Protected: Day 10 – Let’s Make Them Flash, Superstar
Day 10 – Let’s Make These Stories Flash
Yeah, yeah we’re writing super-short stories this month (well, some of us are!), but do they flash?
The Prompt
Write a story in under 1000 words focusing on creating one billiant image in your reader’s mind.
Tips
- The image you leave in their mind doesn’t have to be visual. It could be an idea.
- Really focus on making everything lean and making every word count. Make sure your story is about one thing, one moment.
- Aim to change your reader’s mind about something, whether it’s a person, an experience or a condition of life.
Protected: Day 10 – Make It Flash, Superstar
[Writing Prompt] Day 9 – Character Desires Are Key
Knowing what a character wants, tells us what’s at stake in the story. Conflict between the character’s desire and their circumstances will keep your reader hooked.
The Prompt
Establish, within the first couple of sentences, your character’s desire. Put them in a situation that conflicts with that desire. Tell us how it works out.
Tips
It’s important for a reader to know what your character wants.
Once they know what your character wants, is afraid of, would never do, or desperately wants to do, the reader knows WHY they’re reading this story. That will keep them reading.
Keep it simple. In a short story, you can only examine one of your character’s desire.
Protected: Day 9 – Character Desires Are Key, Superstar
Day 8 – All About Conflict, Superstar
Without conflict or friction in your story, nothing interesting will happen. Today we focus on making sure two opposing forces run into each other in your story.
Audio Only
The Prompt
Put your character in a mundane, everyday situation. Then introduce a strong element of conflict. Bonus points: go back and make sure that your opening line contains a hint of the conflict to come.
Tips
Day 8 – All About Conflict
Without conflict or friction in your story, nothing interesting will happen. Today we focus on making sure two opposing forces run into each other in your story.
The Prompt
Put your character in a mundane, everyday situation. Then introduce a strong element of conflict.
Tips
Day 7 – Playing With Character with Playwright Jen Silverman
Today’s guest prompt comes from Jen Silverman.
Jen Silverman is a New York–based writer and playwright, a two-time MacDowell Fellow, and the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant and the Yale Drama Series prize. She was awarded the 2016–17 Playwrights of New York fellowship at The Lark and is a member of New Dramatists. She completed a BA in comparative literature at Brown University and an MFA in playwriting at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and was a fellow at the Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
For more advice for burgeoning short story writers, Download Signature’s Compact Guide to Writing Short Stories!
The Prompt
My approach to story-telling has always been character-driven. I’m fascinated by characters who are driven by overwhelming desires, who risk big, who long to transform.
Much of my professional writing has been for the theatre, as a playwright, and so when I teach writing, I focused on unlocking new understandings of characters, and accessing their individual voices.
This prompt is about exploring the “engine” of your main character. What drives them? Who are they when the stakes are high and their back is to the wall? Pick one of the following 4 scenarios and explore: how would they deal with this situation?
- Backed into a corner, your character tells a lie to protect him/her self.
- Your character has been plotting blood-chilling revenge on someone. Now both are sitting down to dinner together.
- Your character goes to a psychic, who tells them something frightening that changes how they see their future.
- Your character is obsessed with something. They think they will do anything to obtain it. The person they love most in the world stands in their way.
Tips
- Ask yourself about your protagonist’s initial instincts? Are they a runner? A fighter? A lover? Fearful or forward? Visceral or heady?
- The story you’re working on doesn’t have to contain stakes this high, for this prompt to be useful. Maybe you’re writing a quiet naturalistic story about a relationship dissolving.
- The work you did to unearth your protagonist’s emotional range can still come into play, with the dial turned down to 5 instead of up to 10.
For more advice for burgeoning short story writers, Download Signature’s Compact Guide to Writing Short Stories!
Protected: Day 7 – Write A Twitter Story
103 – StoryADay May 2018 is Underway!
