In honour of today being the middle of the month of May, the middle of our challenge, today’s prompt is:
Middle
In honour of today being the middle of the month of May, the middle of our challenge, today’s prompt is:
Do with that whatever you will.
Go!
I’m spending the day at an amusement park with the kiddies.
I love watching all the different people and types, from the loud, dramatic teens, to the young parents, the kid-free couples, the grandparents, the happy ones, the cranky ones…it’s great fodder .
It’s a setting ripe for drama, mystery, horror, poetry, action, joy and sorrow.
Go!
Write a story using space or sci-fi elements
On this day in 1973, the US launched the orbital space station Skylab.
Write A Story With Space/Science Fiction Elements
Even if you’re not a big fan of science fiction, this doesn’t have to be a difficult assignment. Sci-Fi isn’t all about techno-babble or rockets.
Two of my favourite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are:
1, Captain Picard is left on a planet, by a malevolent force, with the captain of a ship from a culture that communicates so strangely not even Star Trek’s wonderful translators can handle it. They are in peril and must work together. Gradually Picard figures out that the alien captain’s language is based on metaphors, but he doesn’t share the same culture so how can he find metaphors with which to communicate? It’s basically a stranded-on-an-island, must-work-together-to-escape-peril story, all about linguistics. In space.
2, Someone from Starfleet wants to take the sentient andriod Data back to HQ and take him apart to figure out how he works, for the greater good of the service (a fleet of Datas? We’d be unstoppable, Great!). Picard demands a tribunal at which he attempts to prove that Data is an individual not merely a piece of equipment. A wrinkle? Picard’s second in command and Data’s buddy, Riker, must act as prosector, and try to prove that his friend is merely a machine. This one is called “Measure of a Man” and is a long, fascinating philosophical argument about what it means to be human. Set on a spaceship.
Another example: the movie Moon, which came out last year. It is a psychological thriller set on the moon. It uses a sci-fi setting to create an isolation you couldn’t realistically create in a story set on our planet these days. And it uses some sci-fi tricks to mess with the hero’s mind and throw obstacles in his path, and none of it is extraneous.
What kind of story could you write, that uses as space or futuristic setting? A mystery? A romance? A morality play?
Write A Twitter Story
Write a story that would fit in a Twitter post (whether or not you’re on Twitter).
140 characters (yes, that includes spaces). No more. Maybe less.
Go!
Write A Drabble (100 word story)
A ‘drabble‘ is a short story of exactly 100 words. We’ve already done a 55 Fiction day, so this drabble day should be a doddle!
Write a song inspired a song.
Another birth anniversary from the Golden Age of US popular culture: Irving Berlin.
Born Israel Baline in New York in 1888, Berlin was a prolific songwriter, penning some of the most well-known songs ever, from White Christmas to Blue Skies and God Bless America.
While a lot of his songs lyrics were saccharine-sweet, being written for shows, they were all clever and often deceptively simple. My favourite Irving Berlin songs are the ones where he lets a tinge of sadness or regret into them (What’ll I Do? is an example of a both a seemingly simple lyric and real, poignant emotion).
(OK, that was Rogers and Hart, but let’s not pick nits)
Write a story inspired by a song. I’m going to suggest this verse (that’s the bit they usually don’t tack onto popular recordings of standards) from the Irving Berlin song Remember:
One little kiss,
A moment of bliss,
Then hours of deep regret.
One little smile,
And after a while,
A longing to forget.
One little heratache
Left as a token,
One little plaything,
Carelessly broken.
But you can pick another lyric if you want to.
Well, this has been an interesting journey so far.
In a week and a bit I have gone from …
Well, this has been an interesting journey so far.
In a week and a bit I have gone from
I have written every day except Mother’s Day on Sunday, when I spent my writing time doing site maintenance and lining up writing prompts for the coming week (Note to self: if I do this again, I’ll get a month’s worth of prompts ready before Day 1. I also wish I had more blog posts in my back pocket, rather than blog ideas. I was waiting to see what people’s challenges were, so I could blog about that, but in reality, where did I think I was going to find the time? Even this post is robbing Peter to pay Paul).
