[Write On Wednesday] Two Different Timelines

Today’s prompt is inspired by a great book I’m reading on story structure. It’s called Book Architecture: How To Outline Without Using A Formula by Stuart Horwitz (who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference recently. If you get a chance to see him speak, I’d highly recommend it. Very engaging and he takes a VERY different approach to the idea of outlining a story from most pro-outline people.)

The Prompt

Write A Story That Contains More Than One Timeline

Tips

  • Here’s a Flash Fiction example of the kind of thing I’m talking about: Comatose by Megan Manzano
  • In Book Architecture, Horwitz offers a couple of great tips for keeping multiple timelines from becoming confusing: 1, anchor your reader in the ‘present’ timeline before jumping back to a flashback and b, keep your flashbacks moving in the same chronological order (i.e. start at one point in the character’s experiences and move in one direction from there. He uses the movie Slumdog Millionaire as an example of this structure).
  • Here’s a longer, and more complex story that has multiple timelines: The Weight Of A Blessing by Aliette de Bodard (the timelines here are The Present, After The Last Visit With Her Daughter; The Recent Past, During And In-Between Her Three Visits With Her Daughter; and The Far Past, During The War. All of them combine to illustrate the theme of the story while unpacking the details of what the heck’s going on (kind of).
  • For today’s exercise, try doing the minimum: weave two timelines together, and keep each one moving in a particular chronological direction.
  • This might take more time than the usual Write On Wednesday “write it fast and loose” kind of exercise. What the heck, take the whole week.
  • Try taking a story you’ve written before and reworking it this way. Choose one you’re not happy with, or that you never finished Good candidates are stories that sank under the weight of their own backstory. Split out the backstory and tell it in flashback.

Go!

Guest Prompt from Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette KowalMary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Glamourist Histories series of fantasy novels and the a three time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Clarkesworld, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer, lives in Chicago. Visit her online at maryrobinettekowal.com.

We’re rounding out our month with a multiple-award winning, working writer’s advice to take a look at scenes (or stories) from another angle. It seems to be working for her, so let’s give it a try! Thanks for sharing, Mary!

The Prompt

Take the last scene [or story – Ed.] that you wrote. Now rewrite it from the point of view of a secondary character. You have to keep all the physical actions and dialog in the same order, but make it clear what is at stake for the new POV character. Why do they say the things they do? What are they trying to achieve?

Now go back to your original scene [or story – Ed.] and adjust it to incorporate the new things you’ve learned about your secondary character.

Often when a scene seems flat, it’s because we haven’t thought through the motivations of any of the people in the scene except the point of view character.

Go!

May 31 – Scenario – The Windswept Plain

The Prompt

Your story starts with a character standing on a windswept, desolate plain. How did they get there? What do they want? And what is that on the horizon, and why is it getting closer?

You’ll notice that I haven’t provided a lot of (any?) scenarios during this month of writing prompts. That’s because I firmly believe your own ideas will provide more meaningful stories. The writing prompts I provide are merely a way to help shape your thoughts about the things that matter to you.

Today, however, I think you’ve earned a bit of a break.

This is a particularly fun story to post in the comments at the blog or in the community forums, to see how everyone wrote completely different stories from the same scenario prompt. Give it a try!

The Prompt

Your story starts with a character standing on a windswept, desolate plain. How did they get there? What do they want? And what is that on the horizon, and why is it getting closer?

Tips

  • This story can take place anywhere, at any time and with any kind of protagonist.
  • It could be a space opera, a farce, the climax of a tense kidnap story told in flashbacks, a mystery, a comedy, a romance or a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Whatever your taste runs to.
  • You don’t ever have to explain why the character is there or what is approaching. You can focus on the character, his/her emotions, memories or senses and still have a satisfying story.
  • Your story can stay on the plain or, if you’re not the outdoorsy type, have your character scuttle into the huge building right behind her that we couldn’t see in the ‘opening shot’ of the story.
  • Consider sharing this with other people in the community who are writing to the same prompt. If you ever had any concerns about not being able to write anything ‘original’, sharing the results of this prompts should cure you of that!

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

 

And that’s it! You’re done.

No matter how many days you wrote (or didn’t), your writing thanks you for hanging in until the end. Now, print out your Winner’s Tiara, color it in, put your feet up and demand that every one treat you like royalty (the good parts, not the bloody-revolution-parts).

Then come back here tomorrow to check in with the June SWAGr crew, and make your commitments to your writing for next month. (I’m thinking: a few days of more relaxed writing and some revision, to start with.)

Also, I’ll be posting details about next month’s StoryFest, where we get to share our favorite stories from the past month. So don’t be a stranger!

Guest Prompt from John Dixon

John DixonJohn Dixon’s first novel Phoenix Island was not only the inspiration for the CBS series Intelligence (starring Josh Holloway), but was this year awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. (Well-deserved, too! It’s an excellent book!). John is a former Golden Gloves boxer, youth services caseworker, prison tutor, and middle school English teacher.

Like the expert in horror and all-things-creepy that he is, John gave us a very creepy prompt.

The Prompt

Write a story about someone trying to escape a subterranean space.

Go!

Day 30 – The Impact of Art

The Prompt

Write a story about the impact of art

Writing means a lot to you. You’ve been doing it every day for weeks now. You’ve made it a priority. How does that feel?

