[Writing Prompt] Wibbley-Wobbley, Timey-Wimey

I’m a sucker for a time-travel story. It might have something to do with growing up in the UK in the 1970s, where my generation was weaned on Doctor Who, but time travel in all its varieties works for me. Of course, there are lots of quibbles with time travel stories: can you really kill your own grandfather and cease to exist? If you step on a butterfly in prehistoric times will the future change (thank you, Mr. Bradbury)? And most perplexing, why do time travellers always seem to run into the important figures in history, rather than nobodies like you and I?

The Prompt

Write A Time Travel Story That Includes An Explanation Of Why Your Time Traveller Meets An Important Historical Figure

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my time travel #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-wow-timeywimey

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about time travel #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey

See my story – and write your own, today: time travel!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-timeywimey

Why Write?

Seriously? Why tell stories?

No-one’s beating down your door to pay you money for your stories.

There are billions of people in this world. Why are your stories any better than theirs? Who’s going to listen?

You’re Asking The Wrong Questions

Humans are storytelling animals.

Laughter And Photos

Imagination and emotion are what keep us from skating through life, forever on the surface, never going deeper and finding out what matters. Stories are all about imagination and emotion.

Why not write?

Isn’t that a better question?

The Storytelling Imperative

We tell stories every day.

All of us.

Even the people you wish wouldn’t.

You know the one, right? The one who starts to tell you about her journey in to wherever you are right now, but has to back up to tell you about what her husband asked her to cook before she left and how the car used to have heated seats but the mechanic messed it up and she’s still trying to get some satisfaction for that but she bets she never will…and you know there is something she is trying to tell you but now you’re standing there with your coffee gone cold and your boss’s increasingly frantic phone calls rerouting to voicemail, and still she doesn’t seem to be able to bring herself to the point of her story. And you can’t walk away because you know she’s building up to a point and you’re too well-bred to lean in and scream into her face, spittle flying, “Get to the freaking point, woman!”, so you stand there, following her down seemingly endless diversions and side roads hoping against hope that one of them will put her back on the road towards the point of her story.

And how do you know there is a point to her story? Because it’s how we communicate. You have a lifetime of experience in this stuff. You know that once someone has set a scene and introduced some characters (“Me, in my car, driving here”) they have entered into a contract with us to provide not just information but a story: something happens, some conclusion is reached, maybe there’s a moral, maybe not, but you both walk away having learned something.

The Contract

That’s the deal: I’m telling you a story. It will take you somewhere and give you something to take home with you at the end.

If you break the contract you are either a really bad storyteller and a bore, or you’re a comedian. (Think of why Steven Wright and Henny Youngman are so funny: they set up the expectation of a story and then subvert it. They aren’t wasting our time. They are entertaining us, so we forgive them.)

But back to your narratively-challenged office-mate. She didn’t just say, “Wow, it took me a long time to get here today.” She set the scene. She reeled you in. She has declared that she has a story to tell and you can’t help but stay to find out what happens in the end. (Unless, of course, you’ve heard her stories before.)

Why Write Stories?

If nothing else, to practice. To get better at it. To avoid being the person at a party or in the office corridors that everyone is scrambling to get away from.

By telling stories over and over again, in the safety of your notebook, you begin to see how story structure works: the set up, the missed opportunity, the payoff, the conclusion. You begin to learn how to make characters compelling (whether they are real or fictional). You learn how to pare back on the extraneous detail to keep your reader (or listener) interested.

By telling a lot of stories in a short amount of time, you learn these lessons quickly.

Don’t Wait

Dig in to the writing prompts and commit to writing a handful of stories this month. Then come back here and let us know you got on.

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[Writing Prompt] The Journey

…Today I’m getting literal.
The Prompt

Your character takes a journey

I’m always banging on about journeys: “the character needs to move from one state to another”, “writing is as much about the journey as the destination”…

journey
“Journey” by Steve Loya

Well, enough with the metaphysical. Today we take a character and kick them to the kerb!

The Prompt

Your character takes a journey

Tips

  • It does have to be a literal journey.
  • It doesn’t have to be far.
  • But it can be.
  • It can also be metaphorical.
  • This will work best if they really, really want something and the journey is a part of that: promising reward or getting in the way of that ‘want’.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my story of a journey #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about a journey #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey

See my story – and write your own, today: a journey!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-journey

 

[KABP] The Problem of Practice

The problem with telling people that you write is that they immediately ask unhelpful questions like “have you been published” or “when are we going to see that bestseller, then?” or “have you written anything I might have read?”

They mean to be supportive. They mean to show that they think it’s cool and exciting that you are a teller of tales. But the from the next-door and much-more-foul spawning ground that produces the inner editor, comes the inner critic, who stores up all these comments and replays them to you as criticism that you haven’t done enough fast enough and in who, in so doing, slams the brakes on all your progress. You know you’re not good enough yet, and these people, pushing you onto the stage before you’re ready, can cause a crippling case of stage fright. Don’t let them.