I am really enjoying reading everyone else’s comments both on the Twitter feed and at the site.
I love reading everyone’s comments on other people’s stories and making them myself. It forces me to read things critically and pick up tips for my own writing. I find that difficult to do in a vacuum.
So, in short, I’m loving doing the challenge and I’m loving the community aspect of it. Big thanks to everyone who is turning up and trying.
Today is the birth anniversary of Fred Astaire!
Today is the birth anniversary of Fred Astaire!
He was born in 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska and his real name was Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz. His father was born in Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism. His mother dreamed of escaping their humdrum life by making stars of her children. Fred Astaire started out as a child stage star, singing and dancing in a vaudeville act with his sister, Adele, orchestrated by his mother and promoted by his father. Astaire went on to Hollywood and was eventually voted the Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
He strikes me as a ‘type’ that many would see as the ‘ideal’ American: son of nobodies who grows up to be loved and lauded.
Inspired by the life of Friedrich Austerlitz, write the story of a mythical (American?) hero. You can idealize the hero or reveal the flaws and the chinks in the armour, it’s up to you.
Write A Story Inspired By A Picture
If a picture says a thousand words that should save us some time, right?
This could be a piece of art that you love, or you can go to the ‘Explore’ page of Flickr.com and start poking about until you find a picture that speaks to you. (Do this quickly. Allow yourself no more than five minutes to find a picture. Choose the first one that stands out to you).
Write a story connected to that picture. Keep the picture in mind as you go through your story. Always bring it back to the impulse that made you choose the image.
If you can, provide a link to the picture that inspired your story (even if you’re not posting your stories online I’d love to see what images and ideas people get from this).
Go!
It is possible to write a story in 55 words
A lot of people aim to write Flash Fiction because they think it’s going to be quicker than writing a longer story. Don’t they know their Blaise Pascal? (“”I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.”)
It is possible to write a good story in 55 words (the title isn’t part of the word-count, but must not exceed seven words), but it’s not necessarily a quick thing.
Still, Saturdays tend to have more ‘running around’ time than ‘sitting at a desk time’ for many of us, and that might equal ‘thinking time’ if we’re lucky.
So grab your idea right now. Then, while you’re folding laundry, or taking the kids to soccer, think about how you can deliver a punch in 55 words. Think about which elements of your story you can strip away to cut it down to 55 words. What is essential in your story?
Thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about how your week is going. I’ve collected some of the responses…
We’ve made it to Day 7! Congrats to everyone who has written anything, or still plans to! And thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about how your week is going. I’ve collected some of the responses below.
When I had this idea to write A Story A Day, back in March, I knew I was going to need a crew to keep me honest, because I knew it would be hard. My non-writer friends a families gave me that ‘uh-huh!’ look and said things like “that’s ambitious”.
With the help of a few people like Debbie, Carol, Robert and Eden, and the Twitterati, word spread rapidly and I discovered that there are tons of writers out there just as hungry for an excuse to focus on their writing as I was. Tons of people who took “That’s ambitious” and made it a cheer, not a groan.
So now, I have — according to my Story A Day Dashboard — 77 new friends, who are all serious enough about their writing to want to do this challenge. Not everyone is writing every single day and not everyone is finishing a story every day they start one, but everyone is serious about their writing and that is such an inspiration to me. (Sorry, I’m gushing)
The shortest story people are laying claim to is 25 words. The longest is over 3000
@mapelba says “As Ann Lamott said–butt in chair. It helps to listen or read an interview with a favorite author sometimes. Oh, and I’ve given up a lot of TV. That helps.”
@Cidwrites says: “The excitement of my friends who are doing this helps a lot!”
@KristenRudd says: “My trick so far is to mull my story all day, while I’m doing whatever it is I do. I think about the directions it could go, but I mostly think about how to open it. Then, when I can finally sit down after the kids are in bed, the dishes are washed, and I’ve done everything else that needs doing, I’m excited about the story that’s been buzzing all day. If I have the opener, I can sit down and just WRITE (That said, neither story went where I had planned. Characters kept popping in and announcing themselves, changing the story). Who knows if this will hold up – we’ll see! Ask us again in two weeks!
