Today’s prompt comes from horror-and-paranormal author Phil Giunta. But just because it starts with gore, doesn’t mean you have to try to write the kind of story Phil might write. The magic of these kinds of prompts is in seeing what different writers do with the same prompt. If you write this one, why not post in our private forum, and let’s compare note!
The Prompt
You’re walking along a busy city street on your way to work. A short distance ahead, a well-dressed man approaches. He stands out from the crowd only because he is staggering and stumbling as if drunk, but it’s only 8:30 in the morning. As he draws closer, you notice that he has a swollen eye and a bloody nose. He collides with a parking meter and nearly falls over. No one comes to his aid, so you decide to take the initiative. You reach out to steady him and ask what happened…
Phil is currently editing the second book in the series, Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity, which is slated for release in 2016 along with a paranormal mystery novella titled Like Mother, Like Daughters.
Congratulations! You’ve written for seven days straight! If you’re anything like me, things are both easier and harder now. The writing might be becoming a priority in your day: something of a habit that you’re making time for. Sitting down and starting might come easier with all this practice. After coming up with seven new stories in as many days, however, maybe you could use an easier day today. So you have my permission to steal a plot:
The Prompt
Re-tell a classic story in your own way
Tips
Folk tales and fairy stories are best for this, because you don’t run into any copyright issues, but if you aren’t planning on publishing this, then feel free to rewrite the end of The Sopranos or resurrect a character from a Joss Whedon show and give them a happier life.
Try placing the story in a different time from the original.
Change the main characters’ genders or ages or skin color or country of origin.
Change the ending.
Make it funny or ridiculous or poignant.
Use the structure of the original story and use your creative energy to imbue the characters with greater depth.
Tell the story of a side-character or reverse the characters’ roles (as in Gregory MacGuire’s Wicked) or tell the story of the servants who have to sweep up after the ball, or run all over the countryside trying to find out who the glass slipper belongs to…
Meg Wolfe‘s prompt introduces a little mystery into our writing, unsurprisingly since Meg is a mystery writer!
The Prompt
An Unexpected Acquisition
What suddenly shows up on your character’s doorstep, or in the mail, or on his or her birthday? It should be something that wasn’t expected or asked for or even thought about–how would your character react, and what hidden truth does the reaction reveal about his or her background, temperament, education, finances, desires, and/or motivations?
About Meg Wolfe
Meg is a long-time nonfiction writer, most recently of The Minimalist Woman blog and its related self-help and cookbooks. She now focuses almost exclusively on fiction, and has written and published two mysteries, An Uncollected Death and An Unexamined Wife. A third, An Undisclosed Vocation, is slated for release in Summer of 2015.
Look at a museum’s website. Find an object. Or an object in the background of a painting. Think about its significance to the culture it belonged to. Write a story about a character in a culture that values such things (real or imagined).
Tips
If you know a lot about a particular historical culture, you can write about a real culture. Otherwise you’d probably better setting this in a fantasy/futuristic/galaxy far, far away type setting, so that you don’t waste all your writing time researching Incan customs or some such thing.
If you’re stuck, write about the culture you know best: yours. What if someone from outside your group (from another societal group, or from the far future) found an object you hold dear. What might they infer about you from that object? Is there a story there?
This could be a funny story: if you’re a Doctor Who fan, there’s a lovely moment in one of the Christmas episodes, where the supposed tour-guide instructs his guests on Earth’s Christmastime customs. He gets it hilariously wrong.
This could be a tragedy: think of Pompeii…
Look at the object. Is it something our culture still values? Why? Why not? What might drive someone to value a huge urn, or a tiny carving of an elephant, or a blue plate with a spiny fish glazed onto it. Does that seem reasonable to you? Why? Why not? Is there a story there?
Today’s guest writing prompt comes from master storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, who has won the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker awards and The Horror Writer Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award among others!
Our thanks to Mr Lansdale for taking the time to provide this provocative prompt for us.
The Prompt
On the day they saw the blue star swell to gigantic proportions, everyone went blind but Hardy. He was already blind, had been from birth,but he had lifted his head to the heavens because he felt a peculiar warmth.
Moments later the others were still blind, but he could see. All the colors of the spectrum. Even viewed by moonlight, the brightness of it all frightened and puzzled him.
About Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others.
Steal a story from another source, and use it as inspiration
Tips
Great places to look for stories like this include:
News sites. Subjective sites like TMZ and Unworthy give you more editorial and emotion to work with. Harder news sites like The New York Times or the BBC, or the front page of Wikipedia, will give you more facts and less interpretation. Depending on your personality, one or other approach might be more inspiring to you.
Obituaries and alumni magazines are great places to find character studies. Obits give you a person’s life, summed up and including the one or two personal details someone else thought were the most interesting. Alumni magazines offer an insight into character in a different way: what kind of person updates their alumni magazine on ‘what I’ve been up to’? What kinds of things do these people think are worthy of report. What does that say about them?
Today’s guest prompter is Seanan McGuire who also writes as Mira Grant. I love these little peeks inside the minds of successful writers, don’t you?
Today’s guest prompter is Seanan McGuire who also writes as Mira Grant. I love these little peeks inside the minds of successful writers, don’t you?
The Prompt
Some little things got left out, and a little means a lot.
Seanan McGuire was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (Newsflesh, Book 1) (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot. In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original filk music. She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, “With Friends Like These…”
Remember: you don’t have to write to either of today’s prompts, but if one or other of them helps spark an idea, you’re welcome!
First: a little Day 5 pep talk. If you’re finding it hard to write every day; if you’ve missed a day; if you’ve just found us and are wondering if it’s too late to join; if you’ve been here since April and and wondering if it’s time to quit…To all of you I say “don’t worry, just keep turning up. From today until May 31, just sit down, think up interesting characters, give them annoying problems, and write as much as you can. If you miss a day (I mostly don’t write on Sundays, so I’m not going to be doing 31 stories this May), just accept it and move forward. Deal? OK, on with the writing prompt!
Setting can be as potent as an extra character in your story. It can affect every aspect of the story from the way people talk and dress, to the imagery and metaphors that you choose.
The Prompt
Write A Story With A Strong Sense of Place
Tips
“Setting” can be a place, a time or a culture.
Don’t tell us about the setting. Weave details into the story to strengthen the tone, mood, or the actions of the characters.
For example, if your setting is in a pre-industrial culture, your landscape might contain things like hitching posts for horses, small vegetable gardens at every home, rutted cart tracks, coppices of trees, wells etc. Mention them by having your characters use them while they’re talking/thinking about other things.
Think about how your setting affects your choice of words: if your setting is bucolic, perhaps your language will be more flowery than if you were telling a story set in a sterile, scientific setting.
Think about how setting can affect the mental state of characters. Do they get more jittery or more energized if it’s loud? How about if it’s dark? Quiet? Cluttered? Enclosed? Wide open?
Today we’re focusing on the heart of any story: the characters. We often refer to the protagonist as the ‘hero’ whether or not he/she is heroic. Today, however, we’re going to take that word literally:
The Prompt
Write A Story With A Heroic Protagonist
Tips
A hero is not necessarily someone with a cape and superpowers. A hero can be someone who is exceptionally talented in one or more areas and who uses those talents.
A hero can be great at one thing and ordinary (or clueless) in other areas: Adrian Monk is almost incapable of living a normal life, but his OCD and his fears make him an exceptional detective; Elizabeth Bennett is not rich or beautiful or titled, or any of the other things that mattered at the time, but Jane Austen’s famous heroine endures because she is witting and quick and funny; Slippery Jim in Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat is a rogue, but a charming rogue.
Think about characters you love from fiction. What is it that you like about them? Are they funny? Smart? Brave? Brooding? Tortured?
Think about characters you dislike. Why? Are they whiny? Angry? Glib? Uncaring?
What raises the feature you love about that character to the next level?
Think about people in your life that you love or abhor. What features and characteristics do they have that you envy/loathe?
How could you create a character that has a stand-out characteristic (one that you love) that shows the reader the best of humanity? That gives the reader something to aspire to?