There are probably other art forms that move you just as much (Music? Art? Dance?). What would you do and who would you be if you were forced to live a life without art?

The Prompt

Write a story about the impact of art

Tips

  • You may imagine a world where art is forbidden (all art or just the particular type your character wants to commit).
  • You can imagine an artist who is blocked for another reason.
  • What does the lack of art do to that person?
  • Has he/she known what it was to be an artist and lost it?
  • Has he/she never known and are they living a life they thought was OK. How do they discover the missing piece? What impact does that have on the rest of their life?
  • Perhaps your story will be about an art teacher impacting the life of an impressionable kid.
  • Your story need not be a narrative story. Perhaps it is a chilling set of rules to be imposed by an oppressive authority. Perhaps it is a list of titles of work in an art show or exhibition or that have been found in an archaeological dig.
  • You might write about the conversation between an ancient artist and the modern day observer.
  • What does art mean to you? Put that into your story.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 29 – Back To Front

The Prompt

Write a story starting with the climax and working backwards to find out how we got there

This prompt might be easier for plotters than people who prefer to discover as they write. Then again, it might not. Let’s find out.

The Prompt

Write a story starting with the climax and working backwards to find out how we got there

Tips

  • Don’t worry about being cheesy and writing “meanwhile” or “five minutes earlier”. This is meant to be a fun exercise. Allow yourself to have some fun.
  • It still all starts with a character. Think of a character who wants something, doesn’t want something else and put them in their worst nightmare situation.
  • It can be something as overdone as finding themselves in their pajamas in a school hallway. Maybe she’s an adult, face to face with her mortified teenage son and all his classmates. Have her talk to someone (perhaps directly to the reader) and start to explain how she found themselves in this mess.
  • In each subsequent scene, start things off with another mystery (the character, still in her pajamas, and we still don’t know why) is on a bus, no, at the wheel of a bus. Explain how she got into that situation and what happened to the real driver, let it run into the school wall and her jump out to find help, then skip back to another, earlier scene. This time she’s running down the street (again, in her pajamas) away from an irate grandmother, who is shaking a walking frame at her. Explain that one and leave her at the bus stop, then flip back to the moment before she annoyed the grandmother; the moment when she discovered she was on her front step in her pajamas with he keys on the other side of the door. Explain how she went from there, to annoying granny, to being forced to seek shelter on a bus, whose driver was incapacitated, to whatever happened to get her into the school. Then, once last scene could show her very normal, serene morning: a morning in which she decides to stay in her pjs just a few minutes more, only then there’s a knock at the door.`
  • This doesn’t have to be a farce. Think of movies like Memento and Looper. Feed the reader little bits of information. Keep them disoriented.  Or think of
  • Pick your own character and nightmare scenario and…

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

StoryFest 2015 Is Coming!

This is for everyone – whether you wrote or you didn’t. If you wrote in a previous year; if you wanted to write but couldn’t make it; if you wrote one story; if you simply read and enjoyed someone else’s.

This is our chance to celebrate, and boost both the short story and our friends in StoryADay.

StoryFest 2015

June 13-14

storyaday.org

 

StoryFest 2015 logo

How To Celebrate StoryFest

 

  • Come to the site June 13-14, follow a link to a story, read it and comment on it.
  • If you wrote even one story in this (or any previous) StoryADay, submit one to be featured on the site’s front page June 13-14.
  • Nominate someone else’s story to be featured.
  • Spread the word: from Jun 1-14, tell everyone you know on every social network (especially the ones with readers in them) about StoryFest. Tell them to come to the site June 13-14 to read new and exciting work by up-and-coming future stars of the literary world!
  • Post the graphic on your blog, your Facebook timeline, tattoo it on your leg, whatever! (Get your graphics here)

 

What is StoryFest?

StoryFest is a weekend when the stories take over StoryADay.org.

On Jun 13, the front page of StoryADay.org will change to one dedicated to you and your stories. It will be full of links to your stories, online, until June 14.

It’s our end-of-year party, our recital, our chance to share our work with readers.

(It’s also my birthday weekend, so consider your participation as your birthday gift to me!)

 

How To Submit/Nominate A Story

Simple.

Fill Out This Form.

Be ready to supply your storyaday username, your real name or psuedonym, a link to the story you’re nominating, its title and a summary, a link to a story by someone else (optional but karmically recommended).

Deadline: Sunday, June 7.

This gives you a few days to pick your story and possibly polish it a bit. If you can get it to me before the deadline I’ll love you forever, though, as it’s going to take me a while to organize all the submissions.

StoryFest FAQ

 


Does my story have to be online?

Yes. We want to create a reader fanbase for you. Stories must be posted somewhere online, in full.

Is it OK if my story is on my personal blog (or other site).

Absolutely. Just supply the link.

Will it be considered published?

Your story is not being published by StoryADay, but you should be aware that some editors still consider a story that has been posted online, as having been previously published. If you think this is your last good story ever, by all means guard it with your life. Or, if you plan to submit it to a publication in its current form, you may not want it posted online. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about this.

Does It Have To Be A Story I Wrote During StoryADay?

Yes. I’ll have to trust you on this. But it can be a story you wrote in a previous year.

Why Do I Have To Select A Genre Label?

