Second person. Sounds scary. How can you possibly manage to write a story in the second person without sounding as if you’re writing the text for a Dungeon’s & Dragons campaign[1. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…] or a Choose Your Own Adventure?
Well, mainly by being aware that you shouldn’t. Remember that and you should be fine 😉
The Prompt
Write A Story In The Second Person
But in all seriousness, I think this is quite a natural way to write if you focus on the voice. Maybe it’s because I’m Scottish, but I think we talk this way quite a lot when relaying experiences to our friends (“You know that way when you’re running late and the cat throws up in the doorway and for some reason your keys are not on the hook by the door but instead in the bread bin? That’s the day a whacking great truck pulls out in front of you and drives at four miles an hour and just as you’re thinking ‘hey, that latch looks a bit loose’, he slams on the breaks and sheds a full load of packing peanuts all over you and your car and the road ahead of you.”).
Tips
If you need an example, take a look at the opening page of Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney.
Remember that second voice pulls your reader directly into the story. It’s a great way to create a visceral reaction in the reader. Why not make it exciting, thrilling?
Keep the story short if you’re not confident in this form
Allow the story to suck if you have to, but finish it and ask yourself what you’ve learned. File this away and try it again some time soon.
For the next few days we’re going to be concentrating on point of view. Sometimes it’s tempting to write all our stories in the same kind of voice. Not this week. I’m going to give you a real work out and take you through many different types of voice and story.
Ready? Let’s get started.
The Prompt
Write A Story Using The First Person Voice
Tips
The whole thing should be told in the “I” voice.
It should, for preference, be a story about something that happened/is happening to the person telling the story.
When writing in the first person you can never allow your narrative to stray inside another character’s head. The “I” character can speculate about what other people are thinking, but everything must come from their perspective.
If you fancy it, try writing the same story over the next few days, but each day from a different perspective.
In this age of Google Maps and Street view and everyone-documenting-everything, there is no reason not to set your story in a ‘foreign’ location and still get the details right.
The Prompt
Write a story in a place you’ve never actually been to.
Tips
Use a search engine to find out a few important facts about the place.
Use Google Street View to take a look at the place (if your story is taking place in a diner in North-East Philadelphia, hope on Google maps and find out exactly what your heroine sees as she’s looking out of the window, waiting to say that thing she wants to say).
Find a blog or informal tourist account of the location and gather some off-the-beaten-track details.
Don’t spend all day doing these things. Just find one or two really colorful details that will help ground your story in the location. Make your characters from somewhere else if you’re not confident of capturing local speech patterns.
If you don’t write realistic fiction, find somewhere to act as a model for your extra-terrestrial setting. Use a detail or two (like the architecture of the TRW ‘Space Park’ in Redondo Beach, California; used in a Star Trek episode in 1967; or England’s Home Counties as Tolkein’s Middle Earth).
Quickly scan the “In The News” and “On This Day…” sections, or even the Featured Article. If something catches your eye, use it as the spark for today’s story.
The Prompt
Grab a story spark from the front page of Wikipedia
Tips
Don’t spend more than 5 minutes trying to find a story that sparks your interest
Don’t pick something that requires lots of specialist knowledge unless you a, work in the field or b, are comfortable blagging.
Try to concentrate on the characters and their reactions more than the facts. This might be inspired by an encyclopedia entry, but you shouldn’t sound like you’re writing one!
It can be hard to come up with a fascinating character for each new story. Yes, you can certainly use recurring characters, but what about when you get bored and need a change? You’ve raided your memories, you’ve looked at pictures for inspiration, but what to do on a day when you’re truly stuck?
The Prompt
Write A Story Based On An Obituary
Say what?!
Seriously, obituaries are like little potted character studies. Read them carefully and you’ll find stories there you never would have thought of: the little old lady in the nursing home who was actually a counter-espionage agent during WWII; the mother of four who loved to race go-karts; the business leader who quietly spent his retirement raising prize-winning orchids.
