[Writing Prompt] It’s Time For Holiday Stories

It’s Write On Wednesday Day! (That’s really clumsy. I’m going to have to never do that again!)

Thanksgiving dinner decor
Photo by Karin Dalziel


The Nov/Dec/Jan holiday season is fast approaching. I know you don’t want to think about it, but if you’re interested in putting out a short story for the holidays, this is actually kind of last minute.

Publications have long lead times for date-specific stories, so if your holiday stories aren’t already written, now’s the time. Magazines and online pubs LOVE themed stories (Christmas stories; New Year issues; Thanksgiving horror stories!).

Or perhaps you’d like to create a story for friends and family to say thanks for all their support (or: na-na-na-na-na-na-you-see-I-wasnt-lying-around-watching-daytime-TV-all-year).

The Prompt

Write a story tied to a Nov/Dec/Jan holiday

Tips

  • You can use this to flesh out characters from a longer work in progress.
  • You can include characters from your real life.
  • You can use this as a calling card/thank you note/Christmas letter if you send holiday greetings cards
  • Mine your own memories, but don’t feel you have to write memoir. Take an incident from one of your family holidays and recast it on a steampunk airship or a city made of living bone towers or at the Tudor court.
  • Don’t feel it has to be a narrative story. One of the delights of the short story form is that it can be much more than that. Consider writing a list of holiday gifts your character has to buy, complete with passive-aggressive commentary; or a series of increasingly frantic tweets from the Thanksgiving dinner table…
  • Create a compelling character and set them in a ridiculous situation, or a ridiculous character and put them in a banal situation.

Have fun with this. Amuse yourself. Remember, nobody ever has to see this story, so you can be as cruel or as kind as you like!

[Reading Room] The Sentry Branch Predictor Spec: A Fairy Tale by John Chu

Oh, this was fantastic: experimental science fiction by John Chu

Supposedly the story of a technological development, as told by one of the inventors, this is not an easy read. It doesn’t sweep you up in character and stakes and plot points. It does, however, do all the things I love about short fiction: confuse, confound, sweep you along on a torrent of language, and spit you out at the other end, shaking yourself and going ‘whoa!

(For the record, I also like nice narrative stories with heroes and adventure and all the traditional elements of story, but short stories have a unique ability to skirt all that and still give you a good time)

Just throw out whatever anyone’s ever told you about short story structure and read this. The story is not where you think it should be.

Since I’m no computer scientist (and perhaps even if I was) I found myself having to let the words pour over me, for the most part, and search for the story where the author had cleverly hidden it. (Take a look. You’ll see what I mean).

Clever and artistic and unlike anything else I’ve read. I’m not saying I’d like EVERY short story to be like this, but it certainly was refreshing and kind of exciting to remember that short fiction can be … this!

Read it here
Have it read to you
Consider supporting Clarkesworld by subscribing (they are one of the few newer publications that commit to paying their authors. Gasp! I know!)

The Reading Room is a series of short story reviews that are posted (usually on Tuesdays) in order to inspire you to read more short fiction in order to become better at writing it

Week Four: Your Storytelling Strengths

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feelBy this point in the challenge, you’ll have discovered some of your strengths and weaknesses.

This week we’re going to explore those areas further.

Look back, and think about which stories flowed the best for you, and in which your voice was strongest.

This week we’ll:

  • Work on the tone of your stories
  • Write in your favorite genre
  • Write in an unfamiliar point of view
  • Think about emotion, and the business of making readers feel.

The Prompts

Day 22 – Finding Your Voice

Day 23 – Watch Your Tone

Day 24 – Exploring Genre

Day 25 – All Change

Day 26 – So Emotional (Baby)

Day 27 – Write At Your Natural Length

Day 28 – Pace Yourself

Keep writing (and commenting) throughout this week, and get ready for The Last Hurrah in the final couple of days of the month.

[Reading Room] The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family by Usman T. Malik

I found this richly-detailed story in the Nebula Showcase 2016.

This story is structured in sections, each one headed up by a scientific description of one of the states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). Each, loosely, represents a theme for the following segment.

The story is deeply personal and universal (dealing with the challenges faced by those living in modern Pakistan) and at the same time veers into a kind of magical realism that opens it up wide.

Reading this story brought home to me the difficulties and rewards of reading stories from different cultures:

  • It’s difficult because the language flows differently, and because cultural details and assumptions can catch you out.
  • It’s rewarding for all the same reasons, plus you get to challenge your own world view and assumptions. Best of all, you hear poetry in the language that you’d never encounter if you only read within your own culture.

This story slowed me down, and rewarded me for savoring it.

