How did you get on yesterday? Did you write a story?
Remember, set your own rules, and stick to them. If you miss a day, don’t try to catch up. Just keep moving forward!
The Prompt
Write A story centered on conflict
Without conflict you don’t have a story, you just have a series of things happening.
Be sure to put your protagonist in a situation today, where they need to do something they really don’t want to do, talk to someone they really can’t stand, or run from something they’d rather stay and do.
Conflict can be car chases or it can be the story of an alcoholic trying to resist taking that first drink in 25 years.
Go!
Check back every day for more prompts, and don’t forget to come back and leave a comment to celebrate your writing successes, every day!
How did you get on yesterday? Did you write a story?
Remember, set your own rules, and stick to them. If you miss a day, don’t try to catch up. Just keep moving forward!
The Prompt
Write A FLASH FICTION STORY
Chances are, most of the stories you’ve written so far would qualify as Flash Fiction if all we meant was “under 1200 words”.
But Flash is more than that. It is deliberately taut, vivid, and short. It should contain one or two vivid moments or images that stay with the reader long after they’ve gone.
Write your story of 1000 words today, and work on making it flash.
How did you get on yesterday? Did you write a story?
Remember, set your own rules, and stick to them. If you miss a day, don’t try to catch up. Just keep moving forward!
Check back every day for more prompts, and don’t forget to come back and leave a comment to celebrate your writing successes, every day!
The Prompt
Set A TIMER FOR 40 MINUTES
Don’t spend too much time on your opening.
Brainstorm for five minutes, spend the next five on an opening and then give yourself 20-25 to dig your characters into a hole and let them start to climb out of it.
Try to start wrapping it up when you have about five minutes left on your timer. Even if you have to write some brief notes [“this is where they make their great escape”], put an ending on the story.
This will make it so much easier when you come back to revise it later.
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 2019
June 29-30
storyaday.org
What is StoryFest?
StoryFest is a weekend when the stories take over StoryADay.org.
On Jun 29, 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 30
It’s our end-of-year party, our recital, our chance to share our work with readers.
(It’s also my birthday month, so consider your participation as your birthday gift to me!)
How To Celebrate StoryFest
If you wrote even one story in this (or any previous) StoryADay, submit one to be featured on the site’s front page June 29-30.
Nominate someone else’s story to be featured.
Spread the word: from now until StoryFest, 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 29-30 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)
Come to the site June 29-30, follow a link to a story, read it and comment on it.
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: Thursday, June 27.
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 paralyzed 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.
Just popping in to say I hope your writing is going well on Day 2 of StoryADay May!
I’m seeing some great writing triumphs kicking off the month. People are writing through sickness and tornadoes and everyday life, and I’m so proud of you all!
Today I’m sharing the final Superstar post with everyone, because I think everyone needs to take a moment to celebrate!!
Audio only
Transcript
I hope that you have found this illuminating, frustrating, exhilarating…
I know there were days when you weren’t thrilled with what you write and that there were days when you surprised yourself or made yourself really happy.
More than that, YOU know that you have 31 days under your belt, of writing whether you felt like it or not.
(Even if you didn’t write every day, I’m willing to be there were days this month when you wrote when you didn’t want to and you finished a story even when you thought it wasn’t worth it and that act of finishing showed you that you can do this.)
You’ve pushed yourself and I want you to take some time today to make some notes about what you’ve learned, about your rhythms of writing; about how things work for you.
I can give you advice, and Stephen King can give you advice, and none of it really matters. It’s great to put yourself in a community of people talking about things that matter to you, and you can learn from other people’s examples, for sure, but the only way to discover how you write, is to write.
At the end of this 31 days, you’ll have learned something about your rhythm, your practice of writing.
The Prompt
Write a story about a creative person who has just completed, or is in the throes of completing a massive creative effort.
(And yes, this can be autobiographical).
Youc ould tak us thorugh the manic process of trying to finish up the work. You can show us their post-event hysteria/collapse. You can have them reflecting on the effort.
Pay attention to the physicality of it.
Go anywhere you want with this.
It doesn’t have to be serious. It can be self-indulgent (you’ve earned it!)
Looking Backwards And Looking Forwards
I hope this has been a great experience for you.
Write your story today and then take a moment to blog or journal or tweet or whatever you do to celebrate and share.
Take some time to really revel in the fact that you have devoted these 31 days, regardless of how much you were able to turn up, or how often you were able to write, or how good your stories were, you devoted this month to paying attention to your inner writer.
You have these materials now, you can come back at any time and dive back into these prompts, the meditations, the forum. You’ve met these people who have gone through this experience with you and you’ve made some connections. I hope you will stay in touch with each other. Having a cohort of people to help each other out is an amazing thing. These people who know and like you will be your biggest boosters, so stay in touch. Take advantage of the fact that you have this group of people how have shared this experience with you.
(And if you weren’t part of the Superstars group this time around, keep watching your inbox for the next opportunity. I’ll be running this again in September and next May, at the very least.)
