The Prompt

Take a story that you’ve written (maybe this month? Maybe from a longer or older work?) and rewrite an important incident, from the point of view of your main character’s nemesis.

Your beloved main character does need some flaws in order to allow readers to relate to them. Writing a story about them, but from the point of view of someone who is supremely irritated by them, gives you a chance to explore all the ways in which your character might not be perfect…

Try to make the story you write today complete, with no need for the reader to have any outside knowledge of these characters. Practice setting everything up, dripping out backstory, raising the stakes…you know, all the good stuff stories need. All while playing with your existing characters in a new way.

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Hero of Their Own Story

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. Her writing really took off when she learned to be mean to her characters. For an example of that, see ‘Amel and the BRIDE’ in the May/June 2026 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact.

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

 

The Prompt

Sand.

It can be experienced positively or negatively and either type of scenario is fertile ground for description.

Enjoy a brief brainstorming session! Pros and cons of sand. Happy memories versus frustrations with sand. Types of sand. Colors of sand. Uses of sand. Shake out those possibilities.

Find one that works for you and write a story that incorporates sand and some of its gritty glory.

Pressed for time and energy? Consider a drabble.

All the time in the world? Many successful stories incorporated vast deserts of sand.

Whatever you choose to do, hope you find joy in writing a story today.

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Ruby G. Dubois.

Ruby writes wherever she is, whenever she can, wonders what Freddie Mercury would sing if he were still alive, and hopes her attention span and the stars will align so the world can, one day, read her stories.

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

 

The Prompt

Who prepared most of your meals when you were a child?

What objects, smells or flavors bring back these memories?

Write a story in the form of a grocery list, and make sure to tell us the story of a character who has memories like yours…either in what you include in the list, or what you leave out.

Wondering how to make a story out of a list? Listen to me talk about that here along with an example of a list story.

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Brenda

Brenda writes short stories and a fun, upbeat newsletter – Thru the Window

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

 

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by the recent Artemis II mission.

There are so many options here, even if you don’t want to write about space travel:

• someone is far from home;
• four people are living in cramped conditions;
• someone has worked for years on a life-changing project and then has to turn it over to the people who will be the public face, and learn to stand back and watch;
• someone sees a thing for the first time in human history;
• someone who opposed a project has to watch while it succeeds;
• people who have been fighting for years are suddenly united in support of an extraordinary event…

There was so much wonder surrounding the Artemis mission, with all it’s ‘first time in 50 years, with all this new technology!’ hype, I’m going to argue for writing a story, today, that contains some of that wonder, awe, and togetherness.

But that’s just me. You write what you want 😉

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Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She can no longer say “the last time we went to the moon I was 6 months old!!” and she’s OK with that. She wonders what we will do with the 50 years of stellar sci-fi ‘what ifs’ that we’ve written since then…

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

 

The Prompt

Write a story in six sentences and/or no more than 400 words.

Choose a common idiom as your title (no, it doesn’t count towards the sentence/word limit) and then construct your story to subvert the readers’ expectations about the meaning of that idiom.

You can go dark, like, literal, or fanciful…but keep it to six sentences.

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Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She is quite long-winded. She does, however, like a sentence with lots of clauses, and so feels that writing a six-sentence story should be—frankly—a doddle. She might even try it today. In fact she thinks she will. There, done.

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

 

The Prompt

Write a story in which a secondary character has a secret — they are having their period. This doesn’t affect the plot, but it does affect the way the secondary character behaves.

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Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal is the USA Today Bestselling author of a dozen novels, including Apprehension and the Lady Astronaut series. A winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, she is also a professional puppeteer and award-winning audiobook narrator. She co-hosts the Writing Excuses podcast, served as SFWA President, and has an asteroid named after her. Also, her cat talks.

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.