The first week of StoryADay May 2018 is drawing to a close. In this episode I tell you about
The webinar I did with NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program, Marya Brennan: http://stada.me/ywplive
The Superstars program, and how you can still join (today): http://stada.me/superstars
Here’s where you can find all the prompts for StoryADay May 2018: http://stada.me/may2018
And I answer a question about burnout and revision during May.
Protected: Day 6 – Retell Your Own Story, Superstar
Day 6 – Steal From Yourself
Steal from yourself!
The Prompt
Retell a story you’ve told before, in a new way
This exercise opens up opportunities in future, when you have a piece that isn’t quite working. You can cast your mind back to today and remember that yeah, there’s more one way to tell this story, too.
Let us know how you got on today, in the comments below!
Day 5 – Steal From The Best
Steal, borrow, it’s all good…
The Prompt
Have some fun today: Steal something from a favorite published universe
Remember, you can’t sell a derivative work without permission, or a license, but that’s not the point today. Today is all about having fun in a world you know well, or with characters you already love.
Leave a comment to let us know which world you played in today!
Never miss out on news from StoryADay:
Protected: Day 5 – Steal A Story, Superstar
StoryADay+NaNoWriMo Livestream
Catch the replay of me and Marya Brennan from NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program answering questions about short story writing!
Day 4 – Tell A Story In 40 Minutes
Sometimes limits can be good…
The Prompt
Set A Timer For 40 Minutes, Write A Story
Spend 10 minutes brainstorming and starting the story, 20 minutes complicating your character’s life, and the final 10 minutes reviewing what you’ve written, making notes and writing an ending.
Leave a comment, to tell us how you got on today.
Protected: Day 4 – 40 Minute Time Limit, Superstar
Day 3 – Write A Drabble
The Prompt
(Don’t budget too little time for this. Shorter doesn’t always equal faster!)
Leave a comment to let us know how you got on!
Protected: Day 3 – Write A Drabble, Superstar
Day 2 – Quick Story Formula
Yesterday’s awesome prompt was written by one of the authors who contributed to the Signature’s 2018 Compact Guide To Writing Short Stories. I can’t recommend it enough.
For Day 2, here’s a sneak peak of what you’d be seeing all month if you were a StoryADay Superstar. Join us!
(For the rest of the month, the prompts here will be text-only and not as detailed)
Superstars get videos like this, a private forum, guided meditations and a weekly video hangout. Join us?
The Prompt
Use this story formula to to create an interesting character, give them a desire, kick off some intriguing action and plan the kind of resolution you want.
Once you have that skeleton, you can start filling in colorful details…and soon your creative brain will be demanding you start to write!
A _______ (adjective) ________(noun), who _________(verb) ___________(subject), then _________(related verb) __________(resolution)
TIPS
Protected: Day 2 – Quick Story Formula, Superstar
May 01 – Seen from the Outside, Guest Prompt from Tadzio Koelb
Today’s guest post comes from Tadzio Koelb. I love this prompt, because it provides a great roadmap for a strong start to StoryADay May but you can also use it to craft a longer, more leisurely story any time you want.
Take it away, Tadzio!
For more advice for burgeoning short story writers, download
Signature’s Compact Guide to Writing Short Stories!
This prompt, while a bit complicated, is useful because, by pushing you to see one person through the eyes of multiple other people, it makes you use methods of storytelling that many writers often overlook.
Write a story about someone who leaves the house for work, and on the way has some kind of accident. Continue reading “May 01 – Seen from the Outside, Guest Prompt from Tadzio Koelb”
Protected: Day 1 – Seen From The Outside, Superstar!
[Write On Wednesday] StoryADay May Warmup
Today I encourage you to write a warm-up story today, and invite you to join the StoryADay Superstars
The Prompt
Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] StoryADay May Warmup”
[Write On Wednesday] Making Good From Bad
First lines.
They can be the inspiration of something great. Or they can be the omen of bad things to come.
We all know that clichés are one of the things to avoid as a writer. Lines like “It was a dark and stormy night” sounds like a pretty good mood setter to a beginner writer…well, maybe not even to them.
