[Writing Prompt] 1200 Words

Welcome to StoryADay May.

It’s Day 1. You’re nervous, you’re excited, you’re full of ideas…(you are, aren’t you?), so I’m not going to tell you WHAT to write, only how much.

(And of course, you should remember that these prompts are entirely optional. If you want to write a 10,000 word novella today, you go right ahead. Just remember to save some juice for tomorrow!)

engine start by Norlando Pobre
photo used by permission of Norlando Pobre

The Prompt Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] 1200 Words”

[Writing Prompt] Fear

Tomorrow it all begins. StoryADay May 2014. Are you nervous? I always am. (This is the fifth May since I launched the challenge!!)

The Prompt

Write A Story In Which Fear Is A Driving Factor For One Or More Character

Tips

  • Focus today on writing a quick, dirty first draft. You’re going to need that skill in the 31 days ahead.
  • Ask yourself who you’d be interested in writing about today. Pick a person, age, gender and defining characteristic (i.e. A beautiful actress; a harassed mother; an ambitious starship captain).
  • Ask yourself what that person wants from life and what they would be afraid of.
  • Consider what/who might get in this character’s way. What might frighten this secondary character? How does that affect his relationship/interactions with the protagonist?
  • Ask yourself what your protagonist needs to do to overcome his/his opponent’s fear. Will you let your protagonist succeed?
  • What happens if they give in to fear?
  • What do they feel as they try to overcome it?

GO!

Did you write today? Did you finish this story? Did any of your own fears creep into this story? Tell us in the comments, or join the discussion in the community.

[Writing Prompt] Naked!

Next Tuesday is Release Day for a new picture book illustrated by our friend, the lovely and talented Debbie Ridpath Ohi. The book is called “Naked!” and was written by Michael Ian Black. (The two previously collaborated on the hilarious “I’m Bored“.)

It’s such a good title, that we’re going to steal it today.

The Prompt

Tips

  • Use the term literally or figuratively to put your characters in an interesting/awkward/trying situation.
  • You can start the story with the moment of ‘being naked’ or you can end up there.
  • Consider the fact that physical nudity means different things in different cultures. Perhaps this is your chance to explore the naturist community or invent a futuristic colony in which clothes are considered vulgar.

GO!

How Naked! did you go? Leave a comment, below, about how you handled this prompt (or a link to your story online, if you posted it anywhere).

A Month Of Writing Prompts – The eBook!

writingprompts2014coverlarge

A Month Of Writing Prompts 2014


Writing a story a day for a month is a crazy endeavour, but one that hundreds of writers have signed up for every May since 2010. During month of courageous creativity, writers learn how to write every day (not ‘someday’), how to craft a story, how to write in different forms, how to fail and dust themselves off, and write again.
Are you ready to join them?
The StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts book shares the daily writing prompts for StoryADay May 2014: 31 writing prompts, meditations, lessons and pep talks to accompany on your journey to becoming a more prolific, creative and fulfilled writer.
Use these prompts during the StoryADay challenge, or any time you need a creativity boost.


[Write On Wednesday] Third Grade Word List

This week’s prompt: write a story based on a (surprisingly menacing) list of words from a Third Grade reader…

spooky shed image
“Waiting” by José María Pérez Nuñez

My third grader doesn’t bring home his reading book very often, so I don’t get to see the stories he’s working on. Each story, however, comes with a spelling list. That I DO see.

While going through the list of words with him, I got a bit bored while waiting for him to laboriously scribble them out three times each. I started doodling. And made up my own story based on the words he was learning to spell.

And now it’s your turn.

The Prompt

Write a story using the following words:

[Write On Wednesday] The Catalogue Of Disasters

Write A Story Featuring An Escalating Catalogue Of Disasters

As I woke up, I reached for my alarm clock and heard rather than felt my hand knock the full glass of water all over my bedside table – home to my iPhone, table and priceless childhood copy of A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six. So it’s fair to say that I wasn’t in the best mood when my 8 year old declared that no, he simply wasn’t getting up or getting dressed or going to school. After that screaming match my head was pounding so I reached for some ibuprofen, only to scoop down my husband’s blood pressure medicine instead – damned blue-topped bottles! I figured I had time to drop the kids off at school before rushing myself to the ER, but of course, I had forgotten about the half inch of ice on my windscreen….

Ever had one of those days? How about your character?

The essence of story is conflict. Conflict doesn’t have to involve a bad guy. Sometimes the antagonist is simply your character’s bad mood, or the universe, or her lack of preparation.
domino

The Prompt

Write a story that features a character going through a catalogue of disasters

Tips

  • You can start this story at the beginning or the end. They can wake up and start the day off badly, ending up at the wrong end of a loaded gun; or you can start with them strapped into the electric chair, thinking ‘now, how did I get here?’
  • Likewise, the action can all by mental: you start by offending your cat and end by quitting your job in a blaze of glory, burning bridges as you go.
  • This story can be humorous or tragic, but make sure your readers are feeling what your character is feeling.
  • Keep piling on the disasters. Leave us breathless.
  • Give the reader occasional breaks by pausing for moments of backstory, if you like. See how that feels to you, as a writer. Does it cause the story to slow? Could you, instead, include backstory in conversations or pithy one-line asides.
  • Make this more immediate by writing in first person.
  • Or write this in close-third person (no-one else’s thoughts get used, but you’re still writing about your main character as ‘he’ or ‘she’). Remember not to use phrases like “she thought”, “she wondered”, “he looked”. Just tell us a thought. We’re smart enough to figure out that it’s your main character’s thoughts we’re hearing. (e.g. “Well, that wasn’t right” instead of “well, that wasn’t right, she thought”. Much more punch!)
  • Use this exercise to practice putting action into your stories. It doesn’t have to be ‘running from the law’ action. It can be all psychological (think: Jane Austen), but make sure you can have things happening in your writing at any time.

Go!

Photo: Barry Skeates