Read it online here

Week Three – StoryADay September 2016 prompts

This week is Rescue Week!

You’ve been writing for 14 days now and this is where it really gets tough. The novelty has worn off, you’ve used up a lot of ideas, you might be getting a little tired and a little dry.

So this is your rescue week.

Day 15 – Rewrite A Story From Week One

Day 16 – Write A Twitter Story

Day 17 – Ripped From The Headlines

Day 18 – Tell the Story of a Painting

Day 19 – Retell a Fairy Story

Day 20 – Write a Fan Fiction Story

Day 21 – A Classic Story Starter

And don’t forget you can listen to all of these prompts as a podcast – The StoryADay.org Write Every Day, Not “Some Day” Podcast
delivered to your mobile device, daily:

iTunes | Android | RSS

[Reading Room] The Fish Merchant by Tobias Buckell

clarkesworldmagazine.com

If you want to read an incredibly skilled story that is engaging and moving and gritty and touching, written by a writer with a sure hand, give The Fish Merchant by Tobias Buckell a try.

(It was originally published in Science Fiction Age but I found it in Clarkesworld Magazine)

Just look at this opening: Continue reading “[Reading Room] The Fish Merchant by Tobias Buckell”

Welcome to Week Two

Okay, you made it! Welcome to Week Two.

| jump to this week’s writing prompts |

Week 2 Elements of Story

[Remember, if you want ALL THE PROMPTS NOW you can get them in the ebook A Month of Writing Prompts 2016, and help keep StoryADay free at the same time!]

This week we’re going to get a little more serious, but still keeping the stakes very low. I want you to remember that nothing you’re writing this month needs to be brilliant. The point of all of this is to get you writing a lot so that you can find out

  • what it is you really want to be writing
  • what your strengths are what your weaknesses are and
  • how to get over that hesitation when you start to write, and instead find your way to the place where the writing is flowing.

Having said that I don’t want this to be a waste of your time.

So this week we’re going to work on some skills that you’re going to need as you get into crafting your stories when the month of short story writing is finished.

This week I’m going to give you three different story structures that you can use with the story sparks that you’ve been collecting (you have been collecting stories parks haven’t you?) We’re going to take a look at

  • Setting and incorporating setting into your story so that readers feel like they’re part of the action.
  • Ways of making your protagonist a rounded character by giving him or her some flaws.
  • Antagonists and villains and how to incorporate them without making them flat but also without letting them take over the story.
  • Sidekicks and secondary characters to see what they can do for your protagonist and your story.

If you’ve already written a story a day for seven days I’m confident that you are discovering your best practices. Hold onto that knowledge while we dive deeper into the nitty-gritty of storytelling this week. Work when your energy is highest. Squeeze writing into tiny pockets of the day if you have to. Harness your community and your support group and get them to keep you accountable. It’s going to get harder this week, but it’s worth it. Keep writing.

This is important to you.

You deserve this.

Tips For Success In Week 2

It’s getting harder this week so take all the lessons you’ve learned from last week and make them work for you.

  • What was the best time of day to write?
  • What did you do on your most successful days? How can you replicate that this week?
  • What did you do on your worst writing days last week? How can you avoid those things this week?
  • Did you read any short stories last week? Try reading some this week, to help recharge your imagination.

The Prompts

Tips For Taking Part

  1. Write a story every day (you don’t have to use the prompts)
  2. Come back to each day’s post (or this one) and leave a comment telling us how you got on.
  3. Encourage other people to keep going!
  4. Even if you’re not using the prompts, click on the links above, because the comments of those blog posts are where the community discussion’s happening for StoryADay September 2016!

Keep writing!

P.S. Want me to read all the prompts to you in my soothing Scottish accent? Check out the new podcast on iTunes, Android, or any other podcast player.

StoryADay September 2016 Begins Here

Welcome to Week One!

This weeks’s theme: Limits

(Keep scrolling for this week’s writing prompts!)

I know you’re excited.

I know you want to get started on your great masterpiece. But putting that kind of pressure on yourself is the fastest way to create a crippling case of writer’s block!

This week I’m going to impose limits on your writing that will make it almost impossible for you to write something great. This is my gift to you.

Continue reading “StoryADay September 2016 Begins Here”

StoryADay September 2016

It’s that time again: StoryADay September makes its triumphant return for 2016!!!

StoryADayTwitterInlineSimplified

  • If you need a kickstart after your summer or winter break
  • If you’re not writing as much as you’d like
  • If you haven’t found your writing support group yet
  • If you are excited by the idea of spectacular success and glorious failure
  • If you would like to end this month with more first drafts than you would do alone

Join us!