Characters, every one!
And if you feel strange ripping off someone else’s life story, try to see it as a celebration of their life instead. Change the names, change the details, but the story you write that was inspired by the obituary will remain a tribute to the unique human being you read about.
Where To Find Obituaries
Obituaries.com
Your local newspaper’s website
Tips
Reading about the great and good can be interesting, but paging down to the unsung, everyday people can be where you find the most unexpected and fruitful material.
Seize on that one detail about a person that makes them seem real to you.
What made them do the things they did?
What stories lie behind their passions?
What moment led them to that one fascinating detail in their obituary. Wind back the clock and show us the moment when it all started.
Try not to read more than five profiles before choosing one to write about. You could easily lose your whole day looking for the perfect character (or simply reading about people’s lives). Pick the first person who has a detail that makes you go “huh!”
Sometimes the idea of plot can trip us up (“How do I make it interesting? What should I make *happen*?”). But the truth is, write an interesting character, give them some need, put an obstacle in their way, and you need never worry about ‘plot’.
The Prompt
Think of a fascinating character from your life (past or present). Think about what they wanted on a particular day. Write that story.
Tips
Short stories are about a moment in time, when something changes in a character’s life. What one thing tips the balance for your character today?
The change doesn’t need to be life-shattering. Sometimes small changes in perspective have a huge impact on the rest of someone’s life.
For examples of what I’m talking about think of episodic TV. Not every episode deals with the overall arc of the season. Sometimes it’s just a fun story about a day in the life of one of the characters. Maybe Data is trying to learn to sneeze and discovers some truths about life as an android. Perhaps someone goes on a really bad date and discovers that what he really needs right now is to stop dating for a while and hang out with friends.
If you want to read more like this, let me send future articles straight to your inbox:
Go to the Flickr Explore page and pick the first photo that catches your eye.
Stare at it for five minutes or so and write a story inspired by it.
Tips
Pick the most visually arresting picture, the one that interests you immediately.
It might not be obvious what the story is going to be.
This will probably make the story better.
Don’t waste any time writing backstory. Think hard then start when something is happening or about to.
Remember that stories are all about character. What does your character want? What is getting in her way?
Remember to post in The Victory Dance when you’ve finished your story today. You’ll get congratulations and inspire everyone else to finish their stories.
(You don’t have to post your story anywhere, just let us know you have written today)
Well done you, for deciding to take on this challenge. Check out the community and all the support you can find in there. But first, let’s get started!
The Prompt
Write A 100 Word Story (“Drabble”)
I’m starting the challenge with a Drabble because although a 100 word story will probably take longer than you expect, it’s still going to take a manageable amount of time.
Many people who sign up for StoryADay are looking for a creativity boost. Plunging into a 3,000 word story on the first day is a bit intimidating.
Tips
To make a drabble work,
Choose one or two characters
Take one single moment/action/choice and show us how it unfolds
Give us one or two vibrant details in as few words as possible
Show us (hint) how this moment/action/choice is more significant than the characters probably realize in the moment
Write A Story Based On A Character or Scenario From A Game
Tips
This could be a scenario from a video game or a board game (what if you WERE Mario — or met him on the road? What if you were Miss Scarlet. Were you framed?)
What if you really were living on a farm, trying to meet all its demands, like Farmville?
What if you were a character in a Sims-like game and gradually started to realize that was the case?
Think of any game you’ve ever played and use it as a jumping-off point for a story.
If you think you might publish the story, be sure not to step on anyone else’s copyright (you could use a different “colored” character from a mystery board game that was definitely not Clue/Cluedo)
This prompt was inspired by a link Dan Blank shared. Apparently there’s weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the artistic community about how the rise of data is crushing creativity.
The gist is: storytelling is changing. We’re not writing or consuming stories the same way. What does that mean for creativity?