It’s All About Potential

As an adult if you tell people that you play piano or do gymnastics, they just raise their eyebrows and say ‘oh, that’s nice’ and assume it’s a harmless hobby that you do when you’re not doing your ‘real’ job. They might even envy you the time you somehow manage to carve out to keep up these interests.

When you’re a kid, though, tell anyone that you play an instrument or are working on the uneven bars and they immediately start asking you questions about when you’re going to play Carnegie Hall or how long until they see you in the Olympics. Of course, as a kid, all you really want to do is play a piece of music that’s got under your skin and experience the thrill of tumbling through the air. You know how to appreciate that moment when everything comes together and the practice starts to pay off. No kid ever grimly practices tumbles thinking ‘this is for Olympic glory’. Not until some grown-up goes and says the awful words, that is.

At the start of your journey other people see not the joy of creation, but practical potential. It’s a good thing. It’s a great thing. We should think ‘what if?’

-What if I took this seriously?
-What if I shared my stories and other people like them?
-What if I was wildly successful and one of those people in the top 5% of my field?

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Yes. It would. No doubt.

But what if you’re not there yet, not close?

Is it OK to keep practising?
Is it fair to take time away from family and friends to pursue your love of the written word?
Is it right to keep writing even you’re not publishing?

You betcha!

Much as no-one but a parent really wants to sit through a recital of piano classics played by incompetent seven year olds, and no-one but a coach can see the value in watching tiny children fall off the balance beam and dissolve into tears, no-one really wants to read your terrible, stumbling first attempts at stories, with their flat, croaking characters and their plotless meanderings.

But we still have to write them.

The only way to become better at writing is to write. The only way to write good stories is to write bad ones.

And there are, in fact, people out there who are willing, like parents at a recital and scouts at a gymnastics meet, to take your stumbling, fumbling duckling efforts and help you practice, and practice and practice until you become a graceful swan of a writer. They are called ‘your fellow writers’ and later, your editors. Seek them out. Befriend them. Be kind to each other.

And above all, keep writing.

[Write on Wednesday] Bring The Funny

I really enjoyed the short story I posted about yesterday in the Reading Room, and it definitely inspired this weeks’ prompt:

 

The Prompt

Write a flash-fiction story (under 600 words) that takes a familiar trope (zombies, vampires, princesses in distress, twenty-something shopaholics with boy problems, space cowboys…) and have a little fun with it.

 

Tips

You can write long and edit down to 600 words

Don’t try to do too much in such a short story

Do consider having a twist at some point in the story (as with yesterday’s story, where the ‘victim’ was anything but)

 

 

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my fun flash fiction #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is twisty #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-flash

See my story – and write your own, today: flash fiction!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wowflash

[Tuesday Reading Room] Zombie Psychology by Sarina Dorie

While this short story isn’t perfect [1. Pet peeve: you don’t reach a crescendo. The crescendo is the bit where the volume is increasing.], it is fun and entertaining and had some likes that made me smile and frankly, that’s good enough for me.

Zombie Psychology starts with a great first line, too:

“I’d been expecting my ex-boyfriend to show up sooner or later, and when he did, I knew he’d probably want to eat my brain.”

I mean, really. How can you resist reading on?

 

Clocking in at less than 900 words, this neat story uses lots of zombie tropes without taking them too seriously, but without mocking them either. Zombie fans won’t be annoyed by someone trampling all over their myths, but the non-zombie fans among us won’t be left rolling their eyes.

 

Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, which published this story, is an interesting publication: an online paying market that doesn’t waste it’s budget on design fees, but that offers a great selection of really well-written stories in written and audio formats. It’s open to new fiction from  new writers and seems very well-run. Check it out.

 

[Write On Wednesday] Scary story

Oh, you knew I was going to have to do it:

Halloween

The Prompt

Write A Scary Story For Halloween

You can take some traditionally Halloween-y elements and write about them in a spooky way, or in a funny way, or a tragic way, it’s up to you! Or you can invent some new tropes for the scary story (Hey, Stephen Moffat managed to turn harmless stone statues into one of the creepiest new monsters I’ve encountered in years!!)

Tips

  • Use a Halloween object in an unusual way (perhaps a Jack o’lantern that really grins, or a haunted hayride that goes awry, or something about going around the neighborhood for treats but the kids have tricks played on them instead
  • Turn an every day object or event into something spooky by explaining the ‘real’ story behind it (what’s really happening when you leave a door ajar; where the other socks all really go; why you can never find a pen when you need one…)
  • Re-tell a classic ghost story but update the setting. Here are some classic ghost stories to get you started.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my Halloween short story #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about scares #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

See my story – and write your own, today: Scary Story!! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-scary

[Write On Wednesday] Playing With Form

Short stories are not mini-novels and they do not have to read as if they were. Part of the great fun of writing short stories is that we are free to tell a tale while breaking free from the tyranny of the three-act structure.

