[Reading Room] Victory Lap by George Saunders


OK, so everyone’s been raving about this collection, The Tenth of December by George Saunders.

I’m such a skeptic about hype that it was with some trepidation that I plunked down my money and opened the book.

But: wow. If the first story is anything to go on, this is going to be one fabulous collection.

Victory Lap is a supreme example of ‘show, don’t tell’. If you’ve ever wondered what that piece of well-worn advice means, run to your bookshelf and grab this (you probably bought it when people were first raving about it instead of,  like me, pretending to be too cool).

The story starts in the voice of a fourteen year old girl who is coming down the stairs in her house, consumed with her own, fourteen-year-old fantasies of herself: still childlike but on the verge of adult-issues. It so thoroughly captures the inner voice of a teenage girl that it is disorienting, but you adjust quite quickly.

Just as you’re getting comfortable with this voice, it switches into the head of the boy next door, who our hero has spotted through the window, just before the inciting incident of the story.

The boy next door is equally well-realized, equally complex and oh, so painfully awkward. Told only in his inner thoughts, the author builds up a picture of his home-life: the only child of extremely protective, ambitious and unbearable parents; a good boy whose parents are (perhaps unwittingly) perverting that goodness.

I defy you to read this story and not root for the two kids; not have your blood run cold at the thought of what might happen if things don’t go the way you fervently hope they will. Aargh!

 

Not only does Saunders get right inside the heads of these kids, he brings you along, shows so much without once ‘telling’, and makes you empathize to the point that you’re thinking dark thoughts about what you’ll do to the author if things don’t turn out ‘right’ (or was that just me?).

 

And that, my friends, is the mark of an excellent story: suck the reader in, make them care, don’t spoon feed them the details, make something happen; make it matter; raise the stakes; write an ending that forces the reader to go on thinking about the ramifications of the events in the story for your characters, long after they’ve finished the story.

Oh, and go and buy a copy of this collection if you haven’t already!

 

A Month Of Writing Prompts – The eBook!

writingprompts2014coverlarge

A Month Of Writing Prompts 2014


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


[Write On Wednesday] Third Grade Word List

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

spooky shed image
“Waiting” by José María Pérez Nuñez

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

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

And now it’s your turn.

The Prompt

Write a story using the following words:

[Write On Wednesday] The Catalogue Of Disasters

Write A Story Featuring An Escalating Catalogue Of Disasters

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

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

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

The Prompt

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

Tips

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

Go!

Photo: Barry Skeates

[Reading Room] Golden by James Scott Bell


Author James Scott Bell, as well as being a successful lawyer, novelist and writing coach, has been a good friend to StoryADay (giving us both an interview and a writing prompt for last year’s StoryADay May).

So of course, I wanted to like his new story, which veers from his usual style. No mysteries here, no fast-paced action, just the story of a guy dealing with the legacy of something in his past that he’s not proud of.

Writing (and publishing) this story was a big leap for Bell (as he explained when he announced it). he was nervous. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever written before and he was worried that he might fall flat on his face.

Don’t you feel like that, a lot of the time when you sit down to write? I know I do.

So I went into this story wanting to like it. but I wasn’t sure I was going to. I mean, what do I care about a middle-aged, middle-class divorced father on a playdate with his son?

Well, Bell quickly made me care. He does it by using all the craft available to him. Within the first paragraph I’ve learned a lot about the guy, his divorce, the ex-wife. Look how much information he packs into sentences 3 & $ of the story — and not just information, but attitude, character background, exposition, the whole shebang:

“Judy and I reached an amicable settlement on custody, mainly because I didn’t want to fight her anymore. Her family is well off and were not shy about retaining the biggest shark tank in L. A.”

The story is about more than just a bitter divorcé, though. Rather it is about a father reliving something that happened when he was a kid, a little older than his son.

One of the things I noticed about this story (and all of Bell’s writing) is the strength of the narrator’s voice when he’s writing in first person. It is always dipping with character, attitude and is firmly rooted in wherever the character is from (usually L. A.). In this story, even when he takes the character back in time to his teenage years, the voice is distinctive and unmistakably the voice of a teen,

“That’s what got him in bad with Robbie Winkleblack…”

“I ran away, too, but I wasn’t laughing. I was thinking it was all over for me now. I’d be kicked out of school, maybe thrown into juvie.”

How can you make readers care about your characters whether or not they think they are going to?