But suppose you use a bad first line on purpose? Suppose the entire point is to take that bad first line and write a story around it that is…not as tacky? Or makes the reader forgive the first line or make it totally acceptable? Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Making Good From Bad”
Write on Wednesday – Quick Story Formula
This is an awesome way to quickly launch (and finish) a new story, any time you have time to write but are short on inspiration. Try it!
Use this story formula to to create an interesting character, give them a desire, kick off some intriguing action and plan the kind of resolution you want. Continue reading “Write on Wednesday – Quick Story Formula”
[Reading Room] The Radium Room by Tony Conaway
This week I’m bringing you an interview with Tony Conaway whose story The Radium Room is in the anthology Spring Into ScFi.
We talk about his inspiration for the story, how his love of detail (he calls it “trivia”) informs his writing, and yes, we talk about homing rats… Continue reading “[Reading Room] The Radium Room by Tony Conaway”
[Write on Wed] Story Sparks for May 2018
We’re less than a month away from StoryADay May 2018.
Yes, I’m going to be providing you with optional writing prompts. The best stories, however, come from ideas that you care about.
You can use my prompts, but it is going to be the sparks of ideas that you collect, that ignite your stories.
That’s why, before every challenge, I encourage you to gather Story Sparks, fragments of maybe-story-ideas.
The Prompt
Gather three Story Sparks a day for the next week.
Tips
- Read this post on Story Sparks, with some ideas to get you started.
- Read the “Secrets To Your Success” article from the StoryADay Essentials series, which defines a Story Spark and how you can use them to ‘win’ StoryADay.
- If you’re already on the mailing list, dig out the Creativity Bundle you received when you subscribed, and use the Story Sparks Catchers I created for you. If you aren’t on the mailing list, sign up to get your Story Sparks Bundle now!
If you collect three Story Sparks a day now, you will
- Gather 21 interesting nuggets for inclusion in stories, this week alone
- Start looking at the world like a writer does: it’s all material
- Train your brain to start thinking creatively
- Be bursting with ideas when you sit down to write!
Go!
[Reading Room] Paradox by Naomi Kritzer
I was blogging and podcasting a lot, last month, about short story forms, and how short stories do not have to read like mini novels.
And the month before that was all about Flash Fiction.
Today, I’m recommending that you take a look at this story Paradox, by Naomi Kritzer.
It is both flash fiction and a non-narrative story. And it’s great.
It starts,
This is the original timeline.
This is a great example of how you can make every word count, and how short fiction is a wonderful place to practice that.
That single word, “original” does all the heavy lifting. It tells you a lot about what kind of story this is going to be: confusing, time-travel-y, chatty. It conveys genre, style, and tone.
Five words. That’s all it took her to set the reader’s expectations.
(Note to self: write to the author and ask her what the original first line looked like. I’m betting it wasn’t this. Second note to self: rewriting is key!)
It is written in the first person (sometimes first person, plural) and we never find out the character’s name or gender. It plays deliciously, hilariously, with all the time travel tropes and questions out there, and talks, knowingly, to the reader.
This is no mini-novel.
And it leaves us with a flippant question at the end, the deeper question it asks is not about time-travel at all.
Recommended!
[Write On Wednesday] A Prose Sonnet
Today’s prompt continues the month’s theme of looking at different short story forms you can try out.
This one’s a challenge, but really fun.
Right-click to download the audio only
The Prompt
Write a story in 14 sentences
Tips
- You can simply write 14 sentences.
- You could use the Petrarchan form of sonnet where the first 8 lines/sentences propose an argument or an idea and the second 8 answer or refute it.
- You could use the Shakespearean form, with three groups of 4 linked sentences, followed by two lines/sentences that provide illumination, a revelation, a twist or an explanation.
- You could write a sonnet series, with each group of 14 lines fulfilling a different function in your story.
- Writing this way is hard but it frees you. Instead of worrying about writing well, you’re concentrating on the form. Sometimes that tricks your brain into writing really well; sometimes it’s just a triumph to have written at all.
Leave a comment telling us how it went!