“My other trick was to sign up my kid. I have too much pride to be outdone by a seven-year-old, so I’lm guaranteed to write every day.” (I love this one!)
@Wendolin says: “I keep going because every day I wake up and the first thing I think about is . . . what will I end up with today? I go about my morning chores thinking about possibilities. I make this challenge the focus of my day, and though I have many other things to do, I keep the story in the back of my miind, cogitating, adding and subtracting, until at last, I just have to sit down and start writing, no matter how much laundry there is in the hamper.”
Thanks everyone! Keep writing!
Getting started can be a huge obstacle to overcome…so cheat!
Getting started can be a huge obstacle to overcome. Faced with the prospect of having to start a new story every day we can start second-guessing our ideas, our style, our ability…All of this makes getting started even harder.
So cheat.
Go to your bookshelf and pull down a book you admire. Look at the first paragraph. How does it start? Is it a description of a place? Does something dramatic happen? Does someone talk?
Look at the structure of the opening and use it for your own stories (this is how apprentices have always learned, they copy their masters’ work, and gradually find their own style). Copy your master-writer’s structure, but insert your own details.
For example, I pulled Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea off the shelf. Its opening sentence is,
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-wracked North-East sea, is a land famous for wizards.
(Isn’t that a great sentence?)
My story might begin,
The Arcologie Sando, a huge fractured semi-dome that rose up from the rock-strewn desert floor, was famous for producing arcolonists.
OK, hers is still better, but borrowing from the master, gave me a way in to my story.
Go to your bookshelf and steal an opening line from the best. Make it your own, and see where it leads you.
Go!
Field Day
Write a story set at a school sports day/field day or other special event where parents turn up and the worlds of home and school collide.
Today I’m off to supervise hordes of screaming children at Field Day at the kids’ school. (It’s what my school would have called “Sports Day”, with sack races and obstacle course and suchlike, except I don’t remember my parents ever having to help out).
In honour of my noble sacrifice, today’s prompt is:
Write a story set at a school sports day/field day or other special event where parents turn up and the worlds of home and school collide.
Work from your own memory of school or your experiences as a parent/aunt/grandparent/child-free-friend, whatever you have.
Surely there are a few opportunities for conflict and resolution among the sack races and the potato-and-spoon contests!
Write a story based on an incident at a cultural festival.
It’s Cinco de Mayo, which people in the Americas know as an excuse for a party, thanks to immigrants from the Mexican state Puebla (according to Wikipedia it “commemorates the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862,”
Mostly now it’s an excuse to don over-sized sombreros and drink Corona. But it brings us to today’s prompt:
It’s hard to grow up anywhere without attending some kind of cultural festival, whether it’s the English village fete, a religious festival (St Anthony’s Feast in the North End of Boston, for example) , or a nationality-based one (a Burns’ Supper in Scotland, St Patrick’s Day in the US).
Write a story based on an incident at a cultural festival. Add details from the activities, colours and smells of the festival to make your story real.
Write a story set in your first home …
Who says you can’t go home again?
Write a story set in your first home (house? town?). Describe it in exquisite detail. Make us believe we’re there.
Write a Story Featuring A High-Tech Gadget
I love my gadgets.
But even if you’re not a gadget freak, an early-adopter, a lover of all things tech, you can’t really escape the stuff.
So today’s prompt is
It could be a cell phone that accidentally redials, and gets the owner in big trouble.
It could be an iPad, a Kindle, a GPS unit.
Maybe the hero of the story hates technology. Maybe she loves it.
OK? Go!
…Obituaries are wonderful sources of lifestories, character sketches, intriguing stories.
I know, kind of morbid for a spring day, but obituaries are wonderful sources of lifestories, character sketches, intriguing stories.
I like to think of stealing from the obituaries less as grave-robbing and more as creating a tribute to a life lived. So, today:
[Could you write about Bonnie and a great-grandchild on their first trout-fishing afternoon together? Would it be a perfect moment? A farce? A dramatic turning point? What did the river look like, sound like? What did she notice?]