Personally I think it’s awesome. Some of the best stories I’ve read in recent years eschewed the straight narrative (this happend, then that happened, crisis, climax, resolution, the end). One was written as answers to a police investigation, some have been written as lists, or tweets. A recent best-selling novel is written in second person, as a faux self-help book.
Of course, the straight narrative will always have its place, and it’s certainly a helpful structure on which to hang a story (more on that tomorrow), but it can help us stay out of a rut if we try new things. So:
The Prompt
Write a Story That Uses Numbers To Shape The Structure.
Tips
You might time-stamp each of the ‘scenes’ within the story
You might write snippets of things that happen in different houses in one street, using house numbers to break up the flow. Pull the whole thing together with one theme or by having one character who pops up in each different house for some reason.
You can use weight: the weight of a feather, the weight of a newborn, the weight your main character was at 15, then the weight she is at 30 and what that means. The weight a crane can lift.
Use multiple numbers in your story to tie together each scene (or break them apart).
Can you imagine your life without email, Facebook, Twitter, text messages? Can your characters?
Can you imagine your life without email, Facebook, Twitter, text messages?
Photo by John Frassinet
Can your characters?
If you’re writing contemporary fiction and your characters are still calling and popping round to see each other, you might want to rethink that.
This is something new in life and newer in fiction. How to integrate this stuff into the narrative? It’s an exciting chance to do something new. But “exciting” and “new” can also mean “challenging” and “fraught with clunky first attempts”.
Why not get your first attempts out of the way today?
The Prompt
Write A Story Using A Facebook Timeline
Tips
It doesn’t have to be Facebook, but some electronic form of communication should feature prominently.
Try to have your characters use the e-communication the way you do.
You might want to write the whole story as a series of Facebook conversations (how would you format that?) or texts between different friends (like an update of this phone scene from “Mean Girls”, which must seem hopelessly outdated to today’s teens!)
Streams of status updates and back and forth conversation threads (interspersed with direct messages (“who is ‘Janice Atherton’? And why is she commenting on my photo?!”)
This prompt is inspired by “Vanilla Bright Like Eminem” by Michel Faber, a story that captures a moment in time for one family as they travel on a train. (Read my review.)
The Prompt
Write A Story That Features A Mode of Transportation You Have Used So Often You Take It For Granted.
Tips
It might be a bus, plane, boat or your first car.
Include a detail or two that convinces us you’ve really been in that vehicle (the shape or location of the cigarette lighter. The ash tray in the arm of the seat. The inadequate luggage racks…)
This post is the second of two. Check out last week’s prompt or stay here to go straight to the part where you steal a story from someone else!
This prompt is part of a two-part prompt. Last week we wrote stories for other writers to steal from. This week we’re doing the stealing.
The Prompt
Look through the links from last week and find a story with a character, premise, setting or ‘what if’ that you think you can steal and build on. Write that story.
Tips
Don’t worry if the story is less than perfect. As long as it has one appealing feature (character, setting or premise), let the rest go. Just finish it and post it.
Think of this like the kernel of a piece of open source software (like WordPress, on which this site is built). Someone came up with the original nugget and you’re building on it
Post the story somewhere and provide a link to it. Post it in the comments here if you don’t have a blog of your own.
Feel free to take the story off in a completely different direct or into a different genre.
The Rules:
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story (or a link) in the comments.
Leave a link to your story and say which story it’s based on
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: Steal A Story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a Steal A Story! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
See my story – and write your own, today: Steal A Story at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-2
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
This post is the first of two. Come back next week to steal a story from someone else!
This prompt is part of a two-part prompt. This week we’re writing a story that we won’t mind someone stealing. Next week we’re going to look at someone else’s story and steal their character, setting, premise or twist, and write our own story (a kind of derivative work).
The Prompt
Write a quick story with one strong feature: an appealing (or loathsome character), a great setting, a fabulous twist, an intriguing ‘what if’. Plan to allow someone else to steal from/be inspired by this story
Tips
Don’t worry if the story is less than perfect. As long as it has one appealing feature (character, setting or premise), let the rest go. Just finish it and post it.