What mannerisms will your character have? What expressions will they use? How will they talk?
What single adventure could this character have in a story that highlights their most heroic feature?
This is the second of our recurring “limits” posts. As the month progresses you’ll come across all sorts of limits: time, word count, point of view, structure. If you get stuck, try rewriting an earlier story in a new way, using these ‘limits’ posts.
The Prompt
Write a story in 640 words
Tips
Why 640 words? It’s the length of a traditional newspaper opinion column. It’s long enough for a set up, some flavor and a parting shot, but not much more.
Limit your intro and ending to about 50 words each, leaving yourself 540 words to set up and deliver an interesting moment in time for a fascinating character.
Overwrite and then cut, if you must. Think about every word, every description. Does it need to be there. Do your descriptions also tell us about the character’s state of mind? Is every piece of dialogue weighted with things unspoken, double meanings, misunderstanding?
If you need to cut words, can you get away without dialogue tags? There’s no need to say “he said” if you’re following it with the stage direction “John slammed his mug onto the formica counter and turned away”. Can you start the story later in the scene? Can you hint at or imply something that you have explicitly told the reader, with a word or a glance?
If you have finished your story and not yet reached the word limit, what can you add without bloating the story? Is it clear where this story is taking place from the noises, smells and sights the characters notice? It the timeframe or period clear? Do your characters give away the subtext of what they’re saying with unconscious body language? Can you add a few sentences of a different length, to change the pace? Like this?
GO!
Psst! Did writing a short-short story take less time than writing a 2,000-word story? No? I didn’t think so!
Every family is full of stories. Some are told (and retold). Some are secret. Some are a surprise that is only revealed years after you ‘should’ have known about them.
Your friends have stories they tell and retell.
Your colleague and strangers on the bus have stories.
Everyone is telling stories all the time.
Today we pilfer their experiences.
The Prompt
Write a story inspired by family folklore (or a story someone has told you that ‘happened’)
Tips
My grandparents have a remarkable and romantic courtship story. One day I might write that story. Or I might take their story and transport it to a futuristic setting where the characters may face similar obstacles. What stories exist in your family that could inspire a tale or two?
Be wary of realistic retellings of stories that don’t belong to you, especially if the people are still alive. But feel free to use anyone’s story as inspiration, a jumping-off point. Change details, explore other possibilities. Treat your sources with gratitude and respect.
Start with a family story that is often told and ask ‘what if’? What if Grandad had been in a modern war, not Vietnam? What if Dad’s first interview had gone better? What if Uncle Sal had never got on the boat?
Gretchen Rubin says: Write a short piece inspired by one of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. There are 72, but here are a few of my favorites…
Gretchen Rubin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project, Happier at Home and, most recently, Better Than Before (a book about happiness and habits that has huge implications for writers. You should check it out!)
When I asked her if she’d like to provide a writing prompt this self-confessed quotation collector, of course, went to one of her favorite authors for inspiration. Here’s what she sent.
Freedom is horrible. If you are free to do anything, write anything, then there is an infinity-minus-one of ways you could do it. That’s a lot of words, ideas and characters you have to reject just to get something on the page.
This is the power of limits (‘write a sonnet; here are the rules’) and challenges (‘write a story a day; of course some of them will be rubbish, do it anyway’).
Today we are exploring time limits. By limiting the amount of time you have to write this story, you will be forced to make quick decisions and not second-guess yourself.
The Prompt
Write a story in 40 minutes
Tips
Remember this story is a first draft. It does not have to be perfect. It must, however, have a beginning, a middle and an end that you can revise later.
Use the first ten minutes to write an opening and think about your characters. Use the next 20 minutes to write the meat of the story. You’ll start to get an idea of where it’s going about half way through. You’ll also start to have ideas for complications, digressions, a full-length novel. Great. Jot them in the margins or put them in square brackets, and drag your story back to the point. Use the last ten minutes to construct an ending and read over the whole thing for mistakes.
By all means make notes as you read over your completed draft, but do not revise it today.
If you like the story, put a date on your calendar for next month, to revise it.
If you don’t like the story, take a few minutes to figure out why? Is your main character flat? What flaw can you give a hero tomorrow, to spice up that story? Did you take too long to get to the point? Maybe tomorrow’s story should start in the middle of an action scene.
Don’t waste a lot of time coming up with a story for this exercise. If you must, retell a story you’ve written before, or tell a bedtime story, a fairytale, a fable, a Greek myth, a Norse myth, a reimagining of “Atlas Shrugged” if the characters were bunnies and the railroad were a new super-warren…
Every week for almost five years, Jacob Tomsky has been researching and sending a short story to an email list of rabid readers. He doesn’t write the stories (he’s a best-selling memoir writer and budding novelist), but he does curate them.
Driven by his mood, he plucks a story that speaks to him from the vast slush pile of Public Domain works, and sends it to thousands of his Internet friends. Not only that, but Tomsky writes a passionate (and often expletive-laden) exhortation to readers as to why they should read this week’s story. If Tomsky’s ‘dispatches’ are the amuse-bouche of Short Story Thursdays, the stories are the meat.
Since he’s been doing this for four years, he must always really loved short stories, right?
“I actually hated short stories for a really, really long time. Maybe I still kind of do,” he laughs. “I don’t buy short story books, I never did. I was never a fan. I love novels. That’s what I like to read and that’s what I like to write.”
How It All Started
So here’s how it all started: Tomsky had a full time job he hated, in a hotel.
Bored, he began printing out short stories from the web – using company paper and company toner– because it “would look like I was working, like I was just reviewing documents or something.”
When a similarly-bored bellman asked him what he was reading, Tomsky stumbled onto something that has kept him sending out his dispatches weekly, years after breaking free of the job he hated.
“This was not a man that you would consider being a lover of literature at all and he read it and said ‘what’s next?’” Tomksy said. “I really got joy not only out of the minor escape it gives you from work, but also the fact that I was exposing people to short stories that had never even considered it before.
“People were talking about literature and that was very exciting for me as a long time lover and a writer of literature. I was able to get people to read these short stories, [people] that had never read before.”
Why short stories? Well, apart from their utility as a good cover at work, Tomsky points out,
“Everything’s shortening, our attention spans are dropping. I don’t think it’s even a bad thing. Twitter’s 140 characters, Vine videos are 6 seconds. Everything is so short and people’s attention spans are rapid fire.”
Short stories seem like the perfect way to get people reading, “…and I pick really short ones. Really short. So it’s just something people can read on the train and not feel like they’re having to trudge through it.”
The Beauty of the Short Story
Because he’s posting stories mostly from public domain, Tomsky is rediscovering some older writers, some who have been largely forgotten.
“This week’s story,” he says, about a recent Dispatch, “is making people cry. I’ve had six people email me already and say this story made them cry… I couldn’t even find out any information abou this author. The fact that I get to breathe life into these forgotten authors is wonderful.”
Another advantage of reading older works is, “some of this langauge is just amazing. It’s not even antiquated, we just don’t speak like this. Some of these words have fallen out of favor. Phrases and just the tone of language has changed so much. To get to read something …that’s so different from any other sentence you’ll read in the rest of the week, has been wonderful.”
Of course, the short story form has evolved a lot since its invention, and many of the stories Tomsky finds irritate readers because they aren’t subtle or don’t have the emotional impact of modern stories. And, a frustration for Tomsky is that the public domain collection is ‘a sea of white males’.
Still, Tomsky sees a a benefit to reading these stories week after week. “There’s been some great writing…and it’s kind of great to see what we expected from short stories in the past. Those were pure entertainment in the past. It wasn’t entertainment that was vying for attention with any other form of entertainment, you were just happy to be reading anything.”
He adds, “There have been some stories I’ve read on public domain that I think are better than anything I’ve read publishing now.”
“I had three novels pior to that and none of them had a joke in it,” he says. “It wasn’t until I started ShortStoryThursdays that I started with the humor. I think that really primed me for when I had to write a funny book about the hotel world. I was totally ready because I had been practising.”