Read James Scott Bell’s article on why he wrote this and why short stories are so awesome

[Write on Wednesday] Eons

Write a story that takes place over eons

Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520
Source: Hubblesite.org

Last week we talked about writing a story in the moment before a car crash: everything in the story took place during a few seconds in the brain of your main character. This week we’re going to the opposite extreme

The Prompt

Write A Story That Takes Place Over Eons

(or just a really long time)

Tips

  • Obviously, since humans don’t live for eons, you’re going to have to choose something else as the thing that provides continuity in this story: it might be a location on the earth; a multi-generational spaceship crew traveling through unimaginable reaches of space; an alien; a centuries-old mollusk; a tree.
  • You can write a narrative story if you like, but this might lend itself to some different forms: letters, tweets, journal entries, a string of news articles; a faux-holy book written in different styles in different eras. Have fun with this.
  • Thing big thoughts. Eons give you a lot of scope to investigate big ideas.
  • Don’t make the story too long. Big ideas don’t necessarily mean high word count.
  • Don’t forget to include small details, mundane moments, things your readers can hang their emotions on.

Go!

[Reading Room] There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

A house stands alone in a post-nuclear-strike landscape. It is one of those Tomorrowland kind of houses that people dreamed of in the 1950s: the stove is cooking eggs and bacon, the mice-robots are scurrying out to clean, the automatic systems are trying to entertain the absent occupants. Absent? Yes, and we find out what happened to those occupants in a shocking moment that is less shocking nowadays, because we’ve seen it before. But Bradbury was writing when these ideas and fears were new.

The story continues without a single human in it and yet it we come to know the former occupants of the house, their culture and also the character of the house.

Dig Deep And Find Your Unique Voice

Ray Bradbury’s writing is deeply poetic and thoroughly unique. It is a wonderful example of how you can find your voice only be being unapologetically yourself. Written by anyone else, this kind of lyrical writing would be overblown and possibly embarrassing. In Bradbury’s handling, it is just….well, Bradbury.

How To Write A Story Without A Human Protagonist

It’s also a wonderful example of how you can write a story without a traditional protagonist and yet still have a character.

In this story the house is definitely the protagonist, if a protagonist’s job is to guide us through a story and show us a new world in a new way. The house in this story is very much that protagonist. It tells us about the world that humanity has created for itself. It tells us what we have done to ourselves and points out the folly of the story’s human race: concentrating all its creative energies on making gadgets to make life comfortable instead of on solving the looming nuclear threat.

The story has secondary characters too: the family that lived in the house and the former household pet (who play the classic ‘secondary character role’ by being referenced in the story only when they contribute something to our understanding of the protagonist — in this case, the house).

Read the story here.

[Write On Wednesday] Time Slowed Down

Write A Prompt In The Moment Before An Accident

car crash 1

You know that old cliché: time slowed?

Well, if you’ve ever been in a car crash or any kind of accident, you’ll know exactly what that means: the amygdala (the seat of emotion in your brain) kicks in and calmly starts recording every detail. When you go back over your memories, the moment will seem to have lasted at least 30% longer than it actually could have.

The way to recreate this in fiction Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Time Slowed Down”

[Write On Wednesday] Give Us A Hint


Yesterday I wrote about “Hint Fiction”, a book of stories told in fewer than 25 words.

The Prompt

Write A Story In No More Than 25 Words

Tips

    • Remember that, in short fiction, you are collaborating with the reader. Make them supply a lot of the detail by leaving spaces for their imaginations to fill.
    • Feel free to write a longer story first and cut it down
    • Don’t expect this to be easy or quick: 25 words is almost nothing!
    • Read this review of the book Hint Fiction to see some examples of how this can be done well.
    • Choose a moment that has some ambiguity in it.
    • Make the title count.

Here’s mine:
The Moment That Altered The Course Of Her Life

Her arm, casually draped across his chest, felt a sudden, pounding footrace: his brain vainly chasing the escaping heart-words. Her pause, a lifetime. Then: yes.

Go!

[Reading Room] Hint Fiction

UPDATE: Hint Fiction is launching a second anthology: deadline April 30, 2014 (thanks to Flash Fiction Chronicles for the update)

This week I bring you not a story but a collection of stories.

However, each story is only 25 words long.

In the introduction, editor Robert Swartwood says that short fiction,

“…should be complete by standing by itself as its own little world”

Here’s one of my favorite stories in the collection:

“Jermaine’s Postscript to His Seventh-Grade Poem Assignment,” by Christoffer Molnar.

 

“Ms. Tyler, the girl part was about Shantell. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Writing a 25 word story seems like it would be easy, but reading through the more-and-less successful stories in this collection three things stood out

  1. A lot of thinking goes into a short story
  2. Creating a compelling main character is essential if you’re not going for the quick, humorous, punch-line story.
  3. Finding ways to do that in so few words is a fascinating challenge.

To distill the essence of a moment, a person, an interaction, down to 25 words takes a lot of effort and these writers have done an amazing job!

Kind of makes you want to try it, doesn’t it?

[Write On Wednesday] The Glitterati

Writing prompt: what if a bunch of glamorous and exciting people came to your podunk hometown?