Try not to agonize over this. I know most fiction is really cross-genre. It’s just short-hand for readers. I know I’m more likely to plump for a Speculative/Sci-Fi story or a mystery before I will read a fantasy story. As a reader, you don’t want to scroll through a long list of stories with no clues as to which you might prefer. Genre labels simply help readers make a quick decision, rather than being paralysed or overwhelmed and not clicking on anything. Just think like a reader, grit your teeth and pick a genre.

Can I Submit Erotica/Horror/TheWierdStuff?

Um, okay. But I’d appreciate it if you’d label it as such, so as not to scare the grownups.

Can I Revise My Story?

Absolutely. Polish it up, shine its little shoes, put a bow in its hair and send it into the world looking its best. But don’t take too long! And remember, you’re unlikely to ever be 100% satisfied. Polish it a bit, then let it go.

Deadline is Tuesday, June 7.

Guest Prompt from Marta Pelrine-Bacon

The Blue Jar, novel coverToday’s prompt comes from Marta Pelrine-Bacon, who was a StoryADay participant in its first year, 2010. She is an artist and the author of The Blue Jar (a novel about two teen girls in trouble). She’s also a mom, wife, teacher, cancer survivor, and coffee-addict.

The Prompt

What is a picture (a photograph or a painting) that you love or at least that has caught your attention?

Write about the artist or the subject. What happened just before or after the scene in the image? (If possible, share the image with us too.)

Go!

May 28 – Non Human

The Prompt

Write a story with a non-human protagonist/main character

Perhaps you’ve tried this all ready this month, but I’m going to bet that most of your stories have featured homo sapiens. Let’s switch things up today:

The Prompt

Write a story with a non-human protagonist/main character

Tips

  • You could imbue an inanimate object with a character OR simply follow it through a series of owners’ hands, telling their stories as you go.
  • You could write about aliens
  • You could tell the story of an animal. Will you anthropomorphize the animals (like Beatrix Potter?) or will you tell their story from a more animalistic viewpoint, all smells and sensations and urges?
  • What conflict will drive your story? Imminent danger? Longing? Adventure? Relationships?

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt from Charlotte Rains Dixon

Your main character can have anything in the whole world that she wants. Anything!

Charlotte Rains Dixon headshotCharlotte Rains Dixon is a writer who has made the jump from non-fiction to fiction with her new series of mysteries, the Emma Jean books (the first is available now). Her short stories have been published in The Trunk, Santa Fe Writer’s Project, Nameless Grace, and Somerset Studios. Check out her blog for writing tips and inspiration that are very much in tune with the ethos here at StoryADay.

The Prompt

Your main character can have anything in the whole world that she wants. Anything! Doesn’t matter if it is illegal, immoral, or illicit. Explore what that thing is, why she wants it, and perhaps most importantly, what the consequences of getting that thing might be.

 

Go!

 

(Remember, all prompts are optional and you certainly don’t have to do two stories, or combine the prompts, on days when there’s a celebrity guest.)

 

May 27 – Character Study – Fill In the Blanks

The Prompt

A [adjective, unlike you] [noun, like you] decides to [action – something reasonable] except [something unreasonable]

It’s getting late in the month. Either you’re ticking along with no problems or you’re getting a little desperate by now. Either way, this fill-in-the-blanks prompt should help you come up with a story today.

The Prompt

A [adjective, unlike you] [noun, like you] decides to [action – something reasonable] except [something unreasonable]

Tips

  • Here’s my example: a fitness-obsessed 40-something woman decides to train for a marathon except her husband objects.
  • I’ll have to drill down into why her husband might object, what kind of woman is she, what she thinks running a marathon will do for her, what she will never do, what she needs to do, what the state of her marriage is now and will be if she ignores his objections, if that matters to each of them. Then I’ll have to decide on her voice, whether she is strident, aggressive, funny, charming, wheedling, whiney, a doormat. I’ll have to decide when to enter this story (when she tells him her plans, when she’s already half way through the race reflecting on how she got there, when she’s in divorce court, retelling the story…)
  • You can flip the ‘unlike me’ and ‘like me’ and the ‘reasonable/unreasonable’ tags if that makes the process more fun for you.
  • Even the most mundane of ideas can become something wonderful if you think hard enough about pieces and let the characters come alive.
  • Don’t over-write this. Think hard, then imply. Remember, if you’re telling a story to your best friend, you don’t give her much backstory, and you certainly don’t give her both sides of the story. Write this story that way.
  • This story will work best if you let one voice ring out strongly, with all the whitewashing and self-justification we do without noticing!

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 26 – Joy In The Mundane

The Prompt

Write a story rooted in the small moments of everyday life.

I studied history at university.

Most people think of history as big lists of dates and kings and revolutions and war. My favorite moments in studying history were when someone directed my attention to the tiny things that allowed me to see how people really lived, what they were really like, in the foreign country of the past: shopping lists for Venetian guilds that provided clues as to which festivals they took part in (and when); journals by minor figures aboard ship in the early years of the European exploration of the Americas; how the plays and literature of a period could tell us about everything from economics to gender politics…

Big things happen in our world every day. I listen to news radio dry-eyed all morning, and yet (every damned week) a three minute segment on Fridays makes me cry. It’s StoryCorps, a project in which ordinary people interview each other about things that have mattered in their lives. It ranges from personal testimonies about 9/11, to an old couple reminiscing about their courtship 50 years earlier.