Don’t try to write something you’re so proud of that you’ll be loathe to let it go.
Think of this like the kernel of a piece of open source software (like WordPress, on which this site is built). Someone came up with the original nugget, then let everyone else into the sandbox to play with it. Are you more mature than a four year old or will you get annoyed if someone else builds on top of your sandcastle?
Post the story somewhere and provide a link to it. Post it in the comments here if you don’t have a blog of your own.
Come back next week, read the links/stories and create a story based on someone else’s.
The Rules:
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story (or a link) in the comments.
Leave a link to your story and say which story it’s based on
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: Open Source Story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is an Open Source Story! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
See my story – and write your own, today: Open Source Story at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/open-1
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
It’s easy to raise objections to writing fiction in the second person point of view (“You do this, you do that and then you feel …”). The most obvious objection is that it reads like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel. It’s hard to pull off.
But this morning I was listening to an interview with a writer who found a fascinating way into the POV: his novel, “How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia”, is written as a self-help book. (It’s a great interview, full of all kinds of good stuff. Have a listen.)
The writer, Mohsin Hamid, sounds like such a nice guy that I hope he won’t mind us stealing his idea for this weeks’ writing exercise:
The Prompt
Write a second-person fiction tale as if it was a self-help book/article.
Tips
Think of all the ‘How To Write” articles you’ve read over the years. Have some fun with them
It doesn’t have to be ‘self help’, it can be aping any type of non-fiction that lends itself to second person.
You can often find this kind of writing at McSweeney’s. It isn’t always obvious that you might apply the label ‘fiction’, but it certainly is.
People have been writing about robots for a long time and fans of Science Fiction will instantly know what I’m talking about if I mention Isaac Asimov and his three laws of Robotics.
Twenty years ago I couldn’t have asked those of you who are not fans of Science Fiction to write a robot story unless you were writing about heavy industry.
Ten years ago, you could have written about the Mars rover or those funnily little circular robots that were starting to sweep our floors (and sweep for mines in the military).
Today you could write a story about your grandmother, being brought her medicine and being entertained by her own robot butler and only be on the edges of speculative fiction, according to this report from the BBC: Robot Designed To Care For The Elderly.
Reading this article gave me the strongest sense that I was living in an Asimov story (or very shortly might be)
The Prompt
Write a story featuring one of the everyday robotic technologies available to us today
Tips
You can make it, like early sci-fi, an exploration of humanity’s relationship with machines and what that means. Or you can simply use the robot as a primary or secondary character.
Perhaps your robots are sentient but it would be also interesting to see how living with highly-efficient, highly-programmed machines that are NOT sentient affects your characters’ actions.
What does it mean to you? Shortest month? Leap year? Darkness and winter? Summer in the southern hemisphere?
Write A February Story
Tips
What might “February” mean to an old woman? A young man? A kid whose birthday is in Feb?
Might you write a story with a sentence for each day in February? A 28-sentence story? (or maybe 29)
What unexpected stories could you tell, with a theme of “February”?
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: February #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is February! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
See my story – and write your own, today: February at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-february
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
Today’s prompt is a whole scenario with a named character and a tricky situation. Your job is to decide who this character is and how they will ultimately react. I’m really curious to see how different people deal with this, so please do post either the story or a link to your version in the comments, if you’re OK with posting it online.
The Prompt
Lorina Dorsey is nice. Always has been. Which is probably why she’s 52, unmarried and still teaching 5th Grade at the same school after 29 years, she thinks, wryly. She sometimes wonders if people think her weak. If they only knew the strength it took to…but no.
As our story starts, Lorina, is returning to work after the shattering business of burying her widowed mother. Lorina has no siblings. Walking into the school where she has taught fifth grade for 29 years, she sees that the door to Dr Tatchell’s office is closed. She can, nevertheless, hear voices. Dr Tatchell is roaring at someone. It’ll be that nice young Mr Santiago, getting some ‘professional development’ from Tatchell, no doubt. Only the timid, like her, stayed here longer than a semester.