(Keep reading, below, for this challenge’s instructions)

Even If You Fail, You Win

Confession Time:

I utterly failed at StoryADay May 2016!

Gasp

I know!

I wrote 10, 100-word stories and then stopped writing short stories.

BUT (and it’s a big but — I’ll wait while you let your inner 10 year old enjoy that…)

I stopped writing because StoryADay May kickstarted my creativity so much that I worked like a madwoman on my novel instead!

  • I wrote 18,000 words on my novel
  • I powered through the crisis, climax and conclusion and finished the draft…
  • …Even though I’d been completely stalled since January!!
  • One of the 100 word stories I wrote during the first 10 days of May became the seed of the climactic scene of the novel (a scene that had my critique partners on the edge of their seats – yay!)
  • In August I pitched the novel to nine different agents at the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC and all of them want to see pages (one wants the full manuscript).

This is what StoryADay May did for me this year.

Imagine what StoryADay September could do for you.

How This Is Going To Work

On September 1 I’ll post the first seven prompts for StoryADay September, and again, once a week after that.

You can find them here at the blog or sign up to get them in your inbox. OR you can buy the book now, and plan ahead!


If you want to take part, here’s the skinny:

  • I’ll post once a week, with links to 7 writing prompts( If you took part in the May Challenge, they’ll look familiar!). You won’t receive daily emails like you do in May.
  • You post in the comments section of each day’s blog post to say you’ve written your story (or to appeal for moral support as you struggle on)
  • Cheer on the other writers, spread the word, tell your friends.
  • As always, the prompts are purely optional.
  • Use #storyaday on Twitter to find other participants
  • Have fun!

I know I’m posting this a little late (summer was FUN!), so I’d love it if you’d help me spread the word about StADaSept ’16.

Post about it, Tweet about it, Facebook about it (really? Did I just do that?), tell your favorite bloggers to write about it…

It’s never to late to jump in to the challenge, so join us!

[Writing Prompt] Tell A Friend

This month’s theme, here at StoryADay is “Accountability”.

(If you haven’t yet declared your goals for the month, leave a comment in this month’s SWAGr post and tell us what you’re going to do with your writing for the rest of this month)

Today’s writing prompt includes a  built-in accountability trigger.
Phone

 The Prompt

Contact a friend, right now, and tell them that you’re going to write a short story in the next 24 hours. Tell them you’ll send it to them,  or at least check in when you’re finished. Then, write 500-750 words about a character you think that friend will love (or love to hate)

Tips

  • Keeping the story super-short gives you a better chance of finishing it
  • Focusing on your friend (someone you know well) helps you winnow the choices. What will THEY enjoy? (Too much choice is paralyzing. Eliminate every possible character or situation that wouldn’t interest this particular friend. Then start writing)
  • Remember that a short story revolves around a single moment in which something changes for your character.
    • The moment can have happened just before the story starts (in which case you’re dealing with the aftermath and the character’s choices about how to deal with it)
    • The moment can happen at the end, when we know enough about your character to be able to predict how they’ll react (or at least enjoy wondering)
    • The moment can happen in the middle, in which case you get a chance to show us the before and the after.
  • With such a short story you don’t have much room for backstory. Write it as bare as you can. You can punch it up with details and dual meanings, as you re-read and re-write it.
  • OR write a longer piece, if that’s what works for you. Just be sure to GET TO THE END OF THE STORY. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be finished. (“You can fix just about any problem in revision, but you can’t revise a blank page.“)

 

[Writing Prompt] Seek Beauty

Following this month’s theme of Refilling The Well, I’ve thrown some pretty unusual writing prompts at you, including Don’t Write Anything and Rip Off Another Writer.

In that vein, I’m bowing down to Julia Cameron today, and borrowing her concept of Artist’s Dates, popularized in her book The Artist’s Way.

The Prompt

Seek out something beautiful/inspiring today.

Tips

  • You don’t have to write a story inspired by the thing you find. Just seek it out. View the world with curiosity and try to find something that makes you go ‘wow’.
  • You might want to take a trip to an art gallery or a movie theater, or you might simply want to lie under a tree and look up at the sky through the leaves.
  • You might want to listen to live or recorded music. Or watch your baby for half an hour while she sleeps.
  • Breathe. Soak it in. Notice all the details of the Thing and of your reaction to it.
  • Wallow.
  • Then go back to life, refreshed.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Inspired By…

This week, make sure you’re reading some writing you really love; writing that inspires you. It’ll help with all your writing, and especially with this writing prompt.