The Prompt

Write a story rooted in the small moments of everyday life. 

Tips

  • Think of the things that give you pleasure: a beautifully prepared dish of tasty nutritious food; a warm bed; the moment the sun dips below the horizon; the sun shining on a cut lemon on your kitchen counter. Write a story rooted in, starting from, or ending at that moment.
  • Read poetry that celebrates the mundane and relates it to bigger questions: for example, Birches, by Robert Frost or The Flea by John Donne. You don’t have to write poetry to make a small, everyday thing enough to power a whole story.
  • Listen to a StoryCorps interview and use it as the basis for a story.
  • Look around you right now. What can you see? What objects give you pleasure? Why? Imagine a character who gets similar pleasure from that object. Why? How can you make the story more universal? Focus on the tiny reasons for joy and write a story inspired by that.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 25 – Character Fit For Purpose

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

 

This is inspired by an idea shared on the Writing Excuses podcast. They did a wonderful series of shows about how to make a character more sympathetic without making them inhumanely good/evil. Check out the first of the shows.  

Conflict can be “Oh no! The world’s about to end! How do we stop it/escape?” or it can be “Oh no, my mother-in-law’s coming for the holidays and she’s insufferable”, or it can be “I need to do something I really don’t want to do because…”

One way to create sympathy for a main character and keep the conflict in the story, is to use the character’s abilities (or lack thereof) to show how they are a good fit, a mediocre fit, or a terrible fit for the challenges they face.

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

Tips

  • Your character can be a good fit for the challenges but hindered by circumstances (Superman and his need to keep his true identity hidden).
  • Your character can be a poor fit for the challenge he faces, but willing to give it a shot (Bilbo, in The Hobbit. He is certainly not the Burglar Gandalf claims him to be, but he gives his best to the adventure, in spite of being a poor fit for the life).
  • Your character is a reluctant hero. He has the skills and the opportunity, but doesn’t particularly want to be a hero (Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element — in fact, Bruce Willis in a lot of roles!). What inner conflict is stopping him from helping resolve the outer conflict? What will change his/her mind?
  • What if your character is really, really good at one thing and is suddenly thrust into a world/situation where all their skills mean nothing…at first? Can they adapt? Can they find a way to use their skills? Can they partner up with someone whose skills compliment their own? Can you find a way to let them use their existing skills in the end, so they don’t seem like a pathetic character?
  • What if your character is the sweetheart who glues together an otherwise incompatible team of highly skilled, irascible experts?
  • Make us root for or against a character by showing how they employ their talents (or fail to).

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 24 – Epistolary Stories

The Prompt: write a story in letter form

I have an unexplained and abiding love for stories-in-the-form-of-letters, so if you spend any time at StoryADay.org you’re going to see this one again and again, sorry!

The Prompt

Write A Story In Letter Form

Tips

  • This can be a single communication or a series
  • It doesn’t have to be letters. It could be Tweets, Tumblr posts, office-wide memos.
  • The story can unfold from a single author’s point of view, or you can show more than one side of the story, by using multiple authors.
  • If you need inspiration, read famous letters here, here, here or here

Examples::

Handwritten love letters:

Letters from famous authors to young fans

15 Best Resignation Letters

A list of popular Epistolary Novels

(Just don’t spend too much time reading them!!)

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 23 – Limits: Twitter Stories

Yes, it is possible to write a story in as few as 140 characters, but you’ll have to let the reader do some of the work…

The Prompt

Write a story in 140 characters

Tips

  • 140 characters means just that: every space, every punctuation mark, each one counts.
  • If your character is a product of the pre-smartphone era and you want to use ‘text speak’, you can (e.g. Ur gr8!). Personally I never felt the need for that, and have learned to be extremely concise (believe it or not) when I have to be.
  • You can write a single story over a series of Tweets.
  • Stories written this way are gimmicky and often end with a punch, but it’s an interesting experience (not to mention a way to tick the ‘story done’ box on an otherwise busy day).
  • Don’t expect to come up with a refine a 140 character story quickly. You can, however, do it in fragments during a busy day. Keep refining it until you’re happy.
  • Super-short stories like this work well when they have a strong voice.
  • Use some of the features of haiku: juxtapose a small thing with a large thing (object, concern, sight); make a surprising or insightful observation about a common occurrence; use the language at the end to echo the language at the beginning, giving it a feeling of circularity or completion; be impressionistic or surreal or dreamlike; leave a lot to the imagination.
  • If you post a story as a five-part series on Twitter, put 1/5, 2/5, 3/5 etc at the end of each episode, so that readers know there is more coming.
  • If you’re posting your story to Twitter, make it a little shorter and use the hashtag #StADa so we can find it!

 

GO!

 

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 22 – Time For Something Different

The Prompt

Write a story in a style/tone you never use

When I finished the first draft of a novel, my critique group was fabulously supportive. They told me all the things they loved and all the things that needed work. What surprised me the most, though, was their unanimous howl of despair that I had never paid off the romantic frisson between the two main characters. Not a single kiss! How could I?!

“But I’m not writing a romance,” I stuttered.