Rounding the corner, Lorina sees a heap of coats on the floor outside her room. She tuts. Nothing bothers her more than sloppiness. Reaching down to pluck the coats off the ground, she is startled to find Andrew Smeel, the smallest boy in her class, curled up underneath them, sobbing. With some coaxing he tells her that he’d been involved in a scuffle with the other boys yesterday and the substitute had sent them all to Dr. Tatchell. At this point, Andrew curls up in a ball and refuses to say any more.
Lorina is standing, looking down at an 11 year old boy, curled into a fetal position outside her door. She turns to see Mr. Santiago stumbling towards her, white-faced. Her mother is dead. All she has is this school. Her eyes bore into the door of the Principal’s office. She takes one step.
Write Lorina’s story.
Tips
Feel free to change the gender or ethnicity of the characters, as well as the period if it helps.
Start anywhere. Use the backstory explicitly or, better yet, simply use it to inform the choices you make for Lorina.
Ask yourself what Lorina wants, what she’s capable of, what you can show the readers to make them suspect she’s capable of anything.
Will you write this realistically, or take a flight of fancy?
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: Lorina’s Story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a scenario! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
See my story – and write your own, today: Lorina’s Story at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-lorina
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
“What’s that girl? Timmy’s stuck in the old well?”
We all have TV shows that we love even though they are formulaic, populated by ‘character types’ rather than characters, and a real guilty pleasure. And we keep watching them, even if we don’t always admit our deep, abiding love for them to our more sophisticated friends.
So why do we watch? Because on some level they satisfy a need for escapism, heroism, humour, idealism. They may even have moments of brilliance that keep us coming back for more.
(For me, it’s Star Trek, Murder She Wrote and almost anything featuring Robin Hood or King Arthur).
We know the hero is (almost) always going to win. We know none of the major recurring characters are going to die. We know the bad guy will get what he deserves — even if it’s only the frowning disapproval of the hero.
THE PROMPT
Write An Affectionate Parody/Spoof of Your Favourite Formulaic Show
Tips
*If you need inspiration, track down a copy of “Heart of A Champion” by T. C. Boyle, a wonderful parody of the Lassie stories.
*Don’t be lazy. Don’t just reach for inappropriate romance or make the characters stupid. (Check out Jon Scalzi’s “Redshirts” as an example. It starts as a fairly unimaginative parody of the action scenes in “Star Trek” (you know, the ones where the no-name ensign in a red shirt goes on an away mission and gets eaten by pink slime to prove that the landing party faces some peril) but moves on to a more thoughtful and affectionate examination of science fiction tropes.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: Affectionate Spoofing #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Affectionate Spoofing! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
See my story – and write your own, today: Affectionate Spoof at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-spoof
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
Prompt: Write a story in the present tense from a limited third person perspective
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
Wolf Hall: A Novel, by Hilary Mantel, is a strange, disorienting read. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but finally I realised what was keeping me off balance: the book is written in the present tense and from a limited perspective: that of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to King Henry VIII. Everything we learn comes either from Thomas’s direct experience or from things he has heard from other people. Sometime he is reminiscing, sometimes observing in the moment, but the present tense keeps the whole experience very immediate.
The Prompt
Write a story in the present tense, from a limited third person perspective
Tips
In Wolf Hall it is sometimes hard to follow what is going on, because of course, the main character’s thoughts don’t pause to explain. He thinks of one person, who reminds him of another, and the reader has to trust that — at some point — it will be explained who these people are. or what that place was, and it will all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Don’t be afraid to confuse the reader, especially on your first draft. Leave out more than you put in.
Here is an excerpt from the novel to help you see how the author tells the story from Thomas Cromwell’s perspective:
Monday morning the dukes are back. Their instructions are to turn out the occupants this very day, because the king wants to send in his own builders and furnishers and get the palace ready to hand over to the Lady Anne, who needs a London house of her own.
