Day 4, Week 4!
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.
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!
Choose a detail that only your character would notice in this story
(This exercise is borrowed from Donald Maass’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction, a book I highly recommend.)
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.
Welcome to Week Four!
This week I’m providing you with story starters, to give your imaginatiosn a little kickstart.
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.
Have fun with this, today!
Write A Story As A News Report
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.
Write A Story In The Form Of A Series of Letters
Remember to leave a comment to let us know how you got on!
The problem with doing something hard (like writing) is not that you aren’t good. It’s that it’s hard to know how long to work before you decide that you really aren’t any good.
(Hint: It’s longer than you think. And you may never be able to tell!)
How to keep going when you’re not sure if you should.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
My author interviews at NaNoWriMo’s blog: http://blog.nanowrimo.org/
Jerry Jenkins: http://jerrysguild.com
DIYMFA’s 101 Course: https://members.diymfa.com/101-course/
May is far from over! Don’t give up now. And if you’ve just discovered StoryADay May, it’s not too late to jump in. Here’s today’s prompt, and you can find a new episode of the podcast here: Is It Time To Quit? (spoiler: no!)
Tell A Story ‘Direct To Camera’
This is probably going to be in first person.
Write as if you’re writing to your best friend, or talking directly to a police officer, or relaying this to a room of strangers.
if all else fails, stand in front of your phone and tell the story. Tell a real story or a fairy story. See what this does to your writing.
Leave a comment and tell us how it went today!
Write a story today in which the reader only hears one side of the conversation
This could be a telephone conversation, a text conversation, a series of social media updates, a series of letters, whatever.
Bob Newhart telephone does this in telephone calls
Watch Neil Gaiman read his story Orange here or read it here
In Week 2 of StoryADay May 2018 we’re working on craft-based writing prompts (character desires, conflict, structures, openings and endings). Picking up skills and putting down words.
But now that the novelty has worn off, what can you do to rekindle your excitement about writing every day for a month?
Today’s prompt is all about limits, but don’t worry, you don’t have to know anything about poetry and you don’t have to make this rhyme!
Write A Story In 14 Sentences
That’s it!
(Sometimes limits can be surprisingly freeing so if you hate this idea, try it anyway!!)
To see four excellent examples of a 100 word story, hop on over to the publisher’s site now. Or pick up the book from Amazon or request it from your local indie bookstore.
Today we continue our look at short stories as not-mini-novels and play with them in ways you can only play with short stories!
Write a story completely in dialogue
It’s probably best to keep this to two characters because it’s harder to have more than two characters, without attribution.
I want you to keep it straight in our heads, who’s talking, simply by the way they talk.
A guy who works on Wall St should sound different from a farmer from a rural area.
Don’t forget to leave a comment and tell us what you wrote today!
Today’s bonus prompt comes from Elise Holland, writer and editor of the 2Elizabeths online literary magazine
There are so many excellent contests available to short form writers.
Sometimes the clear-cut parameter of a deadline serves as inspiration, and
many contests are genre specific, creating a built-in, detailed prompt.
In order to provide a precise prompt, I suggest looking into submitting
your work to Nowhere Magazine’s Spring 2018 Travel
Writing Contest. Beneath the prompt, you will find my tips on how to find
writing contests, and how to use each set of submission guidelines as
future prompts.
Until May 31, 2018, literary travel magazine Nowhere is seeking
contest submissions from young, old, novice, and veteran writers.
Specifically, they are looking for stories with a strong sense of place.
Send your fiction, nonfiction, or essay, but be certain to specify which
genre your work falls into at the top of your manuscript. Submissions
should be kept between 800 – 5,000 words in length. The contest winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Nowhere. For further details and
to submit your work, visit the magazine’s website here.
About Elise Holland
Elise Holland is the editor of 2 Elizabeths, a literary magazine
focused on poetry and short fiction, with an emphasis on romance and
women’s fiction. Her work has been published inWriter’s Digest Magazine, The Writer’s Dig, and at DIY MFA. Find Holland online at 2Elizabeths.com.
Welcome to Week 3! You’re still here! I’m very impressed…
This week we’ll be looking at some of the fun ways short stories can be written that are nothing like mini-novels.
Write A Story In The Form Of A List
This is a great refresher after a week of deep narrative work.
Go and have some fun!
Today I want to give you an overview of something that I find useful when figuring out where to start and stop a story and how to keep it on track.
It’s called the MICE Quotient and I learned about it from Mary Robinette Kowal, though it was invented by Orson Scott Card.
The letters stand for:
M – Milieu
I – Intrigue/Idea
C – Character
E – Event
Each letter tells you what type of story you’re telling.
This is largely a story about place. Usually your character arrives in a new place at the start, and most of their struggle is about them neogitating that place, learning about it, trying to escape it. The story ends when they leave that place or they fit it.
EXAMPLES: The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Ever After.
A question is posed at the beginning of the story. The story ends when the mystery is solved or the question is satisfactorily answered.
EXAMPLES: Sherlock Holmes, Arrival/The Story Of Your Life
A character starts off with an internal conflict and, by the end of the story they have changed it, or rejected the idea of change, or at least understood where the problem lies.
EXAMPLES: Die Hard (Seriously, John McClane has issues at the start of that movie!), The King’s Speech.
External forces change the world at the start and drive the struggle in the middle of the story. At the end of the story the status quo has been restored or a new normal has been established.
EXAMPLES: The Hunger Games, The Parent Trap, disaster movies!
Pick a dominant thread for your story today, based on the MICE categories. Work towards the ending that fits the story type you chose.
I was introduced to this idea by Mary Robinette Kowal, who talks about it on the Writing Excuses podcast. She also made this excellent infographic, to help keep things straight.
Me? I give a workshop about this and how the first three Die Hard movies fit into different categories. Tell your favorite conference organizer to book me now!
Today we continue with the third of my ‘fairy story’ structures: Hansel Gretel.
Start with a life-changing moment and lead your characters through the story to show us who they become.
Hansel and Gretel starts off with a bang: two kids, alone in woods, abandoned!
What are they doing to do?
After the big opening, all their struggles teach us about the kids’ characters. By the time Gretel finally kicks the witch into the oven, grabs her brother and they make their way out of the witch’s cabin, we know enough about these kids to know they’re going to be OK.
How can you replicate this for your characters?
This is a big week at StoryADay: we’re creating a lot of skills that will help you build stories throughout the rest of the month and beyond. Stay tuned!
And don’t forget to leave a comment to let us know you’ve written, how it’s going, and what you’re learning.
Today’s story structure is a little more balanced, and is illustrated by the Ugly Duckling story.
Use the Ugly Duckling Story To Write A Balanced Story With The Life-Changing Moment In The Middle
Unlike in Cinderella, the Ugly Duckling’s life-changing moment comes in the middle, and then the author spends the second half of the story revisiting situations like the ones that led him to the crisis point. Where he met cruel children at the start, he meets nice children after his transformation. Where he met mean animals at the start he meets kind animals after his transformation. Where his family was horrible to him at the beginning, he gets to reconcile with his mother at the end.
This means we get to see what kind of character the Ugly Duckling has even after his transformation. This structure is a good one to use when your character’s struggle is mostly internal.
To make life easier for yourself, unfold the story in the opposite order to the way you built it. Nest the encounters, like this:
[mother] [animals] [children] [CRISIS] [children] [animals] [mother]
For the next three days we’ll be writing stories based on their strcuture. Today’s will be very familiar to anyone who’s heard the words ‘three act structure’ or ever heard of “Cinderella”.
Write a story in which your hero wants something, tries and fails to get it, and eventually has their life-changing moment at the end of the story.
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