Paparazzi

Does your everyday life seem pretty unglamorous? What about your town?

What if you walked down the street one morning and discovered that a whole bunch of glamorous, exciting people had come to town for a spell?

The Prompt

Write a story about a small town invaded by glamorous/exciting people

Tips

The exciting people could be movie or pop stars on a location shoot, or high-profile politicians in town for a rally, or scientists flocking to study an unnatural phenomenon (think: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver), just as long as it upsets the status quo.

Who are they? Why are they there? Who do they meet?

What do the local people think about all this?

What does your main character feel about them at the start of the story? At the end?

Who learns something from this visit? What?

Also, if you have only ever lived somewhere exciting, seeing celebrities at every coffee counter, write instead about someone really ordinary coming into a situation filled with glamour. Ask the same questions as above?

Go!

[Reading Room] Flax-Golden Tales by Erin Morgenstern

Flax-Golden Morgenstern
Every Friday Erin Morgenstern (author of The Night Circus) posts a Flax-Golden Tale: a ten-sentence story inspired by a photograph by Colin Farrell.

The stories themselves range from quirky to thought-provoking to funny and back again. Often the story gives a character to an inanimate object. The narrator’s voice is always strong. The writing is poetic, concise, efficient and a great model for how you might approach a short-short story, yourself.

 Steal From Erin Morgenstern!

Not the words. (That would be plagiarism and that would be bad.) But we can learn from her practice.

  1. She is doing it week after week after week, which is both challenging and freeing. Knowing she doesn’t have to get it right this week (because there is always next week) must be freeing, even as having a weekly deadline is challenging.
  2. The ten-sentence format is wonderful. Knowing that she has to write ten sentences every time removes one of the many, many decisions a writer must face when sitting down to create something out of nothing (and decisions are often barriers to ‘getting stuff done’). Ten sentences is just enough space to tell a tale, but not so much that you get bogged down or lost. It is not intimidating. Setting small goals (except for during May, of course!) is a valid path towards success and fulfillment.
  3. She is doing this for fun and for practice. She seems to have no desire to write these for publication, other than to post them, free, on her site (and I suspect that’s more about commitment and accountability than anything else). Writing for the love of it is something easily lost once you start practicing (and reading websites that urge to to publish, Publish, PUBLISH!)
  4. This is a collaboration. Every week the photographer in the partnership has committed to providing a picture. Every week the writer writes a story. If one of them is having a bad week, their commitment to the other artist is a wonderful incentive to work, instead of waiting for inspiration (or putting off the act until ‘someday’).

What about you? Could you commit to a writing exercise like this? What would yours look like? Would you work with a collaborator? Leave a comment->

[Write On Wednesday] Misunderstood

Write a open letter from a misunderstood character

Paris Traffic Wardens

Nobody loves the traffic warden. Or the referee. Or the person who tells you that yes, it’s going to be a root canal. But these people are, well, people, aren’t they?

The Prompt

Write an open letter to the world from an unloved character

Tips

  • You can use one of society’s whipping boys, such as the traffic warden, or you can use a fictional character (such as the witch from Hansel and Gretel — try to stick to characters that are in the public domain if you’re going to publish/post this anywhere)
  • The story can be a ‘day in the life’ story, where we *see* the character in a more sympathetic way, if you don’t fancy the idea of the open letter format.
  • The open letter could be in the form of a list of things we didn’t know about the maligned character or it could be an impassioned defense of their kind.
  • The character can be sad, angry, arrogant, pleading…whatever seems right.

Go!

Making Time To Write – Success Stories

I find it useful to read case studies from people who have actually WRITTEN books (and possibly had them published and worked on a sequel). Theory is all very well, but hearing from someone who has actually done it? Much more inspiring. They also tend to be more passionate, less forgiving and much, much more practical.

clock face image
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash

 

Here are a bunch of articles from working writers who answer the second-most-asked question they hear. [1. The first, of course, being “where do you get your ideas?”]

Jon Scalzi is a speculative fiction writer, Hugo award winner and creative consultant on the SyFy Network’s Stargate: Universe. He wrote an energetic answer to the time question which includes this choice paragraph,

There are lots of things I think I’d like to do, and yet if I don’t actually make the time and effort to do them, they don’t get done. This is why I don’t have an acting career, or am a musician — because as much as I’d like those, I somehow stubbornly don’t actually do the things I need to do in order to achieve them. So I guess in really fundamental way I don’t want them, otherwise I’d make the time. C’est la vie.

Jackie Kessler has written 12 novels (not all of them published, but hey, that’s a lot of writing time) and refuses to apologize for taking time to write [link no longer valid].

