[Writing Prompt] Slow It Down

Stories have settings, characters and action. Great! Easy. Let’s get writing!

A-hem. One of the hard parts of writing is getting the pacing of a story correct. You need to slow things down and speed things up in the right places. It may seem counterintuitive but the place to speed up is often in the set up. Readers don’t need a lot of set up. You (and they) can fill in the details as you go along. Again, oddly enough, the place to slow down can be the moment when you reach the action.

Trained by Hollywood as we are, we tend to think of ‘action’ as fast-paced, the bit where the cars come screeching down the hill, the rocket blasts off, the volcano erupts. But in a story, the ‘action’ is simply ‘the stuff the characters do in an effort to get what they want’.  When your characters start taking action, that might be a flag for you to slow the reader down, tease the moment, with some details, thoughts, frame-by-frame storyboarding of the scene.

The Prompt

Take a moment, right in the heart of the action of your story, and increase the tension by slowing it  wa-a-ay down with granular details.

Tips

Some examples:

Take us through every muscle that tenses as the hero prepares to run;

Take us inside a woman’s head for every random thought that flits through it between the words “will you marry me?” and her answer (“Did I leave the iron on? Oh gawd, I cannot believe I thought about that right now. Look, he’s on his knees. He’ll ruin his trousers. Focus, woman! Look at his face. That mole really needs checked out and oh no, this moment has gone on too long. Must answer. Must answer. Should I cry? I don’t think I want to cry, but it seems like the kind of thing I should do. I wish he’d stop staring at me like that…”)

Detail the painstaking preparations the surgical team makes, in silence, before the lifesaving operation.

 

This might not be the most successful story you ever write, but it’s a worthwhile technique to practice. You might just find a brand new tool to put in your writers’ toolkit.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] – Time

Write a story that hinges in some way on time: the passage of, warping of, misperception of, freezing of, measurement of, gadgets for tracking, etc.

Hooray! Day 5 and you’re still coming back for more. Hope the writing is going well, but if not, keep plugging away at it. It’ll come. Why not read and comment on someone else’s work to inspire you?

Since this is a time-limited writing challenge I thought it was about time we wrote, well, about time.

The Prompt

Write a story that hinges in some way on time: the passage of, warping of, misperception of, freezing of, measurement of, gadgets for tracking, etc.

If you need a little inspirations on the workings of time and our obsessions with it, try this collection from the British Museum.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] – The Death of Imagination

Day 4 and you’re back for more. Good for you!
How’s it going? Don’t forget to check in at the forums or leave a comment on this post when you’ve written today, or if you need a little encouragement.

The Prompt

Today, write a story in which imagination and fanciful stuff like art and interpretation have been outlawed. What kind of implications would that have? Why did they do it?

(What if no-one had had the imagination to see the importance in stopping to take this picture? How would language sound without metaphors? Would we, without history, be doomed to repeat it?)

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] – Twitter Fiction

Day three and it’s a holiday in the US, my kids go back to school tomorrow and frankly, I think we all deserve an easy day today so…

The Prompt

Write a Twitter length story. 140 characters. That’s it.

(But watch out. It’ll take longer than you think to come up with a real story and then trim it down to 140 characters. Get some inspiration here.)

Go!

 

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Wanted

You’re back for the second day for writing! Good for you! I’m proud of you.

The Prompt

Today, pick a character (maybe someone from your past, maybe someone you’ve been imagining for years, maybe someone you’ve written about before).

Give that character something to want. It can be as simple as wanting a place to sit down, or as grand as wanting to save the world.

Show us how much they want it, somewhere near the beginning of the story. Make it their guiding principle for every action they take, every word they say throughout the story. See how it shapes everything, and how it frees you from having to explain why they are doing what they are doing, all the time? Nice, eh?

Near the end of the story you’re going to have to decide whether we see your character get what they want, be thwarted, or limp off into the sunset still seeking after it. Show us that scene.

Go!

 

And when you have written your story log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] – Saturday Morning

Welcome to StoryADay September 2012!! You’ve signed up. I’m so proud of you!

Well, while you are welcome to write whatever the heck you want today, here’s a prompt to help you out in the unlikely event that you can’t even come up with one idea 😉

The Prompt

Write a story set on a Saturday morning in the era during which you were a kid. It doesn’t have to be you (or a kid) in the story, but make your story capture the feel, the colors, the sounds of the time.

Don’t forget to make it a story though: something has to happen, someone has to change; we must see a beginning, a middle and an end.

Go!

And when you have written your story log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.