Day 8 | Like a Sore Thumb by Gabrielle Johansen

The Prompt

Think of a time you saw something that was so out-of-place that it made you wonder, “How did that happen?” Answer yourself with a story.

Examples: A rolling suitcase abandoned at a busy intersection, a street bicycle propped against a tree in the middle of a national forest, a woman in a ballgown riding the bus, a green velvet chair sitting on an elevator in an office building, a standing mirror in a pasture, a tree with hundreds of small bits of glass and poppets hanging from its branches, a dragon statue in a hospita, two teenage girls dining at a cafe where all the other tables are filled with Shriners.

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Gabrielle Johansen

Gabrielle writes all stripes of fantasy and still believes in magic.

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.

 

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Day 7 | Dip Your Toe into the World of ‘Memoiries’ by Heidi Clausius

The Prompt

Write about an experience from your past that impacted you.

It can be from any period in your life. It must be something that happened. It can be a good memory or something difficult. The task is to bring your reader into your story with you.

Be experiential by using your senses. Describe your surroundings in detail; sights, smells, sounds, the touch or feel of something.

What were your physical and emotional responses? Help us related to how you’re feeling by taking us into it.

Reflect on something you learned from the experience, or something you didn’t see when you were in the midst of it that you do, now.

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Heidi Clausius

Heidi Clausius is a professional pianist, teacher and writer from Toledo, Ohio. She is currently working on her memoir, Year of the Nocturne. A story from her book was recently published in For the Love of Memoirs, “An Anthology of Emerging Authors.”

Heidi has been a member of Story a Day, Superstars since January 2021. She loves traveling with her family. You can find her at www.HeidiClausius.com

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.

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Day 6 | Talking to Animals by Max Delsohn

The Prompt

Write a story that entirely or mostly consists of a human character talking to an animal.

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Max Delsohn

Max Delsohn is the author of the short story collection, Crawl, which was named a November 2025 Indie Next pick and a Best Book of 2025 by Vulture, Them, Debutiful, Electric Literature, and Chicago Review of Books. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.maxdelsohn.com.

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.

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Day 5 | Stranger than Fiction by Jared Lemus

The Prompt

Look up “funny news stories” or find as many local newspapers, real estate magazines, Craigslist ads, or NextDoor posts as you can. Which headlines speak to you? Some of my favorite from the last year are: “Urgent! Stolen Turkey!!!!!!” from NextDoor, “Man in Chicken Outfit Robs Supermarket” on my local news channel, and “Raccoons are at it again” on a Facebook post. Don’t read the story; make it up based on the headline.

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Jared Lemus

Jared Lemus is a Guatemalan-American author and finalist for the PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short story collection for his book, Guatemalan Rhapsody. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Story, and elsewhere, and his debut novel, Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring, is forthcoming with Ecco-HarperCollins in the Spring of ’27. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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.

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Day 4 | Use These Words by Julie Duffy

The Prompt

Your prompt today is to find a way to use all of the following words in a story. (The words are taken at random from Mary Oliver’s “Upstream: Selected Essays”):

  • poems,
  • winged,
  • faith,
  • bog,
  • darkness,
  • summer,
  • more,
  • many,
  • course,
  • equally.

The point of this is to lower the stakes for you, so that you can write something without worrying about making it a work of art. With these constraints in place, it’s a triumph to simply write a coherent story. In the process, you’ll be practicing all the skills you need in your storytelling life: showing up, puzzling out the story, staying at it until you reach ‘the end’; character creation; putting obstacles in their way; creating conflict; resolving the puzzle; putting some sort of ending on the piece…


You’ve already given yourself permission to write. Now give yourself permission to write something imperfect. (It’s a valuable skill!)

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Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. You can find her most recent story in the May/June 2026 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. If you’re struggling with your writing or your writing practice, Julie offers coaching sessions (One-off troubleshooting or multi-session packages):

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.

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Day 3 | Ride the Wind by Myna Chang

The Prompt

People often react to weather in unexpected ways. What weather events haunt you? Alternatively, what weather simply annoys you? Maybe a sudden gust of wind blows your character’s hair up, or an untimely frost nips their tomato plants. Put your character in the path of a coming storm, or set them a thousand miles away, watching the storm on the news. What happens after the storm has passed? Try to capture the heart of your story in one-thousand words or less.

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Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
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Myna Chang

Myna Chang is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and WW Norton’s Flash Fiction America. She hosts Electric Sheep SF and publishes MicroVerse Recommended Reading. Find her at MynaChang.com or on Bluesky at @MynaChang.

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.

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