Screenwriter John August shares his work-a-day experience of becoming a professional writer. (“my general point is that you need to actively clear time in your day to write, which means giving up something.”) It’s not sexy, but it worked.

Jane Friedman talks about what it takes to make time to write.

Chip Scanlan talks about writing in small chunks, lowering your standards, rejecting the Soup Nazi.

And to finish things off for today:

Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn (@creativepenn on Twitter) shares this personal story, which debunks the ‘if I only had time’ myth a bit:

I once decided that I needed time to write my book. I had some money from the sale of my house, took 3 months off and tried to write every day. It didn’t work. I didn’t have anything to show for it, and went back to work disheartened at my inability to write. It was 4 years until I actually decided to try again.

Then I wrote “How to Enjoy Your Job” in 9 months of evenings, weekends and days off while working fulltime.”.

You can find the time – you just need to re-prioritise!

 

 

[updated 3/3/2020 with corrected and new links]

[Write On Wednesday] The Irritable Author

Write a story in which the main character acts on something that really irritates YOU

“Don’t you just wish…”

Have you ever said those words when something has really, REALLY irritated you?

Imagine what would happen if you followed through on all those little revenge-daydreams you have after someone scratches your car/talks incessantly on their phone in the library/dogears the corners of Volume 4 of your collectable edition of The Sandman 10 Volume Slipcase Set…

The Prompt

Write A Revenge-Fantasy Story

Pick something that really irritates you and write about a character who actually DOES the things you can only dream of doing (as a respectable member of a mostly-functional society).

Tips

  • Read the opening chapters of Rest You Merry by Charlotte McLeod. It starts when mild-mannered professor Peter Shandy finally snaps after being pressured to decorate his home for the annual college Christmas ‘Illuminations’. It’s deliciously hilarious.
  • Pick something that really gets under your own skin, the more mundane the better. (It will allow you to be more creative in your revenge!)
  • Show us the moment when your character snaps. Give us the physical and mental fugue-state breaking point. Remember not to tell us “he was so angry he couldn’t speak”, but to instead describe the pounding in his veins, the way his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. Slow down time with the details, then let ’er rip!

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Sidelong Glances

Having trouble finishing your stories? Try this technique…

I once read an article that suggested it’s easier to talk to men/boys when you’re doing something else at the same time than by trying to sit down and have a deep and meaningful conversation with them.

[Update from 10 years after I wrote this post: Gender politics aside, this observation turned out to be super-valuable as I negotiated the tightrope walk of ‘raising’ teenagers. The conversations we had in the car, while not-looking-at-each-other have been some of the most, ah, enlightening!]

Some serious research hours went into this study that showed men (and I assume some women) find it easier to have more meaningful conversations when engaged in an activity together, than if encouraged to sit and talk things out.

Maybe they’re hiding something, or maybe they’ve just been socialized to believe feelings are icky.

Either way, it struck me that this is perfect guidance for writers: assume your characters are always hiding something (from themselves or others). Write your scenes with them as if you were a parent trying to have a heart-to-heart with a seventeen year old!

  • If you want to ratchet up the conflict, sit them down for an earnest conversation
  • If you want to have a breakthrough, give your characters a physical problem to solve together and let the conversation flow while they do it.

In this week’s prompt, I’m building in the activity. You get to pick the characters, the conflict, and how deep you go.

The Prompt

Write A Story Where the Characters are Engaged In A Hobby/Group

Tips

  • Don’t pick a hobby you’ll need to research. Pick something you like to do, so you can easily include all kinds of realistic details.
  • For example, I might pick knitting or gardening or singing in a choir. Having done all these things, I can easily conjure the personality clashes in a group of enthusiasts
    I could also talk about the tiny details that will make it more realistic: like the adrenaline rush when you think you’ve dropped a stitch, or the physical power it takes to belt out the chorus from “O Fortuna”, along with all the bizarre warm-up tricks choral directors have subjected me to over the years, from ‘ma-meh-me-mo-moo” to group shoulder massages!)
  • This is a great opportunity to work on character-building. Have your main character interact with all kinds of different characters in the group. See what shorthand you can use for each secondary character in the story, without descending into cliché.
  • Try including some tiny, here-and-now moments in the group that echo a larger issue for your main character. This strengthens the theme of the story. (e.g. if you discover that your main character’s issue is that she can’t seem to keep relationships together, allow one of the group’s participants to have issues with commitment to something in the hobby: one month he’s all about cacti, the next month he’s revamping his greenhouse to hold nothing but palms; maybe someone can’t ever seem to knit more than one sock in a pair before moving on to another project; perhaps the newbie on the sports team has been through 14 different sports before this one and can’t settle on one…).
    Mine other people’s reactions to this micro-problem to illuminate the answer to your main character’s macro-problem.
  • Linking your theme to an in-story event, transforms a character sketch or vignette into an actual story that goes somewhere.
  • If you feel you’re missing the mark on this as you write your first draft, don’t worry. Make notes as you go to help you flag this stuff on a future rewrite. (e.g. [“link this to her issue with Dave?’].
    The most important thing today, is to get a first draft finished. Get to the end of your main character’s story and set a date to come back and beef up all the theme/image/foreshadowing stuff later. (Pro tip: Put it on your calendar!)