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by, or in-the-style-of a piece of writing you love

Tips

  • Don’t try to impress me. Pick something you really, really love (something that gets you excited) whether or not you think anyone else would respect it. If you love it, pick it (in the immortal words of this century’s new bard: “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love“)
  • Analyze the heck out of a piece of writing you love, and recreate it with new characters and a new setting. Or just pick a character/author you love and write a loving fanfic tribute.
  • Don’t worry about making it good. Just try to recapture, for your potential reader, the emotions you felt when reading the piece that inspired you.
  • It doesn’t have to be a short story. Write anything. Perform something. Just get creative. Focus on the excitement of creating something.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Don’t Write A Story

In honor of this month’s theme, here at StoryADay, of Refilling The Well, I’m issuing a very odd writing prompt:

The Prompt

Don’t write/watch/read any stories today

Tips

  • You’re probably a writer because you love stories/reading/storytelling.
  • Since you decided to become a writer, your ‘work’ is storytelling, and so everything related to stories is now tinged with a different color.
  • You used to relax by reading a good book, or watching a good show, but now those things make your subconscious go “oy, my character development isn’t as good as this” or “oo, I could do that in my third act…”
  • You need to find, and indulge in, activities that are completely unrelated to writing/storytelling.
  • Think about things you used to love to do as a kid (yes, I know, I know. I mean *apart from reading*). Did you like to roller-skate? Dance? Skip? Play tennis? Play piano? Sing? Knit? Paint? Build things? Garden? Hang out with friends? Lip synch?
  • Pick one and try it. Clear 30 minutes out of your schedule and do something completely unrelated to storytelling.

Go!

 

P. S. Leave a comment to let us know what you picked and whether or not you felt rejuvenated afterwards.

 

June News: 7DayStory + StoryFest

I hope your writing is going well.

If you joined us in May, well done, you! I’m sure you’re a little burned out now, but keep reading for some motivation to keep at your craft this month,

In This Issue

  • The rebirth of the 7DayStory Challenge, 
  • StoryFest,
  • The Rest of The Year…

If you couldn’t join in this May, thank you for all the moral support and encouragement. We had a great group of people writing and checking in every day. You should check out some of the comments

I have to say, I’m pretty proud of the group of prompts I put together this year: like a mini writing course. You can still get a copy of them all in ebook form

The weekly themes are Week 1: Limits; Week 2: Elements of Story; Week 3: Rescue Week; Week 4: You Writing Strengths; Week 5: The Last Hurrah;

Pick up your copy here and help support StoryADay.org

COMING NEXT: The 7DayStory Challenge

Whether or not you participated in StoryADay May, you’re going to find this interesting.

This week I’m (re)launching the 7DayStory challenge created by myself and Gabriela Pereira of DIYMFA.com. Seven days of tasks to teach you how to Write, Revise & Release a short story in 7 Days.

I’ll lead you through:

  • 2 days on the first draft
  • 4 days on a cleverly layered revision strategy
  • 1 day on the submission process

Gabriela’s going to be running a Short Story Summit later in the month, with webinars and all kinds of flashy goodness, but if you fancy warming up with a good old-fashioned email course that shows you how to Write, Revise, Release, Repeat, click here, and I’ll get you signed up.

Yes! Sign Me Up For the #7DayStory Challenge

(If you’re already on the StoryADay Mailing list, look for the last email I sent, for a special link, to make signing up easier.)

The first email will arrive shortly after you click, and another one will follow along every day for a week. You can keep them and use them over and over again, whenever you need a polished short story in a hurry.)

STORYFEST IS COMING, June 10–12


What is StoryFest?

It’s our annual celebration of the stories we wrote during StoryADay May. (see last year’s here)

If you have a story you’re proud of, and/or one by someone else that you liked, fill in this form, and I’ll feature them on the front page of the site during StoryFest. Spread the word, and send all you reader friends over to check it out.

(You must have posted the story somewhere online already. I will link to that page)

STORYADAY SEPTEMBER

This was so much fun last year, that I’ll probably do it again this year. So if you couldn’t make May work, how about September?

And, for all the folks whose lives are ruled by full-time education, maybe we’ll go crazy and throw in a StoryADay January next year, just for you. What’d’ya say?

UNTIL NEXT TIME

After the 7DayStory and Storyfest, I’ll go back to the regularly scheduled programming of

I don’t always get all of those posted every week, but stay tuned, and don’t forget to leave a comment to let me know how you’re getting on, from time to time.