Make your plans for the rest of the year. As you’re writing your celebratory blog/journal entry and going through the worksheet about what you’ve learned this month, think about your plans are for the rest of the year, the rest of the next five years…
Think about how you can put into practice. everything you’ve learned in this month to honor your urge to write to be creative, to write. If you need to be part of a group of people who commit to writing regularly, then you’re going to need to find a group. It might be the SWAGr group–come along on the first of the month, and make sure you’re on the SWAGr notifications list by signing up at the bottom of this page. Maybe you need a real-life group fo people who meet in a cafe on Saturday mornings and does a write-in. Find one. Look on Meetup.com. Start one!
Whatever you need, figure it out, commit to doing it.
Set yourself some goal. Make most of them attainable, but think about having one big, scary, outrageous goal. Think about the steps you can take to get yourself closer to realizing that goal, or at least working towards it.
Thank you for coming along on this journey. I learn a lot from you, and from producing these materials, so I really appreciate you being here. I love getting to know you and building this tribe of people who are on each other’s side as we strive to be writers everyday, not ‘someday’.
Write your story today. Journal about your experiences this month. Watch your inbox for more information from me in the months ahead, and most of all…
Keep writing!!
And don’t forget to sign up to receive reminders about the Serious Writers’ Accountability Group (SWAGr) below!
What are your plans for the months ahead? What would you like to see here at StoryADay to help you reach your goals? Leave a comment (or a link to your blog post) below.
Welcome back to the penultimate day of your month of extreme short story writing.
After setting you free yesterday, I’m putting a few more limits on you again today.
The Prompt
Take a story that you wrote earlier this month, and tell it from a different point of view
The point of this prompt is to show you that sometimes a story benefits from being told in a different way. Noir stories work in first person because that’s what we’re used to. Something set in a Victorian era works well in Third Person Omniscient because that’s how Dickens wrote–it’s what we’re used to.
Use this prompt as an excuse to play with a story and make it richer, through voice.
Here we are, the final three days of this extreme month of writing.
It’s so impressive that you’re still here, that you’re still writing, that you’re still coming back to this.
I know you have stories you want to tell, that the world needs to hear.
Your experiences, your outlook, your way of expressing yourself, are unique in the history of the world and I’m so glad you’ve come this far, and you’re still writing.
And I know you’re going to continue to write, because you’ve come this far.
Today I’m giving you a prompt that might seem a little lazy from me, but there’s a reason.
The Prompt
Write the story that you’ve been hungering to write.
I’ve been very proscriptive this month, telling you what you write, and you’ve been writing for four weeks. You’ve got stories in your head that are nipping at your brain, whispering “tell me!”, so today I’m setting you free.
Tell one of those stories.
Leave a comment to let us know what you wrote today
This is the kind of writing prompt that puts so many limits on your story that you can’t worry about making the story good. Sometimes you end up with a good story, but the silliness of the prompt removes all pretension and blocks.
The Prompt
Your story must include these words; ink, previously, work, breeze, seven, run, delicious, example, spontaneous, barb.
Start a story that begins with the ending, then immediately jumps back in time.
e.g. “It all started 12 hours ago.”
Think of this as the way someone might shoot a heist movie: a character is being led out in handcuffs and a voiceover says, “It all started 12 weeks ago.”
(In a short story you probably need to keep the scale in hours as this means you don’t have too many scenes.)
Don’t worry too much about getting this perfect. Feel free to be cheesy. Just have fun. Leave a comment to let us know how you got on!
This week I share some of the prompts from week 4 of StoryADay May 2018, talk about creativity and limits, and encourage you to dive into the community at StoryADay.
Also, I talk about drug discovery and wheelbarrows…
LINKS
Serious Writers’ Accountability Group (SWAGr): https://stada.me/swagr
Write a story about someone whose boss is doing something contrary to the main character’s morals.
Today I want you to write a story about a character whose boss (or somebody important to them, with power over them) is doing something illegal/unethical. How will your character react?
This week’s theme is, in part, to encourage you to try out stories that use each of the types of story threads from the MICE quotient.
The Prompt
Tell a story that features a disappearance
This could be an Intrigue/Idea story. At it heart it has a question, or a mystery or a big idea.
It could be the disappearance of a person, a cultural phenomenon, or of the bees, or of Arctic Ice. Or it could be something more nebulous. Your story could be serious or slapstick. What will you come up with?
What did you make disappear? What kind of story did you write? What tone did your story take on, today? Leave a comment and let us know!
Think about your character’s past, so that you know what matters to your character, what background they came from.
As an example, I noticed a vase in my in-laws’ house because my parents had the same one. It was really the only notable thing about the vase! It tells you something about our relative backgrounds that our parents chose the same decor…
You might pick something with more emotional resonance: a smell, a song, a flower.
Tell a story about your character that includes a detail that tells us something more about your character.
This week I’m providing you with story starters, to give your imaginatiosn a little kickstart.
The Prompt
Your character wakes up in a space they don’t recognize.
They could wake up in a white van, a locked room, or anywhere that is completely different form their everyday. This gives you the opportunity to explore your character in interesting ways.
There may be other people inside the space, outside the space, interacting with them, or not.
This could be a TV report with a panel of pundits yelling at each other, a reporter on the street, the voice of a producer in your anchor’s ear…
Or, this could be a traditional newspaper report.
Remember to tell a story, though! Then tell us all about it in the comments.
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