Come back and leave a comment to let us know how you got on, this week!

[updated: 11 March 2024]

[Write On Wednesday] Things You Should Know About Me

Cammel Laird Social Club art by Half Man Half Biscuit.

This idea for a story is ripped from the song “Them’s The Vagaries” by Half Man Half Biscuit (thanks, guys!). The narrator says, near the start of the song, “Now we’ve kissed I’ve prepared this list, I thought you ought to know…” and goes on to tell his new love about all his quirks starting with “I’ll not sit backwards on the train” and proceeding down to the most bizarre of pet peeves.

The Prompt

Write a story that begins “Now that we’ve kissed, here are some things you ought to know”

Tips

  • Write this as a monologue or a dialogue, whichever works for you.
  • This has the potential to be funny or tragic.
  • Feel free to write this as a list (like the McSweeney’s lists) or as a series of tweets, or as an oral history (which will make it more like a traditional short story in form).
  • Even if you go with the non-traditional forms (lists etc) there is still a lot of scope for the beginning, middle, end structure.
  • Only the journey you take your readers on will be emotional, rather than literal (from flippant to poignant; from innocent to creepy…).
  • Think of the most colorful people you have ever met or the worst date you were ever on. Imagine one of those people writing this.

[Write on Wednesday] That Wasn’t There A Minute Ago

Your character is at work, in a place they know well. Suddenly they notice something that wasn’t there last time they looked…

This week I’m giving you a fairly specific prompt, and guiding you through the story opening with a series of questions. Use this prompt in any setting, any genre, any time period. Use it again, in a completely different setting. In fact, why not bookmark it now (do people still bookmark things?) and come back to it whenever you’re stuck.
The Stare (243/365)

The Prompt

Your character is at work, in a place they know well. Suddenly they notice something that wasn’t there last time they looked.

Tips

Don’t try to answer all these questions at once. Write a sentence or two before you look at the next question:

  • What is your character seeing/experiencing/smelling/touching/thinking about as part of their daily grind?
  • What do they notice, that is out of place?
  • Why does it suddenly stand out?
  • How does it relate to the character? (Pause here to think about your character’s backstory. Don’t put this in the story yet, but in your own head give your character a reason to connect/recoil from this new thing.)
  • Describe the object, bearing in mind how your character feels about it (but don’t tell us how your character feels about it or why)
  • What does your character want to do? What will you let them do?
  • What happens next?
  • How does it end?

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Family Drama

Oh families. The source of so many off the stories we whisper to friends, but are afraid to commit to paper for fear of offending anyone. Today’s prompt encourages you to dig into that vast repository of family stories for a ‘cheap’ way to find a plot.

The Prompt
Write a story about a stranger at a family gathering.

Tips
Think about a family gathering you’ve been to (yours or someone else’s) – preferably one where one of your most colorful relatives was on great form.
What would that look like to a stranger? (Uncle Bob’s new girlfriend or the lonely new neighbor someone invited as a nice gesture)
Take that real-life story as a jumping-off point.
Decide on a protagonist: is it your stranger or the person who invited them? Think about the protagonist’s history. What’s in their past that’s going to make this situation especially hilarious or poignant or tragic? (You don’t have to explain this in the story, but if you know about it, you’ll be able to make this character richer as you write.)
Pick one tiny incident — someone storms out, someone smashes a plate in frustration, someone swears inappropriately. Illustrate the moment and/or the ripples around the room after it happens. (Remember, this is a short story. You can’t tell too much.)
Concentrate on making the reader feel something: make me cringe with embarrassment, make me love the old grandpa, make me feel your protagonist’s regret when he misses a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to say what he really feels…

Go!

Writing Through The Holidays

ChristmasWritingPic

You’re busy. Or you’re sad. Or you’re conflicted. Or over scheduled. Or delirious with excitement.

Whatever the holidays mean to you, this time of year can be a killer for your writing productivity.

Depending on what you’re working on, that can be OK. Or perhaps you will need to continue to carve out some serious work time even though the 12 Tribes of HisFamilyAndYours are descending on you, daily.

Here are some encouraging words from me to you, on how to keep your inner writer and your outer productive-member-of-society happy together at the year’s end.

What Do You Need?

We’re used to asking what our characters need, but for once, let’s look at what YOU need, as a writer.