Another, unexpected benefit of writing to a group of strangers every week was a surge of confidence in himself as a writer, that came simply from turning up week after week.
“It took out the whole ‘bullshit inspiration’ crap. You just have to sit down and write no matter what. You kind of trust that…there’ll be quality in there.”
Even In The Middle of An Ocean
No-one’s better at coming up with excuses than writers (it stands to reason: we’re creative!). But Tomsky even kept up his weekly dispatches during a four-month stay in South Africa AND during a ten-day crossing of the Atlantic on a freighter from Liverpool to Philadelphia.
“So I told [everyone] I’d be missing a week,” but in reality he queued up a post and had a friend hit ‘send’. “Then, when I was in the middle of the ocean, it just dropped on them,” he laughs.
Track Your Progress
Another tip for boosting your confidence as a writer is to keep track of how much work you’re doing.
While working that hotel job that he hated, Tomsky started tracking his progress.
“I was like, I’m putting 50 hours a week into a job that I hate, that’s going nowhere. How much time am I putting into my art? So I used to clock myself and tape the papers up on my wall. That was very helpful.”
“It’s such a weird, ‘spooky art’. Any way that you can normalize it and bring it into some kind of standard reality, it’s helpful. And if that’s clocking it—like you would yoru time at work—that at least gives you a feeling of progress. Feelings of progress are extremely rare in this art.”
Just Write
So is he cured of the writer’s enemy: doubt? Tomsky gives a qualified ‘no’.
“It still happens every week. Every Thursday I’m like, f*ck I don’t know if I can write anything good, but I do it consistently, and somewhere in my head that helps me …Looking back on a rather successful string of SST dispatches really does give me the courage just to sit down.
“Definitely more writers should do that,” he says, equating writing practise with the benefits of going to the gym. “I always tell people tha—and not just to bring up the fact that I’m going to the gym! The more you do it, the easier it becomes and the better you get at it. It’s not even magic it’s just straight up practice.”
Two of Jacob Tomsky’s favorite short stories in the public domain:
First: The ebook is here! The ebook is here! Get all yer writing prompts ahead of time and start planning your month, today! Only $2.99. Don’t wait, the price goes up to $6.99 on May 1!
Now, on to the last Write On Wednesday prompt before StoryADay May 2015!
They say you have nothing to fear but fear itself.
What they don’t mention is that fear itself is pretty darned terrifying!
The Prompt
Your character is on the precipice: about to do something that terrifies them.
Tips
Think about who your character is and what would frighten them the most (maybe your character is committing to an extreme writing challenge in a few days’ time…)
Can you make it even more frightening? (If your character doesn’t post in the Victory Dance group, there are sharks. Sharks delivered by tornado…)
You can start the story with the decision—they do it or they run away—and then the rest of the story becomes the unraveling of why they made the decision and what the consequences were.
You can start the story slowly and allow the character to fill us in on all the details. In this case let the reader in on what the stakes are, and then, at the end when the character make her decision we understand the ramifications already.
You can decide to do a hybrid of the two and allow the character to make the big decision in the middle of the story. Set up some stakes at the beginning, show us the decision, then take us through some of the consequences (internal or external).
Give us lots of details about the thing that’s frightening them as they decide to do it, or run away from it. More detail slows things down (like during a car crash).
Try to hold in your head a sense of the shape of the story, while you write. Remember that you’re aiming for an emotional connection with the reader.
Go!
Just for practice, if you finish this story today, either post in the comments below or in The Victory Dance group. And if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet, leave a comment and I’ll give you the super-secret entry code to get in to the community.
Today I want you to think of a character and a relationship that should never be broken. Then break it.
The Prompt
The Day My _______ Quit
Tips
You might think of a professional relationship. We don’t normally think of dentists or therapists or trainers or doctors or laywers firing their clients. But it happens. It happens for innocuous reason (they’re moving away) and for hostile reasons (they think you’re a jerk).
You might think of a family relationship. Parents shouldn’t give up on their kid. What if they did?
You could go surreal or fantastic: the day my pet rock quit. The day the aliens stopped calling…
Thnk about what could cause such a rift. Is anyone at fault? Who?
Is it a good thing or a bad thing for the protagonist? Does it feel that way?
You can show us the break up or the aftermath (or even the events leading up to it). But you probably shouldn’t show all three in a short story.
Make sure you show us why the break up matters to at least one character.
I talk a lot about writing prompts and Story Sparks around here. They are your secret weapons for getting through a month of extreme short story writing!
What is a Story Spark?
It’s a term I coined for something that is less than a story idea and certainly not an outline, but something that you notice while walking the world: things that make you go ‘hmmm’, if you will.
Story sparks are details about the world that you can use either to spark or add richness to a story. They can be:
Fragments of conversation: become a dedicated eavesdropper, if you aren’t all ready.
Details from the world around you: the exact color and shape of a dogwood flower in April; a snippet of conversation overhead, out of context; the rhythm of a 14 year old girl’s speech,
Big Ideas that occur to you randomly: the ‘where are all these people going?’ that pops into your head while you’re sitting in traffic; what if my baby had been born with wings? why do so many of us believe in a deity?.
Memories: spend some time going through old memories and pulling out interesting characters, conflicts, fears, hopes, joys. Gather some of them as Story Sparks.
Some of these, with a little interrogation and development could be come a story or a series of stories, but for now they are simply ideas that flit across your brain.You needn’t have any clue what kind of story they’ll fit into or how you might use them.
Capture them.
Save them for later.
How To Harness The Power Of Story Sparks
To feel the power of Story Sparks you must gather them continuously.
Set yourself a goal of gathering three story sparks every day and you will find yourself seeing the world in a different way (a writer’s way).Aim to have 15 at the end of each week, but don’t collect them all on one day.
By getting into the habit of observing the world around you and capturing story sparks daily, you are training your brain to see the world through an artist’s filter. This will help immeasurably when you sit down to write.
Writing Prompts Are Not Story Sparks
(At least not the way I do them here at StoryADay)
I provide an optional writing prompt for every day in May (If you want to support the challenge and give me a pat on the back, you can grab a copy of last year’s prompts here or stay tuned for the release of this year’s prompt ebook)
My writing prompts are intentionally vague.
I don’t know if you prefer comedy or tragedy, sci fi or contemporary romance. I don’t know if you’re a woman or a man or a child or a nonagenarian. So I keep the prompts vague. Here’s an example:
I’m not giving you a topic or a character or telling you where to set your story. I’m giving you a way into a story.
This is the perfect time to start digging around in your Story Sparks notebook/file and see what might fit with this prompt. Choose a Spark that leaps out at you today, in today’s mood, with today’s time restrictions and today’s challenges.
I also give you tips everyday. They are intended to help you drill down further into the prompt, and figure out how you can make it work for you.
Here’s another example:
Notice, I don’t tell you what kind of character to choose or where to place him/her. That’s up to you. Dig into your Story Sparks and see if you can find inspiration for a character who might have these qualities.
Here are the tips I provided for this prompt:
Again, you’ll need to bring your own ideas to this exercise. It’s not a scenario that dictates any details about the story, but rather a prompt; a way into finding a character and a story that matter to you.
And that is the only way to write a story that matters to readers.
So go now and start collecting Story Sparks: 3 a day. You’ll thank me, around May 14, when the creative well is not only dry but cracking and threatening to implode.
A few reasons: One is that it keeps things simple for me. There’s a lot going on around here in April/May and setting up an ebook with three or four different vendors is a LOT of work. I like Amazon. You can get it for Kindle or use their browser-based Kindle app at no charge.
Another is that Amazon is a big kahuna. If lots of people buy the ebook from Amazon (especially if you all buy it on opening day) the ebook shoots up the charts and gets more exposure, and more people hear about StoryADay, which makes the community more buzzy and you more likely to find a writing friend you lurve. (See? It’s all about you).
Thirdly (and this one is less about you), Amazon pays well. If I use their Kindle Direct Publishing and make the book exclusive to them, I get 70% of the list price in royalties in every international market they cover. This money all goes into the running of StoryADay (so actually, it is about you!).