Keep Writing,

Julie

PS, Don’t forget to sign up for the #7DayStory Challenge

SWAGr post for June 2016

StoryADay May 2016 may be over, but the writing goes on: tell us your commitments for June, and get ready for the 7DayStory course and, of course, StoryFest, our annual celebration of the story!

OHMYGOODNESS I can’t believe StoryADay May 2016 is over! I’m relieved, I’m distraught, I’m going to miss checking in every day and seeing all the new stories and new friends appear. BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO END! Here’s the Serious Writers’ Accountability Group, to keep us all together throughout the rest of the year.

Next week I’m running the #7DayStory email course (Write, Revise & Release a short story in a week). More details to come!

And don’t forget STORYFEST 2016 is coming, June 10-12: a celebration of the stories you’ve written and the friends you’ve made. Watch your inboxes for details.

Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our   Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)

What people are saying about StoryADayMay 2014

Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.

(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)

Did you live up to your commitment from last month? Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month.

And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!

****

Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months

  • Write a story a day in May – everyone!
  • Revise at least 10 short stories – Iraide
  • Write two short stories. – Jami
  • Attend one writers’ conference – Julie
  • Write fable for WordFactory competition – Sonya
  • Re-read the backstory pieces I wrote in May and see if I can use them within my novel – Monique
  • Research the market – Jami
  • Focus on my serial – Maureen

 So, what will you accomplish this month? Leave your comment below (use the drop-down option to subscribe to the comments and receive lovely, encouraging notifications from fellow StADa SWAGr-ers!)

(Next check-in, 1st of the month. Tell your friends. )

A Month of Writing Prompts 2016

Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2016 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. (I’m really proud of this year’s collection!) Give a little, get a little :) Click here. Now only $2.99

[Write On Wednesday] Happy Birthday!

In which I trick you into sending me cake…

It’s my long-suffering husband’s birthday today! (Happy birthday, dear!) In honor of that, here’s your prompt:

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features A Birthday

Tips

  • You can take this in any direction: happy, creepy, silly, romantic, horrific…go wild.
  • You could go a little ‘memoir’ on this: recount the story of your best or worst birthday.
  • “Birthday” can be interpreted to mean anything from an actual human birth, to the day a supercomputer is switched on, to the anniversary of some other significant event.
  • Feel free to send low-carb cake recipes.
  • I just put that one in to see if you were still reading. But seriously: cake recipes. Nomnomnom.

Go!

Go Big (And) Go Home

This is it! You’ve made it!

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Today you’re going to take everything you’ve learned this month and write the story you’ve been waiting to write—the story you could not have written before today.

The prompt

Go big or go home

Tips

  • If you have written at all this month, you’;; have shaken loose some writing muscles, learned ways of creating time, making your writing a priority, and silencing your inner critic sot hat you can get that first draft written. Now, take all the lessons you learned about what you do best, stuff your inner critic and your inner editor into the sack, shove it under the bed, close the bedroom door, lock it, put on some earmuffs and write the story you want to write, today.
  • Go big. If you light dark stories, but think you’re too nice a person to really be writing dark…forget it. Go really dark.
  • If you discovered this month that you’ve a talent for being funny, go big today, be hilarious. Be outrageous. Write something so silly, so funny that you make yourself laugh.
  • If you’ve discovered a talent for romance, go gushy today. Target their heartstrings, make yourself cry, make yourself swoon. Don’t worry what anyone else will think. You never have to show the stories to anyone!
  • Maybe you discovered you’r good at writing things a little bit sexy. Go wild today. Say the things you never thought you could say. If you’re worried, handwrite it and then have a ceremonial burning. If you’re really shy, tell the story to yourself by whispering it, in the shower.
  • Go further than you ever thought you would. You can always dial it back and rewrite or use this memory as a yardstick for future writing when you know you’ve gone too far. But try to go too far today.
  • Today is all about joy. Make sure you are feeling the joy, and whatever you decide to write. It can be short, it can be long, it can be brilliant, it can be a mess. Just have fun.

Thank you so much for playing along this month

. I hope you learned a few things. I hope you’ve got the creative kick in the pants you were looking for. **Leave a comment and let us know what you wrote today, what you learned this month just how glad you are to be finished 🙂

And remember, keep writing!!

Haven’t joined the mailing list yet? today’s a perfect day to do it. We’ll be back here tomorrow with the SWAGr accountability group to declare our writing goals for the next month. Come back each following month to tell everybody how you got on. The accountability group is the most powerful way I’ve discovered to stay true to my writing. I hope you’ll join us.

The Power Of Three

If you wrote every day this month, you’ve written a decade of stories three times already. Three batches of 10 stories. Doesn’t that feel neat?

That’s because it conforms to the Rule of Three. For some reason humans love things that come in triplets.