If You’re In The Middle Of A Project

If you have an ongoing project like a long short story, a story you’ve just started or a novel, you really will have to make time every day to write. The good news is you don’t have to do much. Even 250 words a day will keep your head in the project and your characters in your head. The even better news is that getting back to your imaginary world for even this little time every day, will be an incredible mood booster. Sneak off to a spare room for 30 minutes, come out smiling (and get the extended family talking about what on earth you keep in there!).

If You’re Between Projects

If you don’t have an ongoing project, my best advice for you is: don’t worry.

  • Don’t worry about trying to craft stories when you’re temporarily overwhelmed with commitments.
  • Don’t worry about writing stories when you have people you enjoy hanging out with.
  • Do keep a notebook or your smartphone nearby and make notes. Capture moments, turns of phrase, jaw-droppingly inappropriate comments by in-laws (note: you may have to excuse yourself and run to the bathroom so people don’t know you’re writing about them). Use this time of enforced activity and sociability to capture all these things and call them Story Sparks.
  • Don’t worry about what these Story Sparks might or might not turn into, just yet. Write them down. Keep them safe.

Keep Yourself Sane By Journalling

We write because we need to get the voices out of our heads, or because we need to know how we feel about things.

Just because you don’t have time to craft short stories over the holidays, don’t let that drive you insane.

Take a pretty notebook with you (keep it safe) and your favorite pen, and just write. At the start or end of the day, or in any stolen moment, write about your day.

  • Write about what pisses you off.
  • Write about what delights you.
  • Write about what scares you.
  • Let your handwriting reflect your mood. Write tiny letters or huge scrawls or in jagged, stabby motions.
  • Try to write at least one sentence in there that uses some of your writerly skills, but mostly, just let the voices out.

You don’t need ever look at this journal again (though it might be useful to drag it out in July when you are both thinking of writing holiday stories for submission to winter holiday markets and making your own Christmas plans for next year!)

Here’s wishing you a peaceful and fruitful holiday season. I hope you get some rest, and manage to keep your inner writer healthy, wealthy and raring to go in the New Year.

[Write On Wednesday] Word List Stories

It’s back: the ever-popular (no really, it is!) exercise where we all write stories using the same list of words.
It’s silly, it’s low-stress, it is, frankly, ridiculous and it makes for a great way to break blocks or take a break after a longer or more serious project.

So here goes:

The Prompt

Write a story containing the following words
Monthly
Cute
Shortest
Wolfish
Plot
Master
World
Valuable
December

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] 100 Words For Thanksgiving

It’s almost Thanksgiving here in the US (for those non-US people: it’s a Big Deal with lots of travel and turkey and non-productivity).

So, in an effort to keep you writing but not overwhelm you, this week I’m assigning a Drabble, a 100 word story.

The Prompt

Write A 100 Word Story
100/365

Tips

  • 100 word stories sound like they won’t take up much time but they will take more than you think.
  • Remember that you don’t have much time/space to create your story. This stops you from including too much backstory, any rambling, or losing your way in the middle. Keep your mind firmly on the end.
  • Do write more than 100 words if you need to, then trim.
  • If you find yourself writing fewer than 100 words, look back and see if you can beef it up with pointed dialogue, expressive description or more of your main character’s emotions.
  • You can make the theme of the story ‘Thanksgiving’, ‘gratitude’ (or lack thereof), or something completely different if inspiration strikes.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Unseasonal Valentine

Big Heart of Art - 1000 Visual Mashups

The Prompt

Write A Valentine’s Story

I know, you think I’m crazy, right? But if you’re a sick as I am (already) of the Christmas music in the mall (it’s early NOVEMBER!) and the magazine articles about ‘holiday entertaining’, then why not strike back, by skipping the festive season altogether and writing a Valentine’s story?

The bonus here is that, should you happen to write a story draft that has promise, you’ll have plenty of time to polish it and submit it well before the Valentine’s magazine deadlines roll around (end of Nov/early Dec). If you’re more of the Do-It-Yourself-er, then you’ll still need time to polish, format and market your story before February strikes.

And if you’re just writing for fun, what could be better than letting your story take you away from the present day?

Tips

  • Put on some love songs and “think romantical thoughts”.
  • Try writing a love story with a twist. Everything gets kind of sickly sweet around Valentine’s Day. Write a story for the people who really NEED a love story that day! This might include revenge, someone asserting their independence, someone walking away from a relationship, or a good old-fashioned farce.
  • Ever watched a soppy movie or read a romance and hated the way it ended? Create some similar characters and give the story a better ending.
  • Remember that story comes from character. Know your character before you start writing — what does she want? What does she need? How are these different? That’s where your story happens.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Fool’s Errand

This week a major art discovery was made in Bavaria: a hoard of 1000+ art works (many by masters like Chagall and Renoir) was found in the apartment of the son of an art dealer.