Speaking of money: I intend to keep the StoryADay May challenge free forever. But running it is not. In addition to the hundreds of hours I spend working on this every year, I have hosting and domain-registration costs, support for the times when the web coding gets too much for me, the Mailchimp email list hosting (we’re such a big tribe now that we’ve outgrown Mailchimp’s free service); hosting fees for the service I use to sell workshops and ebooks, and on and on the costs go. I’m fairly frugal but the costs run over $1000 a year.
If everyone on the mailing list bought a copy of the ebook on release day I would cover my costs and have a bit left over to make the site prettier and more functional next year.
That won’t happen, but every little bit helps. If you do feel like kicking in a few more dollars of support, don’t forget about the StoryADay Shop, which is full of books, writing workshops and the world-famous StoryADay I, WRITER Course – six weeks, ten stories, one new writing life).
So there’s my Amanda-Palmer-inspired begging bowl. Want to support StoryADay? Buy an ebook, course or workshop. Or, if money is tight, spread the word to your writer friends. Get them involved in StoryADay. That’s as valuable to me as a monetary contribution! And more fun.
OK, this was a long post today. Sorry about that, and thanks to anyone who’s still here at the end of it!
In fact, I had long been scared to commit to writing a novel, but after completing my first StoryADay back in 2010, I said, “Surely writing the same story every day for a month has to be easier than that!” and plunged into NaNoWriMo later that year and ‘won’. (I recently completed that novel – my first!)
So Why Keep Writing A StoryADay Each May?
Writing 31 short stories in a month drives you to the brink of desperation…and it’s right at that brink where interesting things start happening.
You stop caring about whether the story is good and just get it written.
You try crazy ideas that sometimes turn into highly original stories.
You find yourself seeking out story ideas all day, every day, because you know you’ll need a new one tomorrow.
You discover that the more you write — the more ideas you use up — the more creative you become. You never run out of ideas. There’s always another one coming along right behind it.
You discover you can write more than you thought you could. Even if you’re exhausted every day, it’s only one month. You’ll be amazed what you can do with a deadline, a community and little bit of stubborn. And it will feel exhilarating.
Keeping Things Fresh
Past participant Sarah Cain had just finished a novel and was deep in the business of revising the manuscript and looking for an agent, when she found herself in a creative slump. She heard about StoryADay and was intrigued.
“[I thought] would be a change,” she says. “Give me a chance to get some creative energy flowing, which it did. I had great fun with it, and now write quite a lot of flash fiction.”
In addition, she went back to her novel revisions, refreshed and reinvigorated. The following year she landed an agent and signed a two-book deal for that novel and its sequel.
So How Do You Write A StoryADay Without Burning Out?
There are lots of ways to keep writing. Here are some that other StoryADay writers have used:
Accept that these are first drafts — Don’t revise as you write. Just keep moving the story forward, every day until you get to the end. No revisions, no backtracking. Finish with a flourish, drop your pen and walk away. You have the rest of the year to revise these things!
Finish each story — Do your heroic best to get to the end of each story. Even if you have to write something like “[get Frank from the school to the roof of the hospital. Car chase! Explosions]” and skip to the resolution, get to the end of the story.
Resolve as many loose ends as you can and put it on the ‘to be revised’ pile for June. There is an energy about finishing a story that buoys you up for the next one. “You can do this,” it whispers in your ear as you sit down to write the next day. “You told a complete tale yesterday. No reason you can’t do it again today.”
Allow yourself to experiment—Write short-short stories, longer stories, stories that are all dialogue, stories that rhyme, retelling of old stories, retellings of your own stories (in a different point of view, or setting…the possibilities are endless).
Some days you’ll need to do what feels like ‘cheating’ by rewriting a fairytale or reimagining a story of your own, just so you don’t have to work out all the detail. That’s OK. It worked out fine for Gregory Macguire and for Walt Disney…
Allow yourself to fail — You will have some days when it is torture and you when you get to the end of a story and think “what was that?!”. Learn to laugh it off. If you can, figure out why it didn’t work. (Did you forget to give the character something to root for? Did you not know enough about the exotic setting you tried to use? Did you start writing when you were too tired?)
Write down the lessons learned and save them for future reference.
Have A Backup Plan To Help You Start Again—There may be days when time gets away from you and you don’t finish a story. Or whooosh! The whole day goes by and you just forget to write. Prepare for this by having an “if/then” plan in place (an idea I came across in Gretchen Rubin’s excellent new book Better Than Before). Tell yourself “If I miss a day, then I’ll pick right back up the next day. I won’t try to catch up, I’ll just move forward”. Or maybe you can say “If I miss a day, then I’ll confess my sins in the StADa community, and get back to it the next day.” Or some other (positive) “If/then” cycle. All is not lost when you mess up if you have planned for what you’ll do after the inevitable slip.
Join the community — Yes, yes, I know. There’s a danger here. You could spend so much time reading other people’s posts that you never get around to posting, yourself. BUT, there is nothing like a little pat on the back, or a little peer pressure, to make us better than we think we can be. At least post in the Victory Dance group every day after you write something. Congratulate a few other people who have posted, and post a micro-update about your own day. Use the other boards to ask for help, or find a shoulder to cry on when the day didn’t work out as you had hoped.
Don’t ‘quit’ — If you get to day 14 and your life implodes, don’t quit. Change the rules. Admit that life got in the way and you can’t write a story a day this month, BUT commit to writing at least two more stories this month, or one, or whatever you feel you can manage. Come back to the challenge at least one more time.
You’re not failing. You’re learning. Write down what you’ve learned about your writing habits, needs, preferences, struggles, successes, so far this month. Post them somewhere you can find again (a blog is a great place, since it’s archived). Then commit to writing at least one more story before the challenge ends.
Make a note in your diary to check in to the community before the end of May and celebrate the progress everyone has made. Print out your winner’s tiara and wear it with pride, because you showed up. You wrote. You win.
Tomorrow we’re going to talk about story sparks, writing prompts and what you can do NOW to make sure you have the best chance possible of writing 31 stories during StoryADay May. I’ll also be reminding you that I’ll be releasing I have published the StoryADay Guide: A Month of Writing Prompts 2015 on Monday, April 20. Until May 1, 2015 it’ll be selling at a steep discount, so don’t miss that!
Hint: it’s going to look a lot like last year’s edition, but with all-new prompts, tips and pep-talks.
If you want to make sure you receive the rest of this series and notifications about the discounted ebook, and the opening of the StoryADay Community for 2015, join the Advance Notice List:
Now that you’re all keyed up to write, we turn to the tricky question of how to take all your good ideas and turn them into story drafts.
From Idea To Story
Ideas are great.
Story Sparks are great.
Writing prompts can be great.
But anyone can have an idea.
It takes a writer to develop and idea and turn it into a story. Yeah, uh, how do we do that, then?
The Right Way To Write A Short Story
There is no one right way to write a short story.
That’s the beauty of the short story. It can be anything from a classic three-act narrative to a loosely connected collection of nouns verbs and prepositions.
There are as many ways to write a short story as there are writers. The only right way to write a story is to tell it the way you want to tell it.
Writing a short story that readers want to read, however, is a little more limiting.
1. Play With Structure
Short stories don’t have to follow a particular structure. With a short story you can forget about plot diagrams and character arcs and still end up with a satisfying story.
Why? Because short stories exist to immerse a reader in a moment in a character’s life. Or to make them question an assumption by illustrating its absurdity in miniature.
A list can be a short story. A diary entry can be a short story. A tweet can be a short story. But none of them work without the active participation of the reader.
Think about it: in writing short stories, you have to leave a lot out. You can’t spend a lot of time describing the six layers of undergarments worn by ladies of the court, the way you can in a novel. You can’t give much (any) backstory. You can imply, hint and leave spaces.
It’s up to the reader to slow down, pay attention and supply those details. In that way, the short story is a lot like poetry.Even as you play with the structure you must write for the reader.
2. Write For Readers
I don’t mean ‘write for acquisition editors and publishers’. I mean write for your ideal reader.