Their icy stares haunt my dreams, still…

I don’t write romance. I cringe when I read sex scenes. But being a bit of a prude doesn’t absolve me of the need to let my characters get a little lovin’. Clearly I need to practice writing something that’s outside my comfort zone.

The Prompt

Write a story in a style/tone you never use

Tips

  • If all your stories tend towards melancholy, try writing something utterly goofy today.
  • If you write very descriptively, try writing a piece as all (or mostly) dialogue between two distinct voices. Or vice versa.
  • If you normally write deep literary reflections, try a catalogue-of-errors romp.
  • Rewrite an earlier story in a totally different tone.
  • It might not be a work of art (or even a proper story), but you’ll learn something about lightness, language, rhythm and tone.
  • Don’t worry if you don’t think you could write a whole sci-fi novel, or you don’t know the conventions of a mystery or if everyone has always told you you’re just not funny. Try it. Write something short, sweet and out of your comfort zone.
  • There’s nothing wrong with developing a style. In fact it’s a smart career move. But even within grim realistic contemporary fiction, you’re going to occasionally want a little humor, or horror, or mystery. Writing shorts in different tones can help you vary the tone of longer works (or collections of short works).
  • Branching out not only mixes things up for readers, it helps you to boost your creativity, keep the excitement going, and revitalize your own writing.
  • If you’re having trouble with this, read, watch or listen to something you admire that is in the tone you’re aiming for today.

Me? I’m off to write turn down the lights, drape something in velvet, and write a story that’d make E.L. James  say ‘Steady on, old girl!” Wish me luck!

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Writing Prompt from Jacob Tomsky

Jacob Tomsky of Short Story ThursdaysJacob Tomsky is a best-selling writer and host of Short Story Thursdays, a weekly email dispatch that somehow manages to be snarky and sweet at the same time. (If you haven’t signed up to receive a story a week from Tomsky yet, do it now).

Read our interview with him, talking about how he moved from a short-story-hater to one of its best champions.

As you can see from the prompt below, Jacob has Opinions. Do not disappoint him.

The Prompt

Story told in first person or third person only. NO SECOND PERSON, GODDAMN IT.

Past tense. You can do current tense or whatever it’s called but that would piss me off too.

Prompt: Main character is being interviewed on television, live, for the first time ever. Story begins at the moment the camera goes live on the main character.

Go!

May 21 – Limits – Real Time

The Prompt

Write a story that unfolds in real time

The Prompt

Write a story that unfolds in real time

Tips

  • If a story unfolds in real time, you can’t have any ‘meanwhile’, or ‘three hours later’  or ‘earlier today’ scenes. Everything must flow chronologically and in as close to real time as possible.
  • If a character puts the kettle on, to make a cup of tea, you’re going to have to give them something to do or someone to talk to for the full two and a half minutes it takes for four cups of water to boil.
  • You can hop from one character’s perspective to another, as long as you stick to the timeline established at the start. If there’s a knock at the door, you could jump into the head of the person outside the door, but only right after they knocked.
  • You don’t have to time everything (like my example of the kettle) and you don’t have to worry about how fast different readers read; just try to keep everything flowing at a reasonably believable real-time pace. (Have you ever watched an action movie set in a city you know? Isn’t it irritating when there’s a car chase down a street that you know is only a few blocks long, yet seems to be three miles long in the movie? Don’t do that.)

GO!

Did you discover any time-shifting techniques that you would usually have used without noticing? Or was this very natural for you?

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 20 – Limits: Present Tense

The Prompt

Write A Story In The Present Tense

The Prompt

Write A Story In The Present Tense

Tips

  • The present tense grants an immediacy not there in the past tense.
  • This is great for thrillers, because we can’t be sure that the authorial voice (or first person narrator) will survive until the end.
  • You can jump around in time, but each segment must be in the present tense. You can indicate a shift in time by having your characters talk ‘to camera’ or by noting that the sun is now setting or that the morning dew has burned off the grass at last…

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 19 – Limits – Two Voices 

The Prompt

Write a story told only in dialogue

The Prompt

Write a story told only in dialogue

Tips

  • This can be a dramatic scene, designed to be read by two actors or it can be a story with ‘he said’ ‘she said’  dialogue tags.
  • With only two voices it should be possible to avoid using any dialogue tags at all, but you’ll need to work to keep the characters’ voices distinct.
  • Try to reflect, in their language, how they are feeling instead of relying on ‘stage directions’ (she said, nodding encouragingly).
  • Show agitation or excitement by making the language choppier. Like this. Really. I can’t believe … how could you?!
  • Allow characters to ramble when they are prevaricating, but try to avoid excessive use of “um” and “er”. Instead, let them go off on tangents, avoid the point.
  • Allow your characters to speechify (speak in a formal, unnatural style) if you want, but be conscious about it and consistent. Hey, it worked for Shakespeare and Aaron Sorkin!
  • Alternately, try to keep the voice of each character as realistic as possible. Remember that people talk at cross purposes, they interrupt each other, they don’t answer each other’s questions directly, worst of all, they often fail to listen to the other person at all because they’re planning their next riposte.
  • Try to pick two characters who reflect different outlooks or ages or stations in life (imagine the Dowager Countess talking to the cook. It’s more than just accent that sets them apart, it’s word-choice, rhythm, relative confidence, expectation, assumptions about life…)

GO!

