.
Here’s what you need:
A character with a desire
A setting, in time or place
An obstacle to the character’s desire
An action taken by the character that brings them closer to or further from that desire
An outcome. And yes, you can do this in five sentences.
(NB. They can be long sentences, and you don’t have to use one sentence for each item. In the following example, I use one sentence to cover setting, character and desire, and use the spare sentence to fill out the action)
When the casting directors for The Bachelor came to town, Cindy really wanted to give it a go, “Not to get a husband, or anything…Just to have a few laughs, maybe meet some more women my own age…” {SETTING, CHARACTER, DESIRE]
“Don’t be ridiculous,” her step-mother snapped, as she squeezed both of Cindy’s step sisters into too-tight, too-short dresses and screamed at the neighbor’s 13 year old son to come over and cut off the wifi so Cindy wouldn’t be distracted from her chores by shopping for suitable audition outfits online. [OBSTACLE]
As the Uber bearing her family pulled away, Cindy sighed and resigned herself to watching online updates—she was sure she’d be able to find some on Instagram after she had reset the wifi—but before she could do any of that, their neighbor Mrs Pharey appeared at the front door, thrust a blue-silk jumpsuit into her hands and scurried away again, shouting behind her, “Remember to book your Uber home for before the surge pricing kicks in!”
Giggling, Cindy changed into the jumpsuit and sped off to the convention center where she was promptly eliminated in the first round of the auditions. [ACTION]
On the long walk back to the main doors, she struck up a really interesting conversation with Jenny, the show’s story editor who told her she was looking for an apprentice if Cindy was interested, and that she should consider coming back to California with them, which she did, but not before making time to return the blue jumpsuit to Mrs Pharey, because Cindy wanted to start her ‘happily ever after’ on the right foot. [OUTCOME]
Now you try it.
The reasons I’m asking you to use your Big Idea, the one you’ve been saving, is A, to take away some of your magical thinking around it. and B, I want you to always be using your best ideas.
Don’t worry that you’ll run out.
More ideas are coming. Better ideas. More exciting ideas. Ideas better-attuned to the person you are in the moment you sit down to use them.
The more ideas you use the more ideas you generate. Don’t be afraid to use them and (in case that is freaking you out…) You can always use it again later, when whatever you’re waiting for (time? Talent? Magical fairy dust?) comes along.
Artists ‘repurpose’ their own ideas all the time. Don’t worry about it!
In fact, ‘don’t worry about it’, could be our motto this month, so we might as well adopt it here, on Day 1!
Remember, do your best to finish the story today, no matter how messy the middle is. We’re not aiming for perfection, just for completion.
Everything can be fixed in the edit. (Or abandoned. Abandoned is fine, too. You can always write more stories!)
Leave a comment and let us know what you wrote about and how it felt. (As a reminder, I don’t tend to recommend posting your stories in the comments here, except very rarely and here’s why. Treat your writing this month as your own secret pleasure, but do share with us how it’s going.)
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Get the Challenge Handbook, with helper videos, audio and text PLUS daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to jumpstart your writing, daily.
Write with us during May or go at your own pace.
Access immediately. (Will stay online as long as I’m running StoryADay!)
Only $31 during the challenge. Price increases to $97 on June 1, 2024
Ever have one of those days where you want to write, but get to your desk and…nothing?
Well, I created StoryADay May for you (and me).
And this year I have a fantastic new way for you to gain all the benefits of StoryADay: but spend less time wondering what to write: The StoryADay Challenge Handbook.
With daily warm-ups and brainstorming sessions, this new StoryADay experience will propel you into your writing day and let you get to the fun stuff (the writing) no matter how busy you are.
Whether you’re planning to write a StoryADay in May or just want to be able to show up at your deskany day, write, and walk away feeling like you’ve flexed your writing muscles, improved your grasp on the craft, and created something real.
I built the StoryADay Challenge Handbook so you can get more out of this year’s writing prompts, in May…or any time you want to write.
(And this one is specially designed for the introverted writers who aren’t interested in writing sprints or hangouts or really anything other than getting words on the page and growing their skills.)
I’ve taken everything I’ve learned over the past 15 years about short stories, writing, writers, and prompts, and put it together in this brand-new offering. I think you’re going to love it (and the special 15th Anniversary discount….it’s like nothing you’ve seen from me since 2018!).
If you’re longing to get to your desk more often, and feel more fulfilled when you walk away, check out the brand-new StoryADay Challenge Handbook
Keep writing,
Julie
P. S. Yes, the writing prompts will still be coming to your inbox for free, if you’ve signed up. The Handbook adds video, audio, an ebook collection, and daily warm ups and brainstorming exercises designed to propel you into your writing, whether you’re taking the StoryADay May Challenge, or simply want to use it throughout the year to jumpstart your writing day. Grab your copy now
I know I say you should set your own rules for StoryADay, but the truth is, committing to writing daily, can be…easier. Here’s why…
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