[Prompt] May 11 – Delayed Appearance

DELAY THE APPEARANCE OF THE MAIN CHARACTER

Sometimes it’s a problem to create enough suspense in a short story to keep the reader engaged. An interesting way to do this is to delay the appearance of your main character until quite far into the story. This follows on from yesterday’s prompt where you kept your protagonist off-sceen. This time, however, you can build them up and then allow them to take the stage.

How does this feel? Better? Did you keep the tension going even after the character appeared?

Keep Your Main Character In The Wings

Go!

[Prompt] May 10 – Offstage

NEVER LET YOUR CHARACTER APPEAR

Write a story in which the main, most interesting character never actually appears ‘on-stage’.

Everything the reader learns about the character should come in opinions, comments and conversations between other characters in the story. What do we learn about them? How important do they become? How difficult is it to keep them ‘off-stage”?

The Hidden Protagonist

Go!

[Prompt] May 9 – Chatty Cathy

LET YOUR CHARACTER TALK

Tell a story where everything we learn about the character comes from the things they say.
Does what they say match up with what they mean? Iin what ways do they lie about themselves when the speak? How do people react?)

Tell Us About Your Character Through Their Voice

Go!

[Prompt] May 8 – Character From Your Past

This week all the prompts are going to focus on Character. Here’s the first:

REWRITE A CHARACTER FROM YOUR PAST

Pick a character, a real person, from your past. Put them into a story. Be as kind or as cruel as you like (you might want to change their name…)

Use a real character.

Go!

[Prompt] May 7 – Title Recall

PICK A SONG TITLE AND USE IT AS YOUR STORY’S TITLE

Scan this page quickly and pick a title that leaps out at you. Browse around a bit if you need to but use the rule of three: if you haven’t found something on the third page, tough. You’re stuck with it. Pick one and write the story.

Use the title as the title of your story. (It can be very, very tenuously connected to your story.)

Steal someone else’s title for your story

Go!

[Prompt] May 6 – Eavesdropping

STEAL A LINE FROM AN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

Dialogue and story sparks are all around us. Today, listen for a line in a conversation (if you spend the whole day alone at home, turn on the TV or the radio for three minutes). Pick a phrase that you hear. Use the line somewhere in your story today.

This morning I overheard a woman say,

“Karen, have you been to the new Casino yet?”

I might write about the casino or about Karen, or about a coffee shop in a small town with a regular cast of visitors – one of whom is a street person on her regular round of public spaces.

What will your eavesdropping yield?

Go!