This week’s prompts are all going to focus on Point Of View.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, writing in third-person, or first person, or inside or outside your character’s heads. So this week we’re shaking things up. Ready?
The whole thing should be told in the “I” voice, and preferably should be a story about something that happened/is happening to the person telling the story.
Go!
I saved this one for last (in the plot prompts series) because it has the potential to be the most fun of all!
If you’re a writer, the chances are you think a lot (too much?) about everything that happens to you. And you probably remember every little slight anyone has ever perpertrated upon you.
Now’s your chance to have your revenge.
Today you will write a revenge story. (Use examples from real life if you like!)
If you want to keep your main character sympathetic, make sure they’re seeking revenge for something outrageously unfair and that the bad guys are really bad. And make sure that your main character doesn’t just slide through the revenge process unchanged.
Of course, it doesn’t have to end well for your main character. Maybe they start out nice-but-wronged and end up avenged-but-twisted. Or maybe your protagonist is a real bad apple, to start with.
As usual, keep the scale of your story small: focus on one incident – probably the moment of confrontation. Start right in the action and show the backstory in dialogue, allusions, images. Bring the story to a climax and show us how it has affected your main character as s/he walks off into the sunset.
Go!
Thanks to James Scott Bell for a week’s worth of inspiration. Check out the StoryADay.org exclusive interview with JSB, his Plot & Structure
This week’s prompts are inspired by ‘plot patterns’ from James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure
Today your hero is restless. S/he can’t simply live the way everyone else does. Your hero needs to go on a quest.
Whether this quest (and what they seek) is literal or figurative, make sure the goal is something absolutely critical to their survival, and the obstacles huge.
(In a short story you may only be able to give them one obstacle as the set-piece but you can use the action & dialogue to
If you pay attention to doing this, you’ll end up with a complete story, not just a trailer for a novel
Go!
This prompt is inspired by ‘plot patterns’ from James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure
Your prompt today revolves around a protagonist who holds him/herself apart from the rest of their society. Perhaps they are an anti-hero, perhaps a loner, perhaps an introvert in a family of extraverts.
Make something happen to tempt/force this person out of their alone-ness. Will they step into their society during the action of the story? When all is resolved will they stay involved or retreat once again?
Go!
This week’s prompts are all inspired by ‘plot patterns’ from James Scott Bell’s Write Great Fiction – Plot & Structure.
Write a story in which your protagonist is being chased by someone or something. If you choose to show what/who the hero is running from, make sure that pursuer has a vested interest in catching the hero (make it their obsession). Will your hero get away? Stay on the run? Find a safe haven? Convince their pursuer it’s all been a terrible mistake?
Go!
One of the nine plot patterns highlighted in James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure
The love story.
(A billion romance readers can’t be wrong!)
You don’t have to write a traditional romance to be writing a love story. There’s a love story embedded in almost every story you read or watch. From Homer’s Odyssey to Homer and Marge Simpson, love is in the air.
All that is required for a love story is for two protagonists who are in love, and an obstacle to that love. Resolving the obstacle, one way or another, is the plot of your story.
To avoid writing a schlocky, saccharine formulaic romance, “one or other of your lovers [should] grow as a result of the pattern,” says Bell.
Go!
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A 6-part journey through the short story.
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