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May 18 – Limits: Third Person, Omniscient

The Prompt

Write A Story With An Omniscient Third Person Narrator.

Omniscient voice has fallen out of favor recently, which I think is a shame. Then again, I’m a fan of satire and enjoy a bit of Dickens now and then.

Omniscient voice can distance the reader from the characters a bit, and that’s not what the publishing industry thinks today’s readers want. However, it can be a fun challenge, and we’re taking it on today.

The Prompt

Write  A Story With An Omniscient Third Person Narrator. 

Tips

  • In this voice you are never entirely in one person’s head, but you can jump from head to head. It’s best to keep this consistent thought. Stay with one characters thoughts for a while, shift to another and stay there until the next piece of action ends. Otherwise, you’ll give your readers whiplash.
  • If you are not inside a character’s head, the narrator point out what a character is thinking by noting their actions and expressions.
  • Omniscient voice is great for satire, because the authorial voice can comment on the actions of characters, though you  probably want to use this sparingly.
  • If you’re having trouble finding the omniscient voice, imagine the voice-over at the start of the Winnie The Pooh cartoons, or read some Dickens.
  • See if you can pull off Omniscient without sounding like you wrote this in the nineteenth century. (I’m not sure it’s possible. Let’s find out!)

GO!

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May 17 – Limits: Third Person – Limited

The Prompt

Write A Story In The Third Person, Limited

 

We’re writing in a much more conventional fashion today, good old third person, limited.

The Prompt

Write A Story In The Third Person, Limited 

Tips

  • Let the reader hear the thoughts of one person, and one person only. The narrator and the protagonist can infer information about other people’s thoughts, but the reader can never see inside those other characters’ minds. If this was a movie, the camera would swing around the protagonist, occasionally looking over her shoulder and through her eyes, never getting too far away from her.
  • This is the voice often used in detective stories, and mainstream fiction.
  • You don’t have to say ‘he thought’, to let us know what the character is thinking. In this POV if you make a declarative statement, it’s going to be clear that the ‘thought’ belongs to your POV character. For example: “The wind was picking up. Her hair whipped around her face, defying the extra-hold hairspray she’d used. Bob was going to wonder if she’d forgotten where she kept her hairbrush.” It’s clear the last sentence is the protagonist’s direct thought, right?
  • The advantage of this POV is that it keeps the reader close to the protagonist, emotionally. It also helps you set up suspense, since the reader can only know what the protagonist knows.
  • The disadvantage of this POV is that readers can’t see what’s happening ‘off-stage’ unless you use another device to reveal that information (like the way Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak allows us to eavesdrop on important scenes even when Harry’s not supposed to be there; or the way Isaac Asimov’s excerpts from The Encyclopedia Galactica fill us in on the politics, decisions and passage of time in the Foundation series).
  • Keep readers interested in your protagonist by giving them a desire, and an obstacle to overcome. A flaw and a special talent can help too. (Indiana Jones is a great example here: He always wants to save the priceless artifact for posterity, and he’s usually opposed by someone else who wants the same thing, but who has and Evil Purpose in mind. He’s a talented archaeologist, but he has a soft heart and a problem walking away from bullies, both of which get him into all kinds of trouble.)

GO!

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May 16 – Limits: Second Person

The Prompt

Write A Story In The Second Person

Today we’re taking on the rare point of view: second person. It’s tough to pull this off without sounding like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but we’re going to try.

The Prompt

Write A Story In The Second Person

Tips

  • This is a rare point of view for a reason: it’s hard to make it sound good. However, there have been some examples that work well: Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City is one.
  • How To Get Filth Rich In Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamed, is a more recent example and, interestingly, reads like a self-help book. Consider writing a story in a self-help-y kind of style.
  • Halting State by Charles Stross uses Second Person  in a novel that features a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). Role-playing games tend to feature a lot of Second Person in the scenario set-ups, so this is an interesting choice.
  • You could, of course, write an ironic Choose Your Own adventure story.
  • This story could be a mock-advertising piece — another form that often uses this voice.
  • This will probably feel odd, and read strangely, but if you create compelling characters and and an interesting problem for them to solve, readers will stick with you. You’ll probably end up with a fresh feel, even if your plot is not-altogether-original, simply because of the choice of voice.

GO!

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May 15 Limits: First Person

The Prompt

Write A Story In the First Person

We’re on the cusp of the half-way point through the year. After you’ve written your story today, could you come back to the blog and post about one thing that you have learned/that has surprised you/that you’ve remembered, while attempting the challenge, please? Do this whether you’re still writing, whether you think you’ve quit (but really you know you’re going to come back and write at least one more story this month, don’t you?), or whether you’ve missed a few day, but written a few stories too.

What are you learning about your writing, your routine, your voice, the importance of turning up? Or is there something else you’ve discovered?

This week we’re starting a week of limits: point of view, mostly. Trying out all these different forms will give you an idea of what stories call for which perspective, and which you’re most comfortable with.