Readers expect certain things in a story. They expect setting and character and something to happen. Depending on your reader’s preference and tolerance level, they may expect suspense (or not), character development (or not), and a resolution of sorts (or not).
Literary fiction can get away with more of those ‘or not’s than genre and mainstream fiction. Mainstream readers tend to be looking for a less intense escape from reality than literary readers who are willing to study every line as if there’ll be a test on Friday (which they intend to ace.)
But it’s OK for even mainstream or genres readers to expect their readers to participate in the story.
What Do You Mean, Readers Have To Participate?
Read this oft-cited example of the shortest-short story:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
So what? On one hand, it’s just a classified ad. But if you, the reader really start to think about it, you start filling in the details: why the shoes were never worn; who might have placed the ad; and inevitably, how they must have felt, doing so.
You, the reader, are telling the story in cooperation with the author.
This is a pretty extreme version, of course. But you should be aiming for the same effect in every story you write, no matter its shape or length.
I’ve been hosting StoryADay since 2010 and I’ve read a lot of stories in that time. The stories that immerse me in a character or a world or a moment are the ones that stay with me. The stories that ask a question and make me care about the answer (whether or not they supply it) are the ones I seek out and re-read.
So how do you take an idea (either from your own head or from a writing prompt, or from some combination of the two) and make readers keep wondering about it long after they’ve stopped reading the words on the screen?
3. Ask Questions
If you start with in idea about a particular character or setting, next ask yourself “who cares?”. Who will be interested about a story about that character or setting?
Then ask “why”? What makes this situation different? What makes this person interesting?
For example, The Care And Feeding of Plants by Art Taylor, opens with two people who are having an affair, one is married, the other is not. Ho-hum, right? Except that “During one of their trysts…Robert told Felicia to bring her husband over for a Friday night cook-out.” Wait, what? DURING? What kind of people are these? I don’t know about you but I had to keep reading!
Next take your idea and ask yourself “if…then” questions.
In the example above the author might have asked himself: if the husband does come over, what could happen? If the wife refuses to invite him, then what happens? If the lover changes his mind, then what? Follow this line of reasoning down its most interesting, tangled alleys and see what you can come up with. (If you’re like me you’ll need to start writing round about now, because you’ll be too excited not to!)
4. Leave Gaps
Not literally (though maybe, depending on your story). But leave gaps, as in the six word short story above, and readers will start to ask the questions you leave lying around for them to find.
It might not be necessary to tell readers in the first sentence why your character is standing on a bridge, wind whipping her hair around her tear-stained face, one hand on the thin guide rail behind her. Just put her there and then make us care. You can supply the reasons (or not) later.
You might not need to walk through your character’s entire day to make poignant the moment when they walk through the front door of their home, mussed-up and frazzled.
Think about the minimum amount of information you can give the reader in order to pull them in, and keep them interested, yet still give them room to search for clues in the context as to what’s really going on in the story.
In “Orange” by Neil Gaiman, the entire story is told as a set of responses to questions that the reader never hears. Bob Newhart did a series of comedy sketches based on a one-sided phone call (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnO1lnPH3BQ). He never tells us what happens at 1:41, but I’ll bet you, along with the laughing audience, can guess. You can replicate these ideas or you can use them to remind yourself to leave some things unsaid in your stories, to draw the reader in.
5. Try Something New
If you always write narrative stories with a character encountering an obstacle that clashes with their desires/needs, take a break. Try something different. Instead, write a story made up only of dialogue, or in the form of a memo to the staff, or a series of social-media posts or voicemails.
Challenge yourself to create complete characters or illustrate an absurdity, without talking directly to the reader.
As you write, keep asking ‘what if’ and ‘so what’ questions of your ideas.
6. Getting Unstuck
There’s a point, somewhere in the middle of every story, where it’s very easy to get stuck.
You’ve set up the characters and the situation, but now you’re starting to get tired and the thought of fighting your way to the end (with all the digressions that crop up as you think of objections and things you’ve left out, and things you want to explain) is just too much to bear. (A bit like that sentence.)
At this point, we go back to the questions.
If you don’t know what should happen next, ask yourself: what does your character want? What is standing in her way? How can you make it worse? What is she not prepared to do? Can you force her to do it? How can you resolve the reader’s question of “does she get what she wants” as quickly as possible?
If you’re really stuck, simply finish your sentence then write the words “But then” Finish that sentence and write: “And so” Finish that sentence. Repeat as necessary. You can edit out these phrases and clean up the prose in the rewrite (what else do you have to do in June?), but sometimes a crude, structural approach forms the foundation of a what turns out to be a strong story.
7. Keep Writing
If you are really stuck, the only thing to do is to write. Not brainstorm. Not diagram. Not sketch ideas. And certainly not turn to the next, bright shiny idea.
Write your way out of the problem and get to the end of the story.
It’s a short story. What do you have to lose? No one dies if you get it wrong. No one even needs to see it. But by finishing it, you will have learned so much more than if you give up.
I promise you, from bitter, joyful, exhausted experience, this is the truth.
Use the tactics in this article to blast past your fear, push through the mushy middle, and get to the end of today’s story. It might be a mess. It might be the foundation of something great. It might be a complete mistake.
But the biggest mistake of all is to stop writing.
Fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living.
-Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide To Getting Lost
Tomorrow we talk about how the heck you keep doing this over and over again for 31 days in a row. With tips from past “winners” (Plus: how to be a winner even if you don’t write 31 stories)
At the end of this week I’ll be telling you about how you can get your hands onAvailable now a tool to help you sit down and write every day: the 2015 StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts ebook.
Today we’re taking tips from Marian Allen, author, publisher and repeat-StoryADay-participant.
StADa: When did you first participate in StoryADay May?
MA: I heard about StoryADayMay in 2013. I did 2013 and 2014 and I’m looking forward to 2015. ~cracks knuckles~
StADa:Tell us a little about your successes in the past few years.
MA: The first year, I posted this:
People sometimes ask where writers get their ideas. Listen: Getting the ideas is the easy part. Ideas fall like the gentle rain from heav’n upon the place beneath. It’s hooking an idea up with plot, theme, characters, setting, dialog, point of view, language, length, tone, and all the other things that turn an idea into a story that writing is all about.
So I have a big fat folder filled with false starts, snippets remembered from dreams, overheard conversations, random thoughts, and all sorts of “bits”. I plan to reach into that folder and grab a handful of “seeds” and make stories out of them.
That worked. The next year, I went around the house and took pictures of random things, like a globe, a box with a scene on the top, a bowl of rocks, a statue of two giraffes – really random. Those were my prompts.
I always do posts about cats on Caturday – I mean Saturday, or my cats post for me, so my Saturday stories always featured cats. On Sample Sunday, my stories were always about Holly Jahangiri because. Just because. Holly is a real person [A Matter of Perspective ], but twice she won contests I ran to have her name in a story, so now I write stories about her all the time.
StADa: How have you used StoryADay to help fuel your writing?
MA: I tend to write slllllllowwwwwwwwlllllyyyyyyyy, hammering out each word and sentence of a scene. StoryADay is even better than NaNoWriMo at making me turn off that pesky editor. I have to grab an idea and run with it. Knowing that I can do that keeps me from getting too bogged down in polishing when I ought to be knocking together a rough framework. Besides, it’s invigorating to just haul off and write a little story. Telling stories is fun!
StADa:What advice do you have for someone thinking about embarking on the challenge or longing to boost their creativity?
MA: Don’t pre-write. Don’t overthink. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work for you. Nothing is for everyone. Give it a try, though; turn off the editor and just let those inventive juices flow. Have fun with it. Think of the StoryADay stories as word doodles.
StADa:What’s next for you?
MA: I have a couple of novels I need to revise for reissue and many novels roughed out or unfinished. I’m putting together a couple more short story collections (including some from past Mays). I’m one of three partners in Per Bastet Publications, so there’s that to keep up with. Book signings. Family. Cats. Much to do!
But first – fun with StoryADay May!
