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[Writing Prompt] Let’s Get Started!

Welcome to StoryADay May 2013!!

Well done you, for deciding to take on this challenge. Check out the community and all the support you can find in there. But first, let’s get started!

The Prompt

Write A 100 Word Story (“Drabble”)

I’m starting the challenge with a Drabble because although a 100 word story will probably take longer than you expect, it’s still going to take a manageable amount of time.

Many people who sign up for StoryADay are looking for a creativity boost. Plunging into a 3,000 word story on the first day is a bit intimidating.

Tips

To make a drabble work,

  • Choose one or two characters
  • Take one single moment/action/choice and show us how it unfolds
  • Give us one or two vibrant details in as few words as possible
  • Show us (hint) how this moment/action/choice is more significant than the characters probably realize in the moment

[Writing Prompt] Game-ify

I love stealing inspiration from other sources.

The Prompt

Write A Story Based On A Character or Scenario From A Game

Tips

  • This could be a scenario from a video game or a board game (what if you WERE Mario — or met him on the road? What if you were Miss Scarlet. Were you framed?)
  • What if you really were living on a farm, trying to meet all its demands, like Farmville?
    What if you were a character in a Sims-like game and gradually started to realize that was the case?
  • Think of any game you’ve ever played and use it as a jumping-off point for a story.
  • If you think you might publish the story, be sure not to step on anyone else’s copyright (you could use a different “colored” character from a mystery board game that was definitely not Clue/Cluedo)

Best of the Web for Short Story Writers April 21 2013

Jane Friedman’s ePublishing Class April 23

I’m all about creativity over here. I try to not to encourage you to obsess about the market and the audience and how to get published. But, when you’ve been writing for a while, it’s a logical next step. I’ve worked in and around publishing since 1998 and know enough to know that epublishing and self-publishing are often the best option for today’s writer. If you want to publish/be published, you need to educate yourself about the realities of the business. Jane’s is extremely knowledgable and rather smart, so I heartily recommend this class.

LINK:http://store.digitalbookworld.com/self-publishing-ebooks-in-the-flourishing-digital-book-market-webcast

The Character Therapist

Written by a licensed therapist, this blog offers wonderful insights into character motivation, specifically aimed at creative writers.
LINK: http://charactertherapist.blogspot.com

[Writing Prompt] By The Numbers

This prompt was inspired by a link Dan Blank shared. Apparently there’s weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the artistic community about how the rise of data is crushing creativity.

The gist is: storytelling is changing. We’re not writing or consuming stories the same way. What does that mean for creativity?

Personally I think it’s awesome. Some of the best stories I’ve read in recent years eschewed the straight narrative (this happend, then that happened, crisis, climax, resolution, the end). One was written as answers to a police investigation, some have been written as lists, or tweets. A recent best-selling novel is written in second person, as a faux self-help book.

Of course, the straight narrative will always have its place, and it’s certainly a helpful structure on which to hang a story (more on that tomorrow), but it can help us stay out of a rut if we try new things. So:

The Prompt

Write a Story That Uses Numbers To Shape The Structure.

Tips

  • You might time-stamp each of the ‘scenes’ within the story
  • You might write snippets of things that happen in different houses in one street, using house numbers to break up the flow. Pull the whole thing together with one theme or by having one character who pops up in each different house for some reason.
  • You can use weight: the weight of a feather, the weight of a newborn, the weight your main character was at 15, then the weight she is at 30 and what that means. The weight a crane can lift.
  • Use multiple numbers in your story to tie together each scene (or break them apart).
  • Have fun!

[Reading Room] The Distance of The Moon by Italo Calvino

This wonderful sci-fi fairy tale will certainly feel familiar to anyone who saw one of the more recent Pixar shorts, La Luna (in fact the director freely credits Calvino with inspiring elements of the film).

It is funny, and wildly imaginative and, perhaps necessarily, told in a very prosaic, almost pedestrian way. You probably have to write in an almost documentary style when you are writing a story as fantastic as this: the premise being that, years and years ago, the moon was so close to the earth that you could climb up to it at certain times of the month.

It is a wonderful example of how to let your creativity fly free, and still end up with a story that talks about essential truths everyone can relate to.

Listen to it here

The Best Of The Web For Short Story Writers — April 14, 2013

Here are the best of the articles, quotes and links I found this week for short story tellers. Enjoy!

Here’s What Makes Stories So Powerful
Benton Weyi, host of Orastories (a new site dedicated to oral storytelling), writes a passionate call to arms to each of us to value our stories and tell our stories. I defy you to get to the end of this without feeling like grabbing a pen!

The Short Story On Structuring Your Short Story
Larry Brooks, aka The StoryFixer is the host of Storyfix.com and the author of Story Engineering, among other things (a great book that I recommend if you’re trying to structure a novel or longer work). This time he’s writing about short stories. At the beginning of the article I was worried he was going to say we should all be writing stories with some simple four-act structure and I was going to have to lose some respect for him. But of course he doesn’t. My favorite lines from the article?

Which is why short stories are so damn hard to put into a box.

Because the box comes in all sizes, shapes and colors, and can be made from virtually anything.

Which is why I love to write them. How about you?

Things That Make A Story Fail

Jurgen Wolff isn’t talking specifically about short stories here (he’s talking about a movie), but it’s an interesting reflection of good story practices that I found useful.

A Guide To Practical Contentment
Again, not directly about storytelling, but here Leo Babauta is talking about how to live a good life, how to connect to your passions and how to make small changes in your life that lead you towards the bigger ones (writing a little everyday, perhaps?)

Selected Shorts: The Sun and The Moon<
I just loved both of these short stories, one by Italo Calvino that will seem strangely familiar if you saw the Pixar short film “La Luna”, and one by Ray Bradbury about children who have never seen the sun. Sometimes listening to great short stories is so darned inspiring!

Quotes

If you’re not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn’t going to either.
James M. Cain

-quoted in The Paris Review

The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.”
Roger Ebert

I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate—or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my ‘ten minutes’. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.”
Rumer Godden, author

-quoted in The Happiness Project

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.
Thomas Merton

-quoted in The Happiness Project