Today, first person. This is probably the easiest voice to find, since this is how we tell most of our stories in every day life(“I went to that new restaurant in town and you’ll never guess who I saw there…”)

The Prompt

Write A Story In the First Person

Tips

  • Remember that only the thoughts and observations of your “I” character can be presented as fact. No ‘head-hopping’ allowed!
  • The protagonist can make assumptions and judgements about the things around them. They can comment on how they think another character is feeling, but they cannot say it definitively.
  • This mono-focus is one of the great features of the First Person story: it is highly subjective and immediate. It has a built in “show, don’t tell” factor.
  • If you don’t often write in the first person, pick up almost any middle grade novel (that is, something for kids younger than the Hunger Games crowd, but older than the chapter-book-with-illustrations crowd) and you’ll see how it’s done. The protagonist is talking to the reader. It’s the running commentary inside their head. It’s also a favorite of “chick lit” and noir.
  • I don’t know about you, but in my head I’m much less kind, understanding and tolerant than I try to be when I open my mouth. Allow your character to lose the civilized filter that we apply between brain and mouth. Allow them to be less (or more) than their image would suggest.
  • Don’t forget to give the reader a reason to care. Give your protagonist a flaw and an endearing quality. For example, Amelia Peabody  is no-nonsense feminist archaeologist at the turn of the 20th Century, in the (mostly) first-person mystery series by Elizabeth Peters. Amelia is astoundingly arrogant about her own intellectual prowess and impatient with anyone who considers her femininity before her intelligence. She is, however, saved from being unlikeable by her hopeless, romantic devotion to her brilliant — and very manly — husband, Emerson.  She never admits this as a weakness, but the contrast between her professed opinions and her actions/reactions provides a rich vein of humor in the series. It also illustrates her character much more clearly than her own words ever could.
  • Try writing this story for one person in particular, to help you find the voice. Imagine you’re writing it for your sister, your son, or your best friend.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 14 – Write What You Don’t Know

The Prompt

Spend 15 minutes Researching Something On Wikipedia Then Write About It

Yeah, I know. The standard advice is to write what you know. It certainly saves on research time, but where’s the fun in writing what you know?

The Prompt

Spend 15 minutes Researching Something On Wikipedia Then Write About It

Tips

  • It could be a hobby: lapidoptery, stamp collecting, knitting, golf, scrapbooking, hill walking, skeet shooting, board games, cosplay… Soak up all you can about one way to practice the hobby, then write a story about somebody (or a group of somebodies) who are deep in the hobby. Maybe they’re meeting, maybe they’re preparing for a gathering, maybe they’ve just made a big, rare find, or conquered a difficult technique. Maybe they’re questioning their calling.
  • It could be a career, a period in history, a historical event, an astronomical phenomenon, a sport, or the story of how something was discovered/invented.
  • Use details from your research to color in the details of your story, but remember, you’re not writing a documentary.
  • Still focus on the universal truths of human existence (which is where the ‘write what you know’ or at least, ‘write what you want to understand’ advice comes in).
  • Since you want to include lots of detail of the hobby in the story, try to keep the main ‘plot points’ of the story simple: a conflict with another hobbyist; a first; a last; an epiphany; an arrival…
  • Don’t spend more than 15 minutes on your research. Read fast. Scan the page. Grab details greedily. Shape your story around one or two of them. But don’t spend too much time on your research!

GO!

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May 13 – Limits: 100 Words or “Drabbles”

Ready for another break? This exercise is ‘easier’ than writing a 5,000 word story, only because it takes a little less time. It does, however, take a lot more time than any average 100 words in the middle of a longer story.

Crafting a complete story in 100 words is not easy. It is, however, quite satisfying.

The Prompt

Write a story in exactly 100 words

Tips

  • Super-short stories have to pack an emotional punch in very few words. Concentrate on one moment, one incident, that holds huge significance for a character: the moment they first made eye contact with their baby; seeing the first crocus of spring after a hideous winter full of drama and despair; standing on stage in the moment of silence before the applause starts…
  • You’ll want to save the majority of your words for the build-up to the climax. Think about how many words you can afford to spend setting the scene (maybe 25?) and how many you want for the resolution (10?). Can you create a resonant story in 65 words?
  • Choose adjectives carefully. You don’t have much room.
  • Make words do double duty. Instead of saying ‘he walked across the room, shaking with rage’, say ‘he stalked away’, saving five words.
  • Don’t feel you have to hit 100 words on the first pass. Write the story, then go back through and intensify things by making your verbs more active and pruning as much dead wood as you can.
  • Imply as much as you can. Leave gaps. Let the reader work a bit.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 12 – Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

The Prompt

Fictionalize an almost-unbelievable real-life story

They say that fiction is harder to write than true-life stories, because fiction has to make sense.

A friend of mine recently told me a true tale of astonishing machinations in the local politics of her small town.

“If you put that in a novel, I wouldn’t believe it,” I said.

Likewise, the Chilean Miners’ story or the Apollo 13 story would have been roundly mocked as unbelievable, idealistic, romantic nonsense if offered up as fiction by careless writer.

The Prompt

Fictionalize an almost-unbelievable real-life story

Tips

  • Think of the most outrageous story anyone ever told you about their family, their vacation, their town. Find a way to write the story and make it believable.
  • You may have to change some of the elements: dial up or back on the drama.
  • You may have to invent reasons for coincidences, where none existed in real life — just as Nature abhors a vaccuum; Story abhors a coincidence!
  • If you’re really stuck, try searching the web for incredible real-life escapes, near-misses, or surprises.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

And, once you’ve written, here’s your reward for today: the latest, clinically-researched techniques to strengthen your core muscles and prevent all that lower back pain writers complain about! Click on it AFTER you’ve written your story.