Marian Allen writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, humor, horror, mainstream, and anything else she can wrestle into fixed form. Her latest books are the SAGE fantasy trilogy, her science fiction comedy of bad manners SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING, and her YA/NA paranormal suspense A DEAD GUY AT THE SUMMERHOUSE, all from Per Bastet Publications. She blogs daily at Marian Allen, Author Lady. Every. Single. Day.
StADa:When did you first participate in StoryADay?
I don’t remember exactly when I joined a Story A Day but it was likely close to the start of 2014. In 2013 I had begun exploring what was available in the wide world to support and encourage my new career direction as a writer and when I gave notice at my day job in December 2013 StoryADay was one of the important tools I used to keep me focussed as I took the scary, exciting, long overdue and challenging path.
StADa:Tell us a little about your success.
I had put aside my youthful dreams of being a published writer and paid artist when my first child came along and then life kind of got in the way and my dreams slipped way back into the dust covered depths of the internal storage of my mind.
When a life changing pivotal moment arose I finally embraced my inner creative and launched myself whole heartedly into becoming my dream.
I completed my first NaNoWriMo in November 2013, working a full time job, raising teens and participating in three other challenges as well, I managed to produce 104000 words, 36 pieces of art (SkaSaMo) and 41 picture book ideas (PiBoIsMo).
Then I joined social media groups for writing and art, paid subscriptions to organisations dedicated to supporting writers and artists and I looked for opportunities to challenge myself to write stories and then find homes for my stories.
Since my first camp Nano in April 2013 I have written and had published more than fifty pieces of fiction ranging from 500 word competition pieces and ezine contributions to 30k short stories and novellas. I have completed two novels 60k and 80k+ and begun five more novels. I have produced several hundred pieces of art and actually have a growing body of dedicated followers to my blog.
StADa:How have you used StoryADay to help fuel your writing?
At first I was lucky if I wrote 200 words a day so I needed fuel for story ideas and some form of prod to keep me focussed. StoryADay provided me with a lot of good ideas for generating flash fiction. StoryADay has a great deal to offer in terms of prompts and advice and I found this to be terrific for churning up the creative juices, especially when I have been stuck.
StADa:What advice do you have for someone thinking about embarking on the challenge or longing to boost their creativity?
There are so many opportunities and I have found the creative community is a generous and supportive one world wide.
Use what you find out there and make it fit in your life. Whatever time you can dedicate to your dream there is bound to be someone out there with just the right bit of advice for you at a price you can afford. There is a lot of free information- find it and share it.
Set aside fifteen minutes a day and write.
Thinking about your story counts as writing but at some point you need to transfer the words from your head to the page or you will lose them.
Keep a note book handy and jot down ideas, snippets of conversations you overhear, interesting thoughts.
Don’t give yourself a hard time if you don’t write. When you decide the time is right to write you will dedicate the time and effort to it that you give your other day job (that includes parenting). Remember that some of the best writers in the world did not start their writing careers until they had raised their kids and filled their memories with incredible experiences to draw on.
It takes a long time to become an overnight success and the money doesn’t roll in quickly but don’t give up because your story could change the world or even just one persons life so write it. Oh and writing 104000 words in a month while doing all those other things is stupid crazy and caused me to strain my eyes to the point of needing reading glasses, plus swollen ankles, a sore back and no housework done for a month.
It was worth it and I learned to be a little less obsessed and a bit more level headed. The most I have written in a month since then is 56k.
StADa:What’s next for you?
I have been working on prioritising my online time and increasing my actual writing time. It is way too easy to spend too much time in social media groups to the detriment of the word count. I joined a class to learn how to plan my novels more efficiently. I am attending conferences this year for Romance writers, SCBWI(kids books) and finding writers festivals to attend.
After having 30 anthology pieces published I am no longer submitting to small press as most small press pay nothing and I want to be paid for my work. I intend finishing at least two novels this year.
I have had a brief break from my art due to moving house and intend making art daily once we settle in again. My goal is to have my first full length novel under contract this year.
Cecilia A. Clark is a writer and an artist. She has been a chef, disability carer, teacher, farm worker, foster parent and props master plus so much more. She has volunteered for dozens of organisations, had children, coached public speaking and lived. She is curious. Shecan be found online at her blog, Goodreads, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.
I’m exhausted just reading all that. Good luck, Cecilia! I expect to see your novel under contract soon! – Julie
Yesterday we talked about how to decide what you’re supposed to be writing. You can read it here, but the big lesson was: write a lot. Try new stuff. Don’t let your inner-anti-cheerleader stop you.
Well that’s all very well, but what if your life is busy? When are you supposed to find the time, not to mention the discipline, to sit down and write?
The Lie That You Can Find Time To Write
You can’t.
No one finds time to write. Or to play the guitar. Or to be a rockstar. Or to be a successful investor.
You make time.
Everyone successful, fulfilled person who ever lived, made time for the thing that was important to them.
Justifying The Time
I could give you all kinds of tips for scraping together some free time to write (delegate chores, turn off the TV, say no to invitations to go out) but that’s not the hard part.
The Hard Part
The hard part is convincing yourself that you are allowed to take the time to write.
Writing is personal. You do it alone. You don’t look like you’re working hard. You look like you’re surfing the internet or sulking in your bedroom or shirking your responsibilities.
Worse still, you might feel that way inside.
But I’m here to tell you: if you want to write, you must write.
When you’re writing, no matter how hard it is, you are more truly yourself than at any other time.
And when you finish a writing session, no matter how exhausted or wrung-out you feel, the rest of your life seems just a little bit easier. You are fulfilled. Your mind is clear. You have a sense of achievement. You are a better person when you’re writing.
And that’s the real payoff.
Not internet celebrity. Not publishing contracts. Not the legions of fans. Not the multi-millions in movie-rights sales.
The actual payoff for writing is that you are happier.
Which makes you a better person to be around.
Convince Yourself, Convince Your Crew
You have to try this for yourself to really experience it. And once you have, feel free to point it out to the people around you. If they’re smart, they’ll become accomplices in making time for you to write. If you keep at it long enough, there will come a day when you’re rampaging around the house barking at everyone and, instead of barking back, one smart housemate will say, “Hey, why don’t you go and grab a notebook. You need to be writing.”
Trust me. It happens. And if it doesn’t, perhaps you need to surround yourself with smarter, kinder people.
Resources
Here are some resources to help you convince yourself that your writing is not only important but vital to your continued existence — and some suggestions on how to overcome three common obstacles.
If you’re wondering why you can’t get anything written when you’re setting aside a whole 20 minutes every lunchtime, watch this video from John Cleese. It’s his process for being creative. There may be times when 20 minutes can be productive for you, but there are other times when you will need to listen to Mr Cleese’s advice. https://vimeo.com/89936101
If you can’t get past the suckiness of your first drafts, you need to watch this interview with Ira Glass (again). I get the impression he’s a bit bemused that this is rapidly becoming what he’s most famous for, but it’s because it is so very, very true. (Hint: You need to write a lot!) https://youtu.be/PbC4gqZGPSY
If you don’t believe me that your art is worth doing for its own sake (for your sake), then you need to watch this talk by last year’s StoryADay Guest of Honor, Neil Gaiman. Watch it now. https://youtu.be/ikAb-NYkseI
When The Pencil Meets The Paper
Of course, having bought yourself time to write, doesn’t make it go easily.
If I’ve convinced you that you need to write a lot and that you need to make time for your writing, your next question is probably going to be: but how do I turn all this time and dedication into actual stories?
Tomorrow we’ll talk about The Care and Feeding of Ideas, and how to turn those ideas into fully-fledged story drafts.
Until then: do you have a friend who’s always talking about wanting to write, but never quite getting around to it? Why not share this post with that person? Maybe, between the two of us, we can get them to where they need to be and you two can spend blissful afternoons on writing dates, instead of kvetching about how much writing you’re not doing. Share this now!
This week I’m posting a series designed to help you through the emotionally-charged business of deciding whether or not to commit to writing a StoryADay in May this year.