He’s [Cromwell] prepared to stand and ague the point: have I missed something? This palace belongs to the archdiocese of York. When was Lady Ann made an archbishop?
But the tide of men flooding in by the water stairs is sweeping them away. The two dukes have made themselves scarce, and there’s nobody to argue with. What a terrible sight, someone says: Master Cromwell balked of a fight. And now the cardinal’s ready to go, but where? Over his customary scarlet, he is wearing a traveling cloak that belongs to someone else; they are confiscating his wardrobe piece by piece, so he has to grab what he can. It is autumn, and though he is a big man he feels the cold.
See? It’s a bit confusing, not always knowing who ‘he’ is, but once the reader settles into the style, it becomes enjoyable, puzzling out what Thomas Cromwell is thinking, what he is observing and what he is admitting (to himself and others). Don’t be afraid give your readers this pleasure.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: Inner Thoughts #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Inner Thoughts! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
See my story – and write your own, today: Inner Thoughts at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.
It’s that time of year again. Everyone’s made their New Year Resolutions and they’re all hitting the gym. I admit it. I’m one of them.
As I looked around my Zumba class last night I was struck by what a great setting it would be for a story. All those people from all different walks of life, all with their own stories and their own reasons for being there. And guess what? That’s your prompt today!
The Prompt
Write A Story Based Around A Set Of Characters From A Gym (Class)
Tips
You could write the story from one observer’s perspective, or hop from head to head, following each participant’s thoughts.
Remember the story must have a shape, so inject some tension (someone is worried about something; someone wants someone else to notice them, someone desperately wants no-one to notice them…)
If you don’t have much time, limit this to a single perspective and keep the word count short. Ask yourself what your character wants, before you put pen to paper, then run through the scene in your head. Don’t start writing until you know what happened in the hour before the class (or the first half of the class). Leave all that off the page, and just jump in when something interesting’s about to happen.
The Rules:
You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: TEXT #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/LINK
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is TEXT! #storyaday http://wp.me/LINK
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday LINK
See my story – and write your own, today: TEXT at #WriteOnWed #storyaday LINK
If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.
Last week I talked about the benefits of writing seasonal stories and yesterday I highlighted a seasonal story over at Six Sentences. Today I’m combining the two, for today’s prompt:
The Prompt
Write A January Story In Six Sentences
Tips
Your story should have something to do with “January”.
It might be set in the month, have something to do with the Roman god Janus (after whom the month was named), or feature a character named January.
Don’t forget that your experience of January is different from that of many others. (hint: even the weather is different in the other hemisphere.)
Every year at this time I stumble on holiday-themed stories wherever I look: Christmas mysteries, Hannukah radio anthologies, contests themed on New Year’s. Collection after collection after anthology on seasonal stories. And why?…
Every year at this time I stumble on holiday-themed stories wherever I look: Christmas mysteries, Hannukah radio anthologies, contests themed on New Year’s. Collection after collection after anthology on seasonal stories. And why? Because they make great perennial gifts that publishers and authors can wheel out every year at the same time.
Of course, with the lead-time involved in publishing, if you want to have a hope of submitting a story to a themed anthology, you need to have it ready 6 months to a year before the occasion. So this is the perfect time to write.
The Prompt
Write a Themed Story For The Season
Tips
Pick Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, New Year’s or any other seasonal trope (“The First Snowman of Winter”?), whatever means the most to you.
Write it now and put a reminder in your online calendar telling yourself in June to start revising and submitting the story!
If you’re a self-publisher, plan to give the story away or release it annually
If you’re impatient and can’t imagine waiting a year to do something with a seasonal story, start writing your summer beach story or your Halloween spooky story now. (You’re probably cutting it fine for Valentine’s…)
Use all the stories you’ve accumulated in real life THIS holiday season to fuel your story: the good, the bad and the monumentally irritating!
