A lot of short short stories focus on character and twists and surprise, because it’s a great form for exactly those things.
But I don’t want your descriptive muscles to get all flabby.
Why not write a story with a strong sense of place? At some point in the story, imagine you are a tour guide, pointing out the landmarks and notable features of your setting to me, your eager audience.
Be a tour guide to your story’s setting, for the reader
Go!
This is a staple of Sci-Fi and speculative fiction: you’re watching people in Forties garb but discover you’re on a space station populated by aliens who only know humans through one random Bogart movie they’ve intercepted….
But it happens in real life too: a woman thinks she’s in a happy marriage only to come home to empty closets and a note on the kitchen table; you think you’re reading a standard love story only to discover a twist at the end…
Write a story with an element of altered reality.
Go!
Huge thanks to StoryADay-er @cidwrites for today’s prompt.
Cid has created an imaginary book cover at her own StoryADay site, and invites you to use it as a writing prompt.
If the graphic doesn’t work for you, you can still use the prompt by writing a story that contains the line “They said it couldn’t be done.”
Writing prompts are optional, but do leave Cid a comment if you use hers!
Gabriela Pereira is a former StoryADay participant and has spent the past month launching her DIY MFA 2.0, an intensive writing program, all online.
She took some time to tell me about the course and give some great advice for writers about to embark on a big writing jag (know anyone like that?)
She is also hosting a write-in on Sunday May 1. I highly recommend checking out her DIY-MFA site and Facebook page and following her on Twitter.
Tell me about DIY MFA 2.0
The idea behind DIY MFA is to simulate the experience of a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing without actually going to school. DIY MFA has 4 main components: Reading, Writing, Workshops and Community. The original DIY MFA (which took place in September 2010) covered these four topics at length.
DIY MFA 2.0 takes a different approach, focusing mostly on the “writing” part of the equation. The idea in DIY MFA 2.0 is to spark new ideas and create a stash of ideas that writers can go to when they hit the wall or feel a creative drought coming on. There are 4 ways that DIY MFA can help generate new ideas and those are through: character, story, mood and words. Each week in April we focused on one of these areas and explored different writing exercises and techniques with that theme. Ultimately, the goal is to develop methods and tools for generating ideas so that when you need lots of new ideas in a short period of time (like when you’re writing a Story A Day) you have a bunch of concepts already ready and waiting.
How do you make time for writing?
I don’t make time for writing. I steal it. I’m always on the lookout for hidden pockets of time when I can read or write because if I sit around waiting for a huge block of time to land in my lap, I know it will never happen. I live in a city, so for me subways and buses are great places to sneak in some writing. I love my Kindle because I can put a copy of my WIP on it and can edit on the go. I also carry small notebook with me everywhere so that if I’m stuck waiting for an elevator or waiting on a subway platform, I can break out my notebook and jot down a few sentences.
Even with all this time-theft going on, I also try to carve out a few small chunks of time when I do writing “sprints.” In DIY MFA, I’ve asked participants to do at least one sprint per week on Saturdays, but for me these sprints happen whenever I manage to steal a chunk of time long enough that I can call it honest-to-goodness solid writing time. During these precious moments, I’ll practice some stealth writing, where I run to a coffee shop and hide out while I write. Not only am I more efficient if I know I only have a short span of time to write, but the stealth aspect also makes it more exciting (like I’m doing something I shouldn’t… something naughty).
And don’t underestimate the power of the Pomodoro. That adorable little tomato timer app that sits on my desktop has worked wonders for me. If I know I only have 25 minutes to write, I won’t stop to check email or twitter or anything else, I’ll just write. After I’ve finished a couple of rounds of Pomodoro, I’ll treat myself to a short spurt of internet fiddling.
What’s your best advice for someone who’s trying to make writing a priority (again)?
I’m a huge believer in baby steps and I’m not a fan of huge, unmanageable goals because they set writers up to fail. Missing a goal can lead to feelings of “I can’t do this” or “I’m not good enough” which only leads to paralysis, writer’s block and loss of motivation. Of course, lower motivation means the next set of goals becomes even more unmanageable so the cycle just continues. The trick is to break the cycle of negativity and find ways of sparking the motivation when it starts slipping away.
For me, writing isn’t about success vs. failure; it’s about doing. If a writing challenge helps a writer motivate themselves and stay on track, fantastic! But the important thing in my mind is that writers do the work, whether it means meeting a goal within a certain time frame or not. That’s where I think Story-A-Day gets it right: because it’s not just about writing a story every day, it’s about bouncing back on the days when you can’t actually get a story done. It’s about getting ideas down quickly, without judging. It’s about writing it and moving on, leaving the tweaks and edits for some later point.
Ultimately, I think StADa and DIY MFA have similar goals: to help writers rekindle their love of writing and help them develop a sustainable, enriching writing life.
Thanks, Gabriela!
Today’s guest post from Melissa Dinwiddie is a wonderful primer on how to use the StoryADay community to help you become more productive than you ever dreamed. Thanks, Melissa!
Do you know one of the most effective things you can do to get your writing done?
Make yourself accountable.
I don’t know the statistics, but it’s a well known fact that if you want to reach a goal, speaking your commitment — including your deadline — to someone you know will hold you to it makes you dramatically more likely to actually do it.
Accountability is a powerful tool, and there are a number of ways you can integrate it into your writing practice. One of my own secret weapons is an accountability buddy.
At the start of the year I was in a mastermind group (another great accountability tool), assembled with the express purpose of helping each other accomplish one specific goal in the month of January. When that group dissolved, a couple of us decided to keep checking in with each other.