(Actually it may not be emotionally charged for you. Maybe you already know ‘heck-yeah, I’m onboard’ or you’re sure you can’t/won’t/don’t need to take part this year. Good for you. Also, you’ll probably still enjoy the series. You just get to read it without the angst!)
Then I’ll be telling you all about how you can get your virtual paws on all my writing prompts for StoryADay May before it even begins!
How To Decide What To Write
You feel, in your gut, that you should be writing. You know it’s something you want to do. But how do you know what you’re supposed to be writing?
To non-writers, that sounds like a stupid question. Have you ever tried talking to a non-writer about this?
You: “I want to write but I don’t know what to write.”
Them: “Can’t you just, like, write about a wizard or some vampires or a sex-crazed billionaire and become a best-seller and split the profits with me? Can I start planning our round the world cruise for next year?”
Or, more likely.
You: I want to write but I don’t know what to write.
Them: So stop whining and do it. ‘K?
But what should you be writing?
The problem is you could be writing about ANYTHING. And that’s paralyzing. You know you need to pick something, but what?
And The Answer Is…
I don’t know.
I don’t know you. I mean, on some level I kind of do, because you’re probably a bit like me: someone who thinks a lot, worries about other people’s feelings, and finds yourself standing in the middle of the kitchen with the phone ringing and no idea why you’re there but you know that damned phone has just interrupted the Best. Daydream. Ever. And that if you could just get some time to write it down you’d be happy and fulfilled and probably rich and famous to boot.
But on another level I really don’t know you. I don’t know what you like. I don’t know what matters to you. I don’t know what gets you so wound up you stay up all night blogging or researching or fretting about it. I don’t know what makes you laugh, or what you love to read, or what kind of writing makes you throw books across the room (then pick them up and smooth out the cover apologetically because, hey, it might be terrible, but it’s still a book, you know?)
I don’t know who your favorite writers are; what genre you couldn’t live without; what you like in a hero; what you love in a villain; whether a galloping plot or deep introspection is more important to you; whether you like a happy ending or prefer something that feels more like real life.
But oh, look. I just gave you a list of things you might use to find a way into writing your own stories.
(If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend digging out your copy of the Creative Challenge Workbook. It walks you through a lot of this and helps you build a roadmap for the future. You can download another copy here if you need to.)
The Big Secret…That Isn’t Really A Secret
Here’s the thing. Even with all of that information you’ve just gathered about yourself, there’s no way to be sure what you should be writing until you…yup, sit down and write.
The best and only way to find your way to your best style/topic/length/tone is to try everything.
Write A Lot, Write Quickly, Finish Everything
How StoryADay Can Help
How many stories did you write last month? How many last year? What did you learn from writing them? Do you even remember? I know I don’t. (I do remember for 2013 though. 2013 was a good year. I wrote a lot in 2013 and I learned a ton!)
Trust me when I tell you: if you write and finish even 20, even 12 stories in on month you will win so much more than bragging rights. You’ll win a free pass into the Secret Society of I’ve-Discovered-What-I-Want-To-Write.
Write Quickly To Defeat Your Inner-Anti-Cheerleader
Writing quickly and writing every day over a sustained period exhausts your inner-anti-cheerleader.
Sure, on the first day, she’s all perky and energetic. She jumps up and down telling you how worthless you are and how you can’t write and you shouldn’t try.
But your anti-cheerleader thrives on attention. When you turn your back on her and start writing, she can shake her pompoms all she likes, but she can’t really do anything more than distract you and make things difficult.
The next day, she’s looking a little less fresh. Maybe her hair’s not quite as neat. Maybe her jump-kicks are a little sloppy. She’s still trying, but you turn your back on her and ignore her once again.
By the fourth day, she’s getting frantic. Frankly, she’s a mess. Her eyeliner’s smudged and her hair’s all poufy, and the only reason her pompoms are shaking at all is because of her rage that you’re ignoring her.
You’ll think you’ve defeated her, but beware: she’s going to rest up for a few days and let you think she’s gone, but really she’s just waiting for you to get tired. Somewhere in the second week of your writing surge, she’s back: revitalized and vengeful. Don’t listen to her. Keep going. This is where you pull out the big guns:
Finish Everything
There is a power in finishing stories that you need to experience for yourself. I can tell you about it but you won’t believe me until you do it.
Finishing teaches you what each story is about.
Finishing shows you that you’re not a terrible writer, no matter how desperate you felt in the muddy middle of your story.
Finishing gives you a first draft you can revise.
Finishing each story gives you a biochemical surge that triggers your brain’s reward centers and makes it more likely you’ll finish the next.
And sitting down, every day*, to start the next story is what defeats your inner-anti-cheerleader. The routine of it tells her firmly that you are going to ignore her again today. She can’t stand up against that kind of ritual snubbing.
(*’Every day’ doesn’t mean ‘every day’. But having a routine is a powerful thing. More about that later this week…)
It’s all very well for me to tell you to sit down to write every day, but what about the rest of your life? You have responsibilities, right? People who rely on you? Deadlines and obligations unrelated to your writing. How on earth are you supposed to find time to write as well?
Stay Tuned
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the big lie in that question, along with a shift in thinking that will allow you to make your writing a priority at long last.
Make sure you’re on the Advance Notice list (check the “Creativity Lab” group option to make sure you receive this series every day), or check out the blog tomorrow to find out how to justify your writing time to friends, family and yourself.
At the end of this week I’ll be telling you about how you can get your hands on a tool to help you sit down and write every day: the 2015 StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts ebook.
P.S. If you found this useful, why not forward it to a friend? You know, that friend that’s always saying they want to write, but never actually does…
Imagine a correspondence between two writers, one whose writing you admire, one whose writing you loathe. What would your favorite writer pick up on, in the writing or reputation of the other, to criticize. What style would he/she use?
Write an insulting letter to someone who regularly annoys you or someone who picked on you at school. Banish compassion. Write it with style, wit and ruthlessness. Be clever, artistic, snide. Have (guilty) fun.
Write a rebuttal of an imagined unfavorable review of your work. Be sure to point out the critic’s shortcomings in the most colorful, inventive language you can, but challenge yourself to keep it fit for print (no profanity).
Damn someone with faint praise.
Create a rich picture in your head of each of the characters in your story (insulter and insultee). Allow their personalities to shine through you words.
Yesterday’s Reading Room story started out with magnificent metaphors and then flipped to a story about a suburban guy. It brought back the metaphor at the end.
It was an extreme example and tough to pull off (I’m still not sure it entirely worked), but today we’re going to try something similar.
The Prompt
Start a story with a vivid image and weave the metaphor throughout the story
Tips
You still have to make this story about a character. Think of something that matters to your character and create the metaphor/story imagery from that. (e.g. if your character gardens, all the metaphors could be horticultural)
You can weave the tie-in metaphors throughout the story or, like the Reading Room story, start with a vivid image and come back to it only at the end.
Try to dig deeply, and go beyond the obvious, clichéd metaphors. I worked with a reporter on a weekly newspaper who would open a file and think of all the puns and metaphors he could, on a particular topic, before he started writing an article. The top of every file he wrote was a groan-fest! Try creating your own list of imagery before you start to write, to help yourself push past the cliché.
“Dip your foot in the water and here’s what you’re playing with: Xiphactinus, all angry underbite and knitting-needle teeth, with heads oddly humped and eyes enraged with accusation, and ribboned bodies so muscular they fracture coral heads when surging through to bust in on insufficiently alert pods of juvenile Clidastes. The Clidastes spin around to face an oncoming maw that’s in a perpetual state of homicidal resentment.”
Shepard takes us on a tour of the ‘monsters’ of the deep in the Cretaceous era and then, suddenly, the story swings into the modern day human world.
It’s disorienting and not at all what I was expecting. I was a little disappointed, to be honest. The writing in the first few paragraphs evoked a world unknown to me, with power and vivid images. It seemed to promise one thing and then veer away.
But as I read on, I was swept along on the language as we examined the life of one tortured middle-aged, suburban man. I didn’t much like him — I don’t think I was supposed to — but I did end up having some sympathy for him.