These art works, it is thought, were ‘lost’ during WWII (i.e. looted, forced sales, etc.). 70 years on, many of these works must surely have been forgotten about entirely. For certain, many have never been seen by art historians. But there have been people who have pursued this type of art down through the decades since the war ended.

Which got me thinking. There have been many people who mourned, pursued and talked about this art down through the decades since the war ended. As time passed, they may have gone from sounding like crusaders to sounding like cranks. How must they have felt yesterday, when this hoard was revealed?

The Prompt

Write a story that features an obsessed character who is suddenly, unexpectedly vindicated.

Tips

  • The story can share the moment at which the vindication happens or it can happen afterwards (or perhaps even slightly before. Wouldn’t it be fun to let the reader see the vindication coming, but leave the story just before it does?)
  • Character is all in this story. It doesn’t really matter WHAT your character is obsessed with/paranoid about. The interesting parts happen in their interactions with the doubters and believers around them.
  • What would it do to a family, or a relationship, to have one member who was obsessed with an increasingly-outlandish idea through the years?
  • If you’re struggling for a topic, don’t forget the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination is coming up on Nov 23…

Go!

[Reading Room] Cretan Love Song by Jim Shepard

This story is a lovely illustration of how to take one of those factual tidbits we often run across and turn them into a compelling and short story. It’s also written in the second person.

The author starts by writing about the Santorini eruption that wiped out the Minoan civilization 1600 years ago. He starts with an almost clinical, scientific description of what you would have seen if you had been standing on a beach on Crete at the time of the eruption. He quickly begins to introduce descriptive and poetic elements, along with people and relationships. Before long, the ‘you’ of the story has a family, and an urgent desire to fulfill.

What started out as a remote, impersonal “Imagine if” story has quickly become a heart-wrenching race to the finish that has the reader rooting for the unnamed protagonist and ends with a huge compelling message for us all.

Shivers up the spine!

This Selected Shorts episode features a great short interview with Jim Shepard who explains how his obsession with the Santorini eruption turned into this beautiful, moving story (and how it helped him in his everyday life!)

[Reading Room] Subsoil by Nicholson Baker

This story was an absolute delight: an agricultural historian is putting off getting-down-to-work on his publication with one last research trip. Feeling restless with his usual accommodations, he tries a recommended ‘bed & breakfast’ for a change….and he gets it!

I like humor and I like twists (and I love The Twilight Zone), so I loved this story. It starts with a slow burn, but the details are so delightful that you can’t resist reading on to find out what this pompous little man and his odd new hosts get up to. I get the impression the author had some fun researching obscure agricultural equipment and skewering the academic propensity to obsess over minutiae, but he does both with a relatively light hand. It’s funny but not labored, and beneath it all the mystery ticks on.

The climax is surprising and then, once you’re in on the secret, the author lets you see the ending coming; lets you unwrap it along with him as it happens. Really, really satisfying. And a little bit evil. 🙂

[Reading Room] The Dome by Steven Millhauser

I’m not sure when this story was written so I’m not sure if it predates or post-dates other stories about cities within domes, but when a story is this well-written it hardly matters.

This story is fascinating in several ways. Firstly, the writing is just great. If you like language, and like a little humor in your stories, get a copy of this (you can find it at Selected Shorts, read by Alec Baldwin, who does a great job).

Second, it breaks rules — or at least bends them. I’m always reading that stories have to have a character and the character has to want something. This story does not seem (at first) to have a character. And it’s not at all clear who wants what. But it turns out that the ‘character’ could be said to be ‘humanity’. Later in the story it becomes clear that if there is a protagonist, it is the contemporary group of dome-dwelling humans of which the narrator is one.

But it’s refreshing to read something so engaging that breaks from expected patterns and still manages to hold the reader’s attention all the way through.

Steven Millhauser won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his novel Martin Dressler, which prompted publishers to bring some of his older story collections back into print. I’m off to see if I can get hold of some of them…

[Writing Prompt] Borrowed words

Today’s is a silly prompt designed to get you to lighten up about your writing.

One of the best ways to become blocked is to put pressure on yourself to write something good.

Today’s gift to you is a list if words it’s going to be very hard to turn into a good story.

So write something silly. Have some fun:

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[Writing Prompt] Character Rampage

I was listening to a song I love this week. (“I Think Never Is Enough” by the Bare Naked Ladies).