This is a really powerful technique for making stories feeling balanced and deep.

The Prompt

Write a story using the rule of three

Tips

  • You’ve probably noticed that, in many stories, somebody tries and fails, tries and fails, tries and fails, three times. They might succeed on the third try. But they won’t succeed on the second try. That story structure has less resonance than if they fail twice and succeed n the third.

  • Character groupings often come in threes as well: you have the the hero, the smart one, and the funny one.

  • Even the fundamental story structure is made up of three parts: the beginning, the middle, and the end.

  • You can use send your character on a quest where they must complete three actions.

  • Perhaps your character gets three wishes, or three questions.

  • Maybe you can really play with this and drop the power of three in all over the place: every paragraph has three sentences; every sentence has a three syllable word in it. (I’m not sure that would make for great story but hey, we’re getting to the end of the month and were all getting a little punch-drunk!)

Leave a comment telling us how you use the power of three in your story today.

Torture Your Protagonist

One of the biggest problems in fiction is when a writer creates nice characters and then doesn’t want to hurt them. Today, let’s make it hurt!

The prompt

Torture your protagonist

Tips

  • This may come easily to some of you, so you don’t need to read any further. If you’re already good at torturing your protagonist. Just go and get writing!

  • For the rest of us, there’s a temptation to let our characters be funny and nice and lovable. We don’t want to make unsympathetic. However, if they’re too perfect, they’re not interesting.

  • Let’s think back to the earlier story, where I asked you to create a flawed protagonist. Wasn’t that fun? You can still have a sympathetic character by letting them be terrible at one thing, especially if they’re very, very good at a lot of other things.

  • You want the reader to root for your character and the won’t if she’s perfect.

  • Torturing your character doesn’t really mean doing terrible things to them. It just means separating them from their goals and desires.

  • Remember my story about the person who wants the chocolate cake? She’s witty and feisty and could be running around the world getting everything she wants, but the real story doesn’t start until she separated from her heart’s desire: the chocolate cake. I could write all day about my witty-and-feisty character and eventually you would stop reading, if I didn’t torture her little bit.

  • Think about your character’s desires their wants and needs. How can you separate them from the things they want, at least temporarily.

  • It can be their own internal demons that are keeping them from what they want. Or it can be an antagonistic force such as a natural disaster. Or it can be an antagonistic character such as an loving, but overbearing mother. Or it can be a straight-up villain.

Did you torture your character today? Leave a comment telling us what you did to your character and if it came naturally to you or if this is something new. If you are ignoring these prompts and writing your own stories, leave a comment and let us know how it’s going!

Welcome to StoryADay, Week Five!

This is it! Can you believe it?

Three more days to go!

I’m calling this partial-week The Last Hurrah.

This week we’re going to:

  • torture your characters
  • look at the rule of three

And then on the final day I am encouraging you to

  • go big or go home.

(Actually, you’ll probably go big and go home, but that’s OK too)

I applaud everyone who is still turning up at this point in the challenge whether or not you’ve written every day, whether or not that all your goals, the fact that you’re still turning up here makes you a winner in my book.

Three more days. Let’s do this!!

Go At Your Own Pace

Day 28

Pacing

As you look back at your stories this week did you notice anything in particular about pacing — How quickly the action flowed from one incident to the next?

The prompt

Write a story paying attention to the pacing

Tips

  • In a fast, plot driven story your pacing will be fast, too. Things happen quickly. We’re off. We run. Things happen. The language reflects that. There’s not a lot of standing around looking at things once the action gets underway. That’s not to say that you can’t have slow passages and descriptive moments. However, they generally come before the quick action happens.

  • In a literary or inward-focused story, the pacing is more languorous, with your characters pausing lots of delicious description, a whole lot of internal dialogue and long sentences with lots of complex clauses.

  • Within every story the pacing should vary. If you attempt to write a whole story at one pace, you will either leave your readers breathless, or bored.

  • Remember to make the language match the emotion of the moment: choppy and brisk when things are exciting, long and complex sentences when things are relaxed.

Leave a comment telling us what piece you were aiming for today, overall. Did you notice anything about your writing as you looked over your pieces this week?

Write At Your Natural Length

Continuing the theme of reaching to your strengths, this week.

By necessity, in a challenge like this, you will likely have been writing very short stories. (I do know some people who managed to stretch to a few thousand words on some of the days, but for the most part if you’re finishing stories during this challenge it’s probably flash fiction.) For me, that’s fine. If you naturally trend long, today’s your day.