Go!
Graphics for participants to use on their websites
If you’d like a badge to post on your website, feel free to grab one of these. Right click to save to your computer.
500×230 pixels
300×138 pixels
250×115 pixels
200×92 pixels
150×69 pixels
Use ’em anywhere you want to!
Today’s prompt: go to the Newest Articles section of the front page of Wikipedia…
Today, go to the Newest Articles section of the front page of Wikipedia.
GO!
AKA: What Was I Thinking?!
OK, I”m a little nervous. Two days until we begin this journey of writing a story a day.
But it’s a good nervous. It’s an energetic nervous. I’m like a stallion in the gate, ready for the off. Quivering a little.
Already I’m noticing benefits from this Story A Day project…
Photo by:letsbook / Permission:CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
OK, I”m a little nervous. Two days until we begin this journey of writing a story a day.
But it’s a good nervous. It’s an energetic nervous. I’m like a stallion in the gate, ready for the off. Quivering a little.
Already I’m noticing benefits from this Story A Day project:
I’m looking at the world in a different way: looking at everything as a story idea, noticing details, smelling things, wondering how I would describe situations, feelings, people, objects.
I’m connecting with other writers.
I’m blogging about writing and making it a priority.
This might get tough around May 13 or so, but I’m ready. I’ve got my family and friends primed to nag me about my writing, I’ve got a little black book of ideas. I have some backup strategies for days when it’s tough (keep watching this blog and your inbox for those strategies as the month rolls along).
What about you? Are you making preparations? Are you winging it? What do you do when you need to write but get stuck? Are you excited?
Let me know!
In 2006 Eden Kennedy, of fussy.org, inspired by National Novel Writing Month started her own ‘month’: National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). For those of us who can’t possibly hope to carve out the time to writ a novel in a month, NaBloPoMo was a great alternative: commit to posting something every day, and see what happened.
I tried it and was pleasantly surprised to come away with both new friends and an increased sense of creativity, as I viewed my world in terms of potential creative writing opportunities.
Now, NaBloPoMo is a year-round event, with hundreds of people posting daily.
NaBloPoMo was a big inspiration for StoryADay.org, so I emailed Eden to ask her a few questions:
[EDEN] I started it in November of 2006, running it off my own site, fussy.org. It was basically just a blogroll and a list of prizes people kept donating for me to hand out to random people who managed to post every day that month. A lot of people liked it because it was an alternative to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where you write like 6,000 words a day. I, like many others, failed at my NaNo attempt, so it’s like we started a little underachievers club by doing NaBloPoMo. I moved everything over to nablopomo.com in November 2007 so it could become more of a social network, and thousands of new people signed up, to my surprise. Eventually so many people were asking if I could make more events throughout the year, and not just in November, that I decided to just go monthly.
[EDEN] I only participate in November. It’s the original month, and still the month we get the most traffic for, two or three thousand people. The rest of the year we get maybe 400 or 500 people each month.
[EDEN] A real sense of satisfaction at having come up with something to say thirty days in a row. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the will to write something that’s actually worth reading, and not just phone it in or post a YouTube video or something. For most people, one month is enough, but there are several die-hards who go on to post every day for a year or more.
[EDEN] Photos. Posting a photo can either be a great writing prompt, because readers will be interested in whatever the story behind it is, or else it can stand by itself as a post and give you the day off. Nothing wrong with that!
Thanks, Eden!
Interesting point about the photos. Who says your Story A Day story couldn’t be a comic strip, a photo essay, a particularly evocative picture?
So, only four days left until we begin our Story A Day challenge.
Nervous? Thinking about backing out?
Yeah, me too 😉
So, only four days left until we begin our Story A Day challenge.
Nervous? Thinking about backing out? Yeah, me too 😉
I’m going to be posting a daily prompt, which you should feel free to use or ignore. The prompt will be on this blog, but you can also
(I think I’ve got most of my bases covered there but if you have somewhere you’d like it to appear, let me know and I’ll look into it.
I’m also going to continue posting articles on the craft of writing.