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is very seasonal #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
See my story – and write your own, today: seasonal stories! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
Don’t miss my seasonal story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-seasonal
Want to bore your readers and ensure they never get past your first paragraph? Write your opening as it were stage directions: describe a character or a room or the light or the hills…
YAWN!
It’s a familiar trap and we do it for a good reason — we’re trying to create an atmosphere or paint a picture in the reader’s head. The problem, from a reader’s perspective, is that we haven’t given them a reason to care about the pretty picture we’re painting.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve seen to combat this problem is to start your scene as close to the action as possible (and by ‘action’ I mean ‘conflict’, and by ‘conflict’ I mean ‘the thing that’s going to torment/delight your character and therefore your reader, until the story is finished.)
How Quentin Tarantino Slapped Me in The Face
Buy this as a t-shirt at Threadless.com
Reservoir Dogs is a deeply unpleasant, unsettling movie, but when I went to see it in the theaters I came out stunned, not just by the gore, but also by the masterful storytelling. And it started right from the opening.
The opening scene takes place in a diner. No, there’s no ‘action’ in the scene but the conversation sets up all the characters (including a discussion about tipping). The meal is over, we’re entering the scene at the last possible minute, right before the interesting stuff happens and the characters reveal themselves. We feel that the characters existed, knew things, had lives, before we started to observe them.
Immediately after the credits, we jump to the interior of a car where, clearly, something has gone wrong. Mr Orange has been shot and Mr White and he are racing away from somewhere. Granted, Reservoir Dogs ‘cheats’ a little because the rest of the movie is told in flashbacks, but for our purposes, this scene illustrates my point. This scene could have started with the crime going wrong. It could have started with Mr Orange injured and being dragged to the car. But it doesn’t. They’re in the car. He’s sure he’s dying. Mr White appears to be helping him (quite tenderly, for a foul-mouthed criminal…). Horrifying as the scene is, you are fascinated. It’s hard to resist finding out what is going on.
And all because we walk in to the story when the action has already started. This is something we, as writers, need to do in our stories.
The Prompt
Write a heist story, but start it as late in the action as you possibly can.
Tips
You don’t have to go all Reservoir Dogs. You can write a gentle, comedy ‘heist’ where no-one is really in peril (a little old lady trying to make off with a pie from one of those rotating cases in a diner, armed only with a crochet hook…)
Try not to use ‘flashbacks’. Instead, start the scene when it’s getting interesting (when the crook is confronted? When the pursuit is in full flight?)
Make sure your readers know, early on, what’s at stake, and gradually unfold the reasons for your main character’s actions as the story goes on.
You can make the criminal sympathetic by giving them a good reason for attempting robbery, or you can make someone else the hero.
Keep putting obstacles in your protagonist’s way.
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about openings #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
See my story – and write your own, today: openings! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
Don’t miss my heist story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-openings
I’m a sucker for a time-travel story. It might have something to do with growing up in the UK in the 1970s, where my generation was weaned on Doctor Who, but time travel in all its varieties works for me. Of course, there are lots of quibbles with time travel stories: can you really kill your own grandfather and cease to exist? If you step on a butterfly in prehistoric times will the future change (thank you, Mr. Bradbury)? And most perplexing, why do time travellers always seem to run into the important figures in history, rather than nobodies like you and I?
The Prompt
Write A Time Travel Story That Includes An Explanation Of Why Your Time Traveller Meets An Important Historical Figure
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my time travel #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-wow-timeywimey
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about time travel #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey
See my story – and write your own, today: time travel!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey
Write a flash-fiction story (under 600 words) that takes a familiar trope (zombies, vampires, princesses in distress, twenty-something shopaholics with boy problems, space cowboys…) and have a little fun with it.