The prompt

Write to your natural length

Tips

  • I’m a natural sprinter (like Gimli the dwarf). Some people are ultra marathoners, like Brandon Sanderson. What’s your natural length?
  • Today I give you permission to write a partial story, a scene, and extracts from a longer tale. It doesn’t have to feel complete, like a short story should, but it should still have something of a story arc. Use today to practice that.
  • For example, if you have novel-in-progress, use today to write a scene from that novel. Because you’re continuing the longer work you don’t have to explain the setting and the characters, just jump in.
  • If you don’t have a novel or longer project that you’re working on take a few minutes to daydream. If you were writing a novel what would it be about? Spend a few minutes imagining the setting the characters and then pick a dramatic moment in the story. Write that scene, as if you’ve already written everything that comes before this point in your “novel”.
  • Even if you are writing a novel, you can write a dramatic scene from a hypothetical-other-novel, if that sounds like fun to you)
  • After having spent the best part of the month writing short stories you may find that your scenes start to come out with a stronger narrative shape than they used to.

Leave a comment telling us how your writing went today. What did you write that? I don’t forget, if you’re enjoying this prompts, share them.

An Emotional Rollercoaster

Today we’re taking your readers on an emotional ride!

The prompt

Write a story designed to elicit specific emotions in the reader

Tip

  • In looking back at your stories this month, have you noticed that you are better at eliciting certain emotions than others? Perhaps you’re good at scaring people. Perhaps you’re good at writing tearjerkers. Perhaps you good at making people laugh. Or making people feel the beauty of the situation or your words.

  • Even if you’re not sure what you’re best at, pick an emotion today that you would like to make your readers feel. This is your chance to go all “Stephen King”, or “50 Shades Of Gray”.

  • In order to elicit emotions in readers you’re going to have to make them care about your character. Then you have to put that character in peril.

  • Peril doesn’t necessarily mean dangling them off a cliff. Just remember to focus on what they really, really want…and then take it away from them.

  • The more you can keep the reader inside the heart of your character the stronger their reaction will be.

Leave a comment to let us know which emotion you went for today. And remember, if you’re enjoying these prompts, why not share them?

Change Your Point Of View

Today were looking at point of you again, but in a slightly different way

The prompt

Pick a point of view you don’t usually use and write a story in it

Tips

*Look back at the stories you’ve written this month or in the past. Do you have a favorite point of view? Do you always default to first person or third person? Write a story today in a different POV.

  • If you flip back and forth between different perspectives frequently, just decide which to use today based on what you’ve written so far this month. What have you done most of? Choose that.

  • Each point of view brings with it restrictions and possibilities. If you frequently right in the same point of view you may be limiting yourself

  • To demonstrate the power of POV, you may want to repeat the exercise we tried earlier in the month of taking a story that you’ve previously written and writing it from another point of view. This time however I want you to keep the same character as the protagonist. Simply change the “I said “to “he/she/it/they said”.

  • Try to focus on the opportunities that this new perspective offers. If you’re shifting from third person omniscient to a limited/first person perspective, **really dig into the facts really dig into the characters thoughts and emotions. In these more limited perspective there’s no excuse for “Telling Not Showing”. Everything can be written as if we’re riding along on their shoulder, experiencing everything with them.

  • If you’re moving from a limited perspective to a third person omniscient, celebrate the fight that you cannot see things from different peoples’ perspectives. The most effective, least confusing way to do this is to have seen breaks between each head hop in the short story. (You probably don’t want to do it more than a couple of times but it can be quite fun to have most of the story told one person’s perspective then have a line break and give another character’s perspective as the conclusion of the story revealing a lot about the truth of the situation that, perhaps, the first character didn’t know.)

  • If you hate moving away from your favorite point of view that’s fine. You don’t ever have to do it again. Sometimes creative failures are essential to teach you what to avoid in future.

Leave a comment telling us what you discovered in your writing today. Perhaps you are very versatile with point of view or perhaps this was ridiculously hard. What did you learn? And remember, if you’re enjoying these prompts,share them.