May 11 – Memories

Just because something happened in real life, doesn’t make it a good story. At a writers’ conference I heard agents sigh every time someone said they were writing a memoir. “Why not turn it into a fictional story?” one said, brightly, with barely disguised overtones of desperation.

Today we’re going to try to do that. Instead of trying to capture something exactly as you remember it happening, we’re going to give your experience to a character and mine the universal truths (or funnies, or horror) from it.

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by a memory from your own life

Tips

  • How many different homes have you lived in? What little things do you remember about each? Could they be the spark for a story (think of the connected attics in The Magician’s Nephew or the bricked-up adjoining door in Coraline’s house-turned-apartment-building. Was there anything quirky about a house you lived in? Could it spark a story?
  • Who was your crazy neighbor? What do you remember about that lady on your street who always shouted at you when your ball went into her front garden? What stories did you tell about her as kids?
  • What was that big trauma that happened in your town when you young? An unexpected death? A fire? You know, the thing you reminisced about for years afterwards (“Remember when we were 10 and there was that huge blackout?”). Think of the movie Stand By Me for the ways you could turn a big event in the lives of a group of kids, into a real story that has implications for your characters.
  • What do you remember from when you were five or younger? From 5-10 years old. 10-15? 16-20? 20-30? 30-40? What was life like for someone that age, at that time? What was important to you? Is there a moment when you realized things had changed? When you did something for the first time? The last time?
  • Who were the influential people in your life at each age? What were their stories? Were they they people you imagined? (You know how we were all freaked out the first time we saw a teacher outside school? Everyone is more than the sum of our interactions with them. Revisit someone from your past and give them a more rounded story than just your memories of them.)

GO!

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May 10 – Agony Aunt

You’re a writer, which probably means you’re at thinker, which probably means that a fair percentage of your friends come to you for advice on a regular basis. And you probably give this advice in a thoughtful, reasoned, I-don’t-want-to-hurt-your-feelings kind of way.

Not today.

The Prompt

Write a response from an advice columnist with an attitude

Tips

  • Pick a problem that friends having brought to you in reality (you can promise yourself you’ll never, ever publish this story, if that helps).
  • Or make something up. It can be about relationships, cars, gardening, careers, diet, family, or something weirder.
  • Think about your advice columnist. What kind of attitude will you give him/her? (Maybe your answer will depend on the kind of problem you picked. If it’s something that irritates the snot out of you, let your columnist be as angry or snarky as you never can be. If it’s something you feel great compassion for, allow your columnist to be more empathetic and mushy than you ever could be, in person.
  • If you need an example of a witty-but-caring response to a dating problem, read this answer from novelist Maureen Johnson.
  • If you want weirder examples, you probably already know where to find them…

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt from Gregory Frost

Today’s prompt is a real treat: a writing exercise from author Gregory Frost. (Side note: his classes are the kind that writers only tell their best friends about … and then only after their own application has been accepted!)

Here he shares a prompt that seems to be about setting but turns out to be all about character. Flex those writing muscles, people!

The Prompt

Character through Setting

There’s a tale that John O’Hara once wrote a story in which all he did was describe the contents of a room, and by the end you knew that the occupant had committed suicide. No person appears in the story. It’s all done by inference.

For this exercise, select a character. Think about who they are and what you think you know. Then pick a setting. It can be a room, a landscape, the interior of a car…

Now describe the setting in in very specific detail: Use as many senses as you can, as are appropriate. The person you are telling us about is not present in this setting, but by the time you’re done, we should know the important aspects of him or her.

One more thing…

O’Hara also said that getting the details of a character exactly right is critical—especially the detail that is wrong.

So for this setting, add one element that does not belong there (one of these things is not like the other), and see what sort of story that wrong element suggests.

-gf

Gregory FrostAbout Gregory Frost

Gregory Frost is a fantasist, author of adult and young adult fiction (SHADOWBRIDGE, LORD TOPHET, FITCHER’S BRIDES, TAIN, etc.). He has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Nebula, Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon, and James Tiptree Jr. Awards among others. He is Director of the Fiction Workshop at Swarthmore College.
For more:
Web: www.gregoryfrost.com
Twitter: @gregory_frost
Facebook: gregory.frost1

May 9 – Lists

A lists can be a whole story in itself, but lists can also provide a framework for a series of stories. Today, give some thought to list-making. It might help you later in the challenge when your idea engine is running on fumes. Pick your favorite idea today, and save the rest for later in the month

The Prompt

Use a list to generate a story idea or twelve.

Tips

  • Use established cultural lists, or your own.
  • Use an imagined list (“the lists my mother gave me when I left home”, or “Mr Renquist’s Classroom Rules”) to tell a character’s story.
  • Pick your favorite of the 7 Deadly Sins, 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit, 9 Circles of Hell, 5 Pillars of Islam, 12 Labors of Hercules, 3 Rules of Robotics, 3 Laws of Motion, 6 Principles of the Scientific Method…
  • Write one story or think about how you might use each item in the list to generate a story. The series might feature different characters, the same protagonist, or might take a supporting character from the previous story and make him/her the protagonist of the next.
  • Make notes on this today, to help you later in the month.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.