For New Year over at Six Sentences they’ve posted a New Year themed story.
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.
Write a Themed Story For The Season
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!
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
I found this story in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and I loved it.
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.
I love it when that happens.
Durak
by Anatoly Belilovsky
published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine No.54
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.)
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.
Write a heist story, but start it as late in the action as you possibly can.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!)
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.
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.
Wired For Story by Lisa Cron
The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottshall
Writing Fiction For All You’re Worth by James Scott Bell
Story Engineering by Larry Brooks (aimed at novelists but still a good overview of story structure)
The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin (pre-order)
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
The Complete Stories by Grace Paley
The World’s Shortest Stories, Steve Moss, Ed.
The Best American Non-Required Reading 2011, Dave Eggars, Ed. (More than short stories, but don’t let that stop you)
(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)
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
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!!
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