Focus On Genre

Since we talked since we touched on the genre yesterday when talking about the tone of your story, today we’re going to take a deeper look at genre and the expectations readers have, based on that genre

The Prompt

Write a story focusing on genre expectations

Tips

  • Pick a genre that you know well. (It’s all very well to say that you’ll write a noir mystery, because the noir style is so easy to copy. But if you don’t really know noir you’re just making life harder for yourself.) If you spend most of your day reading Regency romance, then by all means write a Regency romance today. (I’m looking at you, fellas.)
  • Grab a book in your chosen genre and take a look at the first page. How does the author let the reader know — immediately — that they are reading a particular genre?  Look at the choice of words. Look at the names of the characters. Look at the length of the sentences. Each genre has specific norms and you need to be using these norms if you want to please a lot of readers. (If you’re making experimental art, you may be able to skip these things. But, even if you are writing for your own pleasure, you’ll be dissatisfied if you feel like you’re missing the mark. Looking at reader expectations in your genre is one way to narrow your focus and hit that mark.)
  • Make a list of the features you notice on the front page of the book you chose.
  • Now that you have a list of norms (and a cheatsheet) for your genre, grab a Story Spark and start writing in the style of the genre you’ve chosen. Don’t be afraid to go over the top and write almost a parody. It can be a useful lesson in what makes this genre tick.

Leave a comment telling us what genre you are writing in today. Was this exercise hard or easy for you? Did you know what genre to pick? And remember, if you’re enjoying these prompts, please share them!

Watch Your Tone

Look back at your stories from this month and see which tone comes most naturally to you…

Continuing the journey of discovering what comes naturally to you and harnessing that.

The prompt

Story focusing on one consistent tone

Tips

  • Pick a book from your bookshelf. Read the first page. You should be able to tell what kind of tone the entire book is going to have, from that first page. Is it going to be spooky? Is it going to be funny? Is it going to be poetic and lyrical?

  • Look back at your stories from this month and see which tone comes most naturally to you. It may not be the one you expect. A lot of people think they’re going to write “serious” fiction and find out that instead, they’re hilarious. And sometimes it works in reverse, too.

  • Pick the tone that came most naturally, even if it surprised you. Consciously write a story today using that tone.

  • Don’t forget to give us a character to root for, an interesting setting, and a problem that conflicts with the character’s deepest desires.

  • Don’t forget to finish!

Leave a comment to tell us what you discovered about your best tone. Or, ask for help if you need figure if you need help figuring this out.

Finding Your Voice

Silence all the critics in your head telling you you should be writing some other way…

You been writing for three weeks you have a good body of work under your belt. Now is the time to pause, see what you learned, and start focusing on your strengths.

The prompt

Write a story in the voice that came most easily to you this month.

Tips

  • Take a look back at the stories you’ve written this month. Which story came easiest?
  • Let’s try to replicate that today.
  • Take something from that story—the character, or the universe, or something about the styling which was written.
  • Give your character a new setting, or a new problem. Or introduce a new character in the same universe.
  • Do whatever it takes to re-create the voice of that story. Silence all the critics in your head telling you you shouldn’t be writing this way. Don’t let them say you should be writing some other style, or in some other genre, or more seriously, or less seriously. Today is all about writing what you are best at, the voice that only you can write.

Leave a comment to let us know what you discovered about your writing and your voice this month, and what you wrote today. And remember, if you’re enjoying these prompts please share them.

A Classic Story-Starter

Today I’m giving you a classic “story-starter” prompt. I really don’t do this much, do I?!

The Prompt

Begin your story with the line: “Huh!” He said. “I never would have thought that would fit in there…”

Tips

  • You can go pretty much anywhere with this one.
  • That’s all I’ve got.

Leave a comment to tell us where YOU went, with this prompt. I’m dying to know!

Write A FanFic Story

More ways for you to steal ideas, as we continue Rescue Week here at StoryADay

The Prompt

Write a Fan Fiction Story

  • While you can’t legally use somebody else’s world and characters to write a story and publish it, nothing is stopping you from writing stories for your own pleasure inspired by someone else’s universes.
  • There is no limits to what you can do here. Pick a story or character you feel doesn’t get enough air time in your favorite show.
  • Change the ending to the series that you love.
  • Write the untold story of what came before we first meet character.
  • Tell whatever story is going to give you the most pleasure.
  • There are lots of places online where people share fanfic (sometimes with the creators’ blessings, sometimes not so much), so you could go and read something and get some idea. However, this is a rabbit hole I’m not sure you want to go down during the StoryADay challenge. Not to mention the fact that some of it gets quite saucy!
  • Use all of the tricks you’ve learned about storytelling to play with characters you already love you. Spend some time with them using your talents and your skills along with the knowledge you have amassed by watching/reading about them.
  • Think about how you can provide shortcuts and clues that let readers who don’t necessarily know the character catch up. Don’t waste time on backstory unless that’s the story you’re telling. Don’t forget to add in emotion and conflict.
  • It can be easy to get carried away writing about your favorite characters. Don’t forget to builds to a climax resolve the crisis to finish the story.

Leave a comment letting us know what you wrote about today and how it’s going. And don’t forget, if you like these prompts, share them!