Tips
You can write long and edit down to 600 words
Don’t try to do too much in such a short story
Do consider having a twist at some point in the story (as with yesterday’s story, where the ‘victim’ was anything but)
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my fun flash fiction #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is twisty #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash
See my story – and write your own, today: flash fiction!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wowflash
You can take some traditionally Halloween-y elements and write about them in a spooky way, or in a funny way, or a tragic way, it’s up to you! Or you can invent some new tropes for the scary story (Hey, Stephen Moffat managed to turn harmless stone statues into one of the creepiest new monsters I’ve encountered in years!!)
Tips
Use a Halloween object in an unusual way (perhaps a Jack o’lantern that really grins, or a haunted hayride that goes awry, or something about going around the neighborhood for treats but the kids have tricks played on them instead
Turn an every day object or event into something spooky by explaining the ‘real’ story behind it (what’s really happening when you leave a door ajar; where the other socks all really go; why you can never find a pen when you need one…)
Re-tell a classic ghost story but update the setting. Here are some classic ghost stories to get you started.
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my Halloween short story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about scares #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
See my story – and write your own, today: Scary Story!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary
Short stories are not mini-novels and they do not have to read as if they were. Part of the great fun of writing short stories is that we are free to tell a tale while breaking free from the tyranny of the three-act structure.
The Prompt
Write a story that does not follow a traditional narrative structure.
Write in diary excerpts or in list form, or as series of log entries, a Twitter conversation, word-association , stream of consciousness, whatever you can come up with.
Want to write a story as a series of letters? Do it! Want to tell the story backwards? Go for it! Feel like writing all-dialogue, or none? Fine!
Tips
Yesterday’s post about Neil Gaiman’s story “Orange” shows one intriguing way to do this
For inspiration, read Amanda Makepeace’s story “One Hour“, which was written in the form of several Twitter entries posted over the course of one hour.
Read this blog entries, which is mostly in the form of a list. Could you write a story that way? (Warning: contains painfully cute images of a baby!)
Bonus question: electronic media, with its insistence that readers be able to resize the text or display a piece on multiple devices, acts as a brake on ‘concrete’ literary forms (think: set fonts and sizes, words forming a shape on the page). Does this bother you? Do you ever think about the form of the words on the page as you write? Leave a comment below.
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story.
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story playing with form #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about form #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
See my story – and write your own, today: Playing With Form #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form
Fifty years ago this week, the US discovered that the USSR was building nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The two weeks that followed brought the two countries closer to disaster than ever before or since.
Public domain photo from CIA records
The Prompt
Write a story set in an alternate history where the Cuban Missile Crisis turned out differently and someone did launch a strike.
Tips
If you want to read up on the actual events, this Wikipedia article seems pretty good. I particularly liked the part (well, not ‘liked’, but you know what I mean) about the Russian submarine, the facts of which were only disclosed in 2002. What if the commander had made a different decision? What if Miami had been hit by a nuclear bomb.
You don’t have to write a Tom-Clancy-style military thriller here. Imagine anything in the alternate history of the world, from a mother trying to find clean water for her kids, to a history lesson for Fourth Graders.
Your story could treat the subject tangentially. It could be the kind of story you normally write, only with a few details in this world different: maybe there are only 49 states now (or maybe there are 52), perhaps Disneyworld was relocated to Pennsylvania “after the big war”…
You don’t have to be too serious. People lived and loved and laughed through the Blitz. People in an alternate timeline after Cuba would have to find ways to do the same, or humanity wouldn’t survive!
The Rules:
1. You should use the prompt in your story (however obliquely you use the ‘want’, it should be there in the character and all their reactions).
2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Optional Extras:
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Don’t miss my short story: After Cuba #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about the Cuban Missile Crisi #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
See my story – and write your own, today: After Cuba #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648
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It’s easy to raise objections to writing fiction in the second person point of view (“You do this, you do that and then you feel …”). The most obvious objection is that it reads like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel. It’s hard to pull off.
(af), 
![[Writing Prompt] Write A Compelling Opening](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/image.jpg)
![[Writing Prompt] Wibbley-Wobbley, Timey-Wimey](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Screen-Shot-2012-12-11-at-11.00.06-PM.png)