At first our monthly calls started to get a little chatty — understandable enough, since we liked each other and had come to think of each other as friends.
This is an inherent danger in any accountability relationship. The problem, of course, is that chatting does not make for finished projects and completed goals.
Accountability partners have to be vigilant, and must keep coming back to the purpose for their partnership. If you want to chat, set up another date specifically for that. During your accountability check-ins, stick with the agenda: keeping each other on track.
This is exactly what I did at the end of a particularly chatty call. “Before we hang up,” I asked, “what’s your next step?”
My buddy confessed that she had a novel that had been sitting in a drawer for way too long, and what she really wanted was to get it edited and up for sale as a download on her site.
“Aha,” I responded, kicking into coaching mode, “so what’s stopping you?”
I asked her realistically how long she thought the editing would take, and when she said “about four hours,” I suggested (okay, I practically insisted) that she do it this week. In other words, I held out an expectation that I thought was achievable.
With my kick in the butt, she was ready to take on this project that she’d been putting off, so the next step was to set up a check-in schedule that worked for her. She committed to emailing me a progress report every night before going to bed, and set a goal of a 2-3 chapters per day.
Although it turned out four hours was an underestimation, I’m pleased to report that in less than two weeks my buddy had finished editing her entire manuscript and was ready to tackle the production side of getting her novel made into a downloadable ebook format. She swears she never would have gotten there without my help.
Do you think this kind of partnership might work for you? Give it a try! To keep you on track, I recommend sticking with the same structure every time you meet. The following questions are a good jumping off place:
Remember to reserve your chatting for another time, and let me know how it goes!
Artist, Writer and Inspirationalist Melissa Dinwiddie helps creatives (and “wannabe” creatives) to get unstuck, get unpoor, and just plain play bigger. Find her at her blogs, Living A Creative Life and 365 Days of Genius.
Leave a comment with your best tips for boosting productivity and/or working with other people and win a copy of Rory’s Story Cubes, a wonderful dice game that doubles as a story-telling tool. Roll the dice and make a story from the extremely cute images on the dice.
Today’s winner will be a random draw, so you get extra entries if you post about StoryADay on your blog, Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else (yes, I’ll give credit for blog posts from yesterday). Just leave me a comment saying where you posted.
Special thanks to Rory O’Connor and the lovely folks at Gamewright Games for donating this prize.
Ack!
There were so many great comments on yesterday’s post about creativity and productivity for writers that I had a hard time choosing a winner.
And in the end I chose two (and am suffering horrible guilt about leaving out all the other people who wrote great comments).
But don’t fret, because you can all enter again to win another copy of Rory’s Story Cubes on the next post, which is all about how to work with an accountability buddy to make your writing life more productive than you ever dreamed.
This next giveaway will be a drawing out of a virtual hat (red), and you can get extra entries for posting about StoryADay in other places. See the Accountability / Writing Buddy post for more details.
Thanks for all your great tips on creativity and productivity.
Brenda said,
1) Go someplace (a mall, a casino, etc.) and people-watch. I try to make up backstory for the people I see.
2) Listen to instrumental music. Classical and Drum music work well, as does the genre aptly called “Trance.”
3) I grab a box of cheap colored pencils and doodle. Sometimes the doodles end up being a creature, or a map of a fantasy land, or a character. I’m not an artist, by any means, but even my second-rate scribbles (lol) can cause a spark that becomes a story.
I think the reason that these 3 usually work for me is that they all have one thing in common: they make writing fun again.
Trina, in confessional-mode, spoke for many of us,
I say I have no time, but if I truly go back and look at how much time I spend on Twitter or surfing the Net, I have plenty of time. Guilty as charged.
MJ gave me a reason to stop feeling guilty for gossiping about strangers,
Myself and my boyfriend stole the idea of sitting in a restaurant and making up stories about the other diners from a movie we watched. It can be a lot of fun and generate a ton of ideas and helps with character development.
Janel had two great points,
I plan on pulling several prompts every night in May.
I’ve just decided that I will write to ease the stress instead of looking at the stress as a writing block.
Dominique’s suggestions were,
I overcome theses moments of writers block by keeping a pen and pencil around to writ down any great thought’s , plot ideas, or character lines. I also Take a trip to the bookstore to look through coffee table books full of images related to the subject I am writing
Steven made me feel a little less schizophrenic,
I was telling a friend about some story ideas I had mulling around in my head, she said that it must be busy “in there”. I told her that at times it seems like a cocktail party,…Once I get at least the outline of a guest’s story to paper, they tend to back off and let me relax.
Brandy is, like many of us, a list-maker and note-taker,
1. Keep paper and a pen/pencil everywhere; in the car, my purse, on tables, on window ledges, etc., because I never know when inspiration will strike and not having materials near me could kill or stall a great idea.
2. Install whiteboards with markers in different areas of the house and several larger ones in your office/studio. I have found that having a place where it is okay to write in an nontrational way helps me free my thoughts. ..Having a wall of white boards in the studio/office allows me to write “on the walls” which is something we have been trained not to do since childhood…
3. Write EVERYTHING down…My grocery lists end up with story ideas, character quotes, and settings along with the bananas and soup…
You can read all the comments in full here.
I have decided to award today’s prize to Brenda and Brandy, but thanks to everyone for taking the time to share your tips.
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts Jan 3, 2025
![[Daily Prompt] May 3 – Be A Tour Guide](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Prompt_challenge2011tn.jpeg)