In it, the protagonist is proudly telling us how he followed his own dreams rather than blindly going to college or backpacking through Europe or working in retail, like everyone else he knew (“I never worked a single day in retail/Telling people what they wanna hear/ Telling people anything to make a sale./ Eating in the food court/ With the old and the bored…”). I love it and want to play it to my nieces and nephew, my sons, everyone in their teens. I love his in-your-face arrogance. And then I started to wonder if the band ever performs this song now, and if, 20 years on, they’re ever faintly embarrassed by that arrogance. Even though it’s one of the things I love about the song…

And that got me thinking: one of the best things about being a writer is having an outlet for all those times you want to rant and rave unreasonably but can’t because you’re too damned polite.

 

The Prompt

366:01/11/2012
Write a story about a character who says and does things you could never do/say.

Tips

  • Let them be as heroic/funny/romantic/angry/mean/bitter/vindictive as you like.
  • Don’t worry about making them rounded. This is a short story not a novel. You can give them one line where they move a cat out of harm’s way before nuking the city, to let us know there’s more in there than the pure character we’re seeing in this moment. This isn’t a novel. We don’t need to see much more than that.
  • Think of an issue that’s liable to set you off on a rant (it could be anything from a hole in your sock to the hole in the ozone layer, from apostrophes to healthcare, from sport to cell phone use) and think of a character who shares your position on that thing (or opposes it) to the extreme. Put him/her in a situation that’s going to get him riled up and start the story just after that has happened.
  • Don’t back off. Let them say all the things you never would. Remember, you don’t have to show this to anyone if you don’t want to (but I bet you’ll want to).

Go!

The One Thing You Must Do Before Taking Writing Advice

The problem with writing advice is that it all weighs the same.
Weigh Scale

  • You read four articles on character development and start to worry because vibrant characters don’t come easy to you.
  • Your favorite writing-blogger is having trouble with dialogue in her own fiction so she does a series on the importance of natural dialogue. Now you start to think worry that your high-fantasy characters’ dialogue isn’t naturalistic enough.
  • It’s coming up to NaNoWriMo, and everyone’s talking about outlining and sharing their own Type-A version of it, which makes you start to doubt that you could ever write a novel because…damn!

There is an abundance of wonderful advice about writing online. If you are ever having a problem in your writing it is easy to find five different polemics on that topic in as many seconds.

But if you’re not writing regularly, how do you know what advice YOU need hear?

Find Your Strengths, Work On Your Weaknesses

I had the pleasure recently of being able to ask the talented and prolific Chuck Wendig about his characters and how he makes them pop off the page.

His answer took me completely by surprise.

“I feel like voice is my strong suit,” he said, simply.

He went on to talk about other areas that he struggles with more — areas that need work in the rewrites — but this? It was the easy stuff for him.

A small, controlled explosion went off in my brain:

He’s just good at this stuff.

I don’t have to be as brilliant at characterization as him. Maybe I can’t be.

If I’m really, really good in some other area, maybe it’s OK if I focus on that.

This Is Not An Excuse

This is not at excuse to avoid learning about the craft. You do need to be proficient in all areas of writing.

But if your first draft is weak in one area (or several), don’t let it slow you down. Instead, play to your strengths. If you’re witty, play that up. If your wordplay makes people smile, go to town on it. If  you are all about the dialogue, get that down first.

  • Write a lot to discover your strong suit.
  • Play to those strengths.
  • Fix the rest in the rewrite.

 

Need help with the ‘write a lot’ part? Try these articles:

How To Become An Insanely Productive Writer

Delegate Your Way To Writing Success

Five Irresistible Writing Prompts

Need more help? Take a look at the Time To Write Workshop, The StoryADay Guide to Breaking Writers’ Block and the Warm Up Your Writing Home Study Course in The StoryADay Shop.

[Writing Prompt] Limit Yourself To 100 Words

#100

One of the first internet-era writing challenges I ever attempted was over at 100words.net . The challenge was to write 100 words (exactly) every day for a month (I think the brain behind the idea originally did it for 100 days, but by the time I discovered the challenge it was a calendar month).

It was hard, but it was freeing too. And it was my experience with those limitations (and the rhythm of writing every day for a month) that set me thinking about my own StoryADay challenge, years later.

The Prompt

Write 100 words. Exactly 100.

Tips

  • It can be helpful to think of this as an exercise, not a story
  • Start with an experience of your own. As you whittle your words and ideas down to exactly 100, you will inevitably be creating fiction.
  • 100 words isn’t much. You don’t have room for traditional story structure, or to worry about all those writing rules you’ve been working to absorb. Just write.
  • If you need a more specific prompt, write about something you did yesterday morning. Give me details, colors, emotion.

Go!

Oh, and thanks to everyone who left comments or got in touch about the five-a-week prompts in September. The deal was that someone who commented would win a copy of my Time To Write Workshop. And (drumroll please) the winner is: Sarah Cain!! (I used the random number generator at Random.org — and got ridiculously excited waiting for the winning number to appear! Congrats Sarah. Hope it helps!