And the language…wow.
I had to go back and read the story again to figure out what the heck happened when we switched from the Cretaceous to modern suburbia, but that was OK because I wanted to.
I read the story without the introduction found online, which made it even more disorientating, but see what you think:
Does a story have to have conflict? Does it have to have a beginning and a middle and an end? Perhaps not.
Lydia Davis’ story “Can’t And Won’t” is pages of complaints about life:
My sheets get all twisted in the dryer.
The carrot cake was a little stale.
When I toast the raisin bread, the raisins get very hot.
The bridge of my nose is a little dry.
I’m sleepy, but I can’t lie down.
The sound system in the examining room playing folk music.
I don’t look forward very much to that sandwich.
There is a new weatherman on the radio.
Now that the leaves are off the trees we can see the neighbors’ new deck…
There is no ‘happening’, no crisis, no rising action, but do you get a sense of character? I do.
What is a story if not a portrait of a character or characters?
The Prompt
Write A Non-Narrative Short Story That Allows The Reader To Experience Another Character’s Life
Tips
You can copy Lydia Davies’s idea and write a story of complaints. Make sure all the complaints belong to one, very specific character. (They can be like you, or unlike you. It can be a secret portrait of your annoying coworker, your ex-mother-in-law, your little brother…) [remember, this is an exercise. If you decide to publish this, you might want to credit Davis as the inspiration!]
This story won multiple awards in 2013 for Best Short Story and I can see why.
The Care And Feeding of Houseplants is crime fiction, though it’s not clear for a very long time where and when the crime is going to come in…but I didn’t care because the writing was so engaging.
As is often the case in mysteries, the passion at the heart of the story is all about infidelity. As in Thea’s First Husband the husband is complicit in his wife’s decision to stray. Unlike that story, however, this tale is visceral and full of raw imagery. Information is doled out during the story, rather in great gobs of ‘telling’.
In this story we really get inside three out of the four characters’ heads, even when not narrated from their viewpoint: the way the lover views his conquest’s “beige linen business suit…folded carefully across a chair by his bedroom window’ tells us as much about her character as about his self-congratulatory tendencies; the wife comments on her husband’s character during their courtship, saying “He’d brought her an orchid for their first date. He’d typed up tips for taking care of it”, which speaks volumes about both the husband who did these things and herself, who noticed.
I really enjoyed this story. It was more than a mystery, more than a crime: it was a story that pulled me along from the start to the deliciously dark ‘reveal’ near the end. I was, if you’ll pardon the pun, rooting for and against the characters exactly as the author intended, and I loved every minute of it.
When I was ten or eleven years old, our teacher marched us over to the cafa-gym-itorium (didn’t your school have one of those?) and sat us down in front of the rolling cart that held (hooray!) the TV set.
The film they showed us featured a tumble weed. There was no dialogue, just a stirring score that swooped and whispered as the tumbleweed rolled through its day. First it rolled down a deserted street and across an open plain. Then it started to have adventures. It was nibbled by animals, it got stuck on a fence and, in a climax that had the whole class gasping and biting our nails, it had a run-in with an 18 wheeler. We were sure it had been destroyed. Silence fell in the huge room as 26 preteens stopped fidgeting and tried to make sense of our feelings of loss. Then, oh joy, the tumbleweed rolled across the now-empty road and we all cheered.
Why did we care, asked our teacher. We all shrugged, a little embarrassed, as the spell broke and we realized we had been rooting for a bundle of twigs.
“That,” pointed out our smug teacher, “Is called ‘personification’.”
More than 30 years later, I still remember the experience and the discovery.
This week, the NASA Dawn Spacecraft settled into orbit around Ceres, a dwarf planet in our solar system’s asteroid belt. Imagine what it’s like. Could you imbue Dawn with a personality and report back for us?
What other object catches your interest?
Decide whether or not you will tell the story in the third person (as in my tumbleweed story) or the first person.
If you work in the third person you can decide to have your object pass through the hands of several people or you can observe the object and anthropomorphism your narration, to give it life.
If you work in first person, you can have a lot of fun figuring out what characteristics such a thing could possess. (Think of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Cogsworth, the butler-turned-clock is, in his own words, a bit ‘wound up’)
“Thea’s First Husband” was first published in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and went on to be nominated for Macavity and Agatha Awards
The story is narrated by a woman who seemed to have won the lottery: plucked from behind a bar to marry an older, wealthy man who showers her with gifts and insists she not work any more. Of course, things start to go wrong as the bloom goes off their romance and Edward begins to invite younger men home…for Thea. Eventually she discovers Edward has hired a private detective to follow her around. What will Thea do next?
I was a little impatient with the amount of backstory and exposition the narrator dumped on us at the start of the story and again as the climax was being set up. It wasn’t badly done, it just seemed like the kind of thing all the writing advice columns in the world tell you not to do at all. I did, however, find myself kind of warming to Thea as she went through her dead-eyed days as a trophy wife.
I particularly liked the explanation of her motivation for staying in this loveless marriage. It was nothing dramatic: simply that she was tired of struggling and it was nice to be rich. It was a good reminder that ‘conflict’ in a story—even in crime fiction, which this is—doesn’t have to be dramatic or high-adventure. It can be ordinary and everyday and not remotely noble, as long as it is treated honestly.
I’ve read this story on two different occasions now and didn’t remember the ending, or much about it. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
I was a little surprised this was nominated for awards. It was solid. It didn’t wow me. But apparently it’s good enough to be nominated, so I definitely recommend taking a look.
Today’s exercise is designed to help you see that you CAN write, even when you think you don’t have time. Take 30 minutes today to write a complete story. Here’s how…
Sometimes life gets in the way of writing. We must find ways to work in a time-crunch.
Today’s exercise is designed to help you see that you CAN write, even when you think you don’t have time.
The Prompt
Write A Story In 30 Minutes
Tips
Turn your phone off, mute your email, hang a signon the door, put on huge silly headphones. Do whatever you need to do, carve out 30 minutes today to Just Write.
Use only 30 minutes, start to finish, brainstorming to ‘the end’.
Set a stopwatch. Take seven minutes to brainstorm. Think of a character. Give him/her a problem/desire. Pick a reason why solving this problem/achieving this desire causes them extreme heartache/peril (examples: Wesley loves Buttercup but is too poor to woo her. Becoming good for her means risking being murdered by pirates, a prince and a rodent of unusual size. A bookworm’s heart’s desire is simply to read, but his wife thinks its a waste of time so he can’t read at home; and his boss threatens to fire him if he catches him reading at work.)
Pick a good opening line that sums up the character and the problem. (“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” – J.D Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye)
You should be at about 10 minutes into your time now. Spend the next 15 minutes getting to the meat of the problem, throwing complications at your character, and having him start to try to resolve them. Fail at least once. (If it’s an interior kind of story, you can let that failure be ‘temptation to give up’)
Five minutes to go! At some point in the past 15 minutes your character should have started to tell you how the story should end. Tie up the last challenge you gave them and move immediately to the ending. Two sentences. Don’t worry about connecting the middle to the ending just yet. That’s what rewrites are for. Just write “[connecting stuff]” and move on to the end.
There. Didn’t that feel good?
What you have in front of you is likely not a complete short story. It’s a sketchy first draft. But it’s a sketchy first draft that moves. It has an interesting character. It has action. It has a sense that it’s going somewhere, and it has and ending.
Now you have a draft you can rework. Add a few lines to help clarify setting and description for the reader, if it’s that kind of story. Change some of your ‘info dump’ paragraphs to dialogue and move them to earlier/later in the story. Expand or delete details. Figure out your theme and how you can (subtly) strengthen it.
Do this, and I think you’ll have a pretty good story. All from taking 30 minutes to squeeze a little short story writing into your day.
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About Phil Guinta
About Meg Wolfe
About Joe R. Lansdale
The Prompt
Are you familiar with the 
I’m not giving you a topic or a character or telling you where to set your story. I’m giving you a way into a story.