There might be videos and audio, and you should certainly feel free to post the same kind of things.
I may not post my actual stories every day, but I will be posting a log of my writing at in my personal Story A Day journal.
If you’d like everyone here to know that you have written your story for the day, post about your progress in the Victory Dance group.
You can also post in your personal Story A Day blog or on your own blog, if you have one.
If you need inspiration, check out the posts on this blog, the resources page, and the various Story A day groups.
Remember: A little something is still more than a lot of nothing.
Robert Brewer is the Poetic Asides poetry blogger for Writer’s Digest, and is in the midst of hosting April’s Poem A Day Challenge.
He took a few minutes to talk to me about what this particular creative challenge has meant to him and the poets who took part.
I believe in breaking big tasks into smaller tasks. So, think of the month in terms of weeks or 4- to 5-day increments of time. Another trick, write shorter if you’re just struggling in the middle–or get silly. Remember: A little something is still more than a lot of nothing.
—
Thanks Robert!
The best short stories can say a lot, but they don’t try to do too much.
A short story is not a novel…
The best short stories can say a lot, but they don’t try to do too much.
Writing a story a day is going to be a huge challenge. Inventing characters and settings and inhabiting them for just one day? Huge.
We don’t have the time or space to tell wandering epics.
We have time for one incident or one central character or theme [1. by the way all of this is also not true. In writing rules are made to be broken. Except that one about the apostrophe. I will hunt you down and smack your palm with a ruler if you put an apostrophe before the “s” in a plural!]
If your story starts to wander towards an interesting side character, slap that character’s hand and promise him he can be the hero of tomorrow’s story. If you find yourself backtracking to show too much of what happened before the ‘now’ of your story, file the idea and write a prequel tomorrow.
The beauty of writing aevery day is that you don’t have to do it all today. You can write tomorrow. In fact, you have to!
So finish the story you started (even if you’ve fallen out of love with it) and make note of all the other ideas that were so good they butted in today.
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
-Ezra Pound
Stuck?
Here’s a secret weapon to keep you writing every day:
Rewrite the same story in different styles.
How?
Is your story refusing to sing? Are you sick of the sound of your own prose?
There are times when every (good) writer feels this way. It could be a moment of great despair, but it could also be an opportunity to try something new.
Some days finding ideas is easier than others.
On the days where the story ideas are flowing, stick a bucket under the spigot and catch them all. You’ll need them later. Here are some prompts to get that idea spigot to open. Get ready with your notebook…
Some days finding ideas is easier than others.
On the days where the story ideas are flowing, stick a bucket under the spigot and catch them all. You’ll need them later.
(And when you come back to them, give them your full attention. “Cell-phone trouser call” might not mean much at first glance, but on a second glance you’ll remember the idea you had for a girlfriend whose boyfriend had an amusing habit of putting his bluetooth headset in his pocket and redialing her by accident. If you give it few moments of serious thought you’ll remember how you thought that might go bad and what tone of story it was going to be. If today’s the day for that story, go for it.)
Here are some prompts to get that idea spigot to open. Get ready with your notebook…
Think of incidents in your life that have stayed with you: the playground fight when you were 10; the day everyone gathered to watch you complete the Rubik’s cube; your wedding day; that time you embarrassed yourself so horribly that you blushed to think about for five years straight. Can you go back and put a fictional character in that situation? Can she go somewhere with it? Why is she there? Does it happen the same way or does she handle it the way you wish you had? play!
What about all those stories that you heard, growing up? Yu heard them over and over again until you groaned. You might not know exactly what Poughkeepsie looked lik in 1956, but you know the emotional core of the story and you know one or two details that will give your short story authenticity(didn’t your mother always interrupt your dad’s story to rib him about his finely coiffed ‘DA’ hair? And didn’t your dad get her back by reminding her of the gold necklace she was so snooty about, but that turned her neck green?). Re-purpose these stories, with different people and a different setting if you need to. But stay true to the point of the story, to the point the teller was trying to make.
You know how interviewers ask you where you see yourself in five years? Well, why not turn that into a story? Maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s a character you’ve had rattling around in your head. Maybe it’s a ‘real’ fictional character. Where is Moriarty five years after Holmes’s death? What about Harry Potter? (Now, these would count as ‘fan fiction’ and might represent a breach of trademark or copyright, but if you’re just writing them as a creativity exercise for yourself, you probably shouldn’t worry too much. But you might not want to try to publish these ones. [3. there’s a recent book by Melanie Benjamin called Alice I Have Been which imagines the life of the real girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland)
Obituaries of ordinary people contain wonderful character sketches: the whole family, the era they lived in, their interests, their careers. Sometimes you can imagine the person, their hopes and dreams, from the activities they pursued and the comments of those left behind. Online obituary listings often have ‘guest books’ where loved ones add more detail. OK, maybe you think I’m being ghoulish. I prefer to see this ideas as a tribute to the departed person.
Look around. What do you see that is out of place? What could it mean? Elizabeth Peters saw a trash bag lying lumpily at the side of the road and thought,
‘Oo, what if that was a dead body?’
Then she wrote a novel – a whole novel! – from that kernel of an idea.
A man, talking quietly into a cell phone at the coffee shop? Why quietly? Might we say ‘furtively’? Why is he here and not at work or at home with his wife? Is he meeting his girlfriend? Oh look, a beautiful woman just walked in and sat with him. He smiles too much, is way too chatty for that to be his wife. Is he having an affair? What if his wife arrives? What if he is meeting with an event planner to plan a lavish 40th birthday party for the wife?
Is there a traffic cone on top of a statue in town? We all know students put it there, but who were they? How did they feel? Would they do it again?
There’s a kite stuck in a tree? How did it get there?
An old man sits on a bench, staring at his shoes. Who is he? What is he thinking? What has he seen in his life?
Ideas are everywhere. Keep your eyes open and your notebook handy.
Need more help? Get the ebook that grew out of this article: Breaking Writers’ Block, A StoryADay Guide
I’m not sure yet (because I haven’t done it), but I think it’s going to be possible to write a story a day.
Here are some of the ways I’m planning to make time every day to tell stories:
One of the main reasons I have little time to write is that I have children. It’s tough to sit down and writing a story when someone is likely to burst in and tell you that they *neeeeed* something right now, and another one trails behind him saying that he *neeeeeds* the same thing, or more likely something completely different.
But I have found that one of the best ways to ‘write’ stories is to tell them to my children. Whether at bedtime or during potty-training, or in the car, there’s nothing quite like having a live audience for keeping you going. If their attention starts to wander, you know you have to step up the action. If you pause for a moment, they demand to know what happened next.
Maybe if I can carry my phone around with me and record the stories I tell to the kids, that’ll help me out a few times.
Again with the motherhood thing, I spend quite a lot of time driving around. Sometimes I’m alone, and sometimes they’re wa-ay in the back playing with toys. Again, with my trusty phone nearby, I can tell at least part of a story on every journey. I think recording stories is going to be really helpful, even though I love to write (with a fountain pen and everything).
I like limitations. I like to know I only have 1000 or 200 or 55 words into which I have to shoehorn a story. Some days I’m planning to set myself a short word count limit and trying to craft a short story within it.
I always found that seat-of-the-pants writing during exams worked really well for me. With a time limit, I can’t afford to listen to the inner critic. So some days will be Time Limit days. Write a story within an hour, half an hour, by 3pm, whatever seems to work that day.
Some days I’ll assign myself a genre to work in. Write a film noir story, write in the style of Virginia Woolfe, write a monologue, write in the third person.
Like the genre/styles assignments I’m planning to write the same story several different ways. I”ve got another blog post coming with more details about that)
So, those are some of my ideas. How about you?
Welcome to Storyaday.org.
I started thinking about this at the weekend: I don’t want to do NaNoWriMo because I don’t want to write a novel. And I couldn’t manage 50,000 words in 30 days at this point.
But a story a day?
Maybe I could do a story a day.
I mentioned it to my co-conspirator Carol, and she was all for it. Of course.
So here we go…
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