The Prompt

Write a story that does not follow a traditional narrative structure.

Write in diary excerpts or in list form, or as series of log entries, a Twitter conversation, word-association , stream of consciousness, whatever you can come up with.

Want to write a story as a series of letters? Do it! Want to tell the story backwards? Go for it! Feel like writing all-dialogue, or none? Fine!

Tips

  • Yesterday’s post about Neil Gaiman’s story “Orange” shows one intriguing way to do this
  • For inspiration, read Amanda Makepeace’s story “One Hour“, which was written in the form of several Twitter entries posted over the course of one hour.
  • Read this blog entries, which is mostly in the form of a list. Could you write a story that way? (Warning: contains painfully cute images of a baby!)
Bonus question: electronic media, with its insistence that readers be able to resize the text or display a piece on multiple devices, acts as a brake on ‘concrete’ literary forms (think: set fonts and sizes, words forming a shape on the page). Does this bother you?  Do you ever think about the form of the words on the page as you write? Leave a comment below.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story.

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story playing with form  #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about form #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

See my story – and write your own, today: Playing With Form #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-form

[Tuesday Reading Room] Orange by Neil Gaiman


One of the things I love about short stories is the way they can play with form. They are, at their best, unpredictable. “Orange” by Neil Gaiman (which I found in the Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 anthology)  is a perfect illustration.

Written in the form of answers to a police interrogation, the story never actually tells you what those questions were, leaving you to both speculate and laugh out loud at times. It unfolds gradually from the shallow answers given by a teenaged girl about her less-than-perfect homelife, to something much more complex and true. And funny and touching and hopeful and sad.

That the protagonist is answering a interrogation tells you immediately that something has gone wrong and you read in part to find out what. But after a while, as I often find with Neil Gaiman’s writing, you are reading just for the sheer joy of it. His use of language and character are masterful, engaging and accessible.

After reading this story, I immediately called over my precocious nine-year old son and read it again, over his shoulder. Upon finishing, he flipped back to the start to read it again too. It’s like that.

Highly recommended if you feel you’re getting into a rut with your short story writing and need some inspiration for a shake up. Or if you just want to read a fine, well-written short story.

[Weekly Writing Prompt] Alternate History

Fifty years ago this week, the US discovered that the USSR was building nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The two weeks that followed brought the two countries closer to disaster than ever before or since.

Public domain photo from CIA records

The Prompt

Write a story set in an alternate history where the Cuban Missile Crisis turned out differently and someone did launch a strike.

 

Tips

If you want to read up on the actual events, this Wikipedia article seems pretty good. I particularly liked the part (well, not ‘liked’, but you know what I mean) about the Russian submarine, the facts of which were only disclosed in 2002. What if the commander had made a different decision? What if Miami had been hit by a nuclear bomb.

You don’t have to write a Tom-Clancy-style military thriller here. Imagine anything in the alternate history of the world, from a mother trying to find clean water for her kids, to a history lesson for Fourth Graders.

Your story could treat the subject tangentially. It could be the kind of story you normally write, only with a few details in this world different: maybe there are only 49 states now (or maybe there are 52), perhaps Disneyworld was relocated to Pennsylvania “after the big war”…

You don’t have to be too serious. People lived and loved and laughed through the Blitz. People in an alternate timeline after Cuba would have to find ways to do the same, or humanity wouldn’t survive!

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however obliquely you use the ‘want’, it should be there in the character and all their reactions).

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: After Cuba  #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is about the Cuban Missile Crisi #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

See my story – and write your own, today: After Cuba #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/?p=2648

[Write on Wednesday] Fun With Vitriol

Ever hated a place? I mean really hated it?

Rage (Portrait)
I’ve been reading a few books recently where a character pours his emotions about his life and everything in it, into his description of where he is.

The authors used the character to write passionate, scathing, vitriolic critiques of the places. Reading them gave me a gleeful, naughty chuckle because I am so darned polite and evenhanded that I could never say that kind of thing about any one, place or thing. But maybe my characters could…

The Prompt

Write a story in which one of your characters rips the setting to shreds.

For inspiration you could take a look at how the various characters look at the locations in Ken Follet’s sprawling Fall of Giants. At one point Billy, going home to the town he has longed for, suddenly finds it “small and drab, and the mountains all around seemed like walls to keep the people in.” [1. Follett, Ken (2011-08-30). Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy (Kindle Locations 15428-15429). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.]

Or look at how another Billy sees the towns he visits as a returning Iraq war hero in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

For a more extreme version, (and if you can take some furious-but-funny foul language), have a look at the opening section of A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away by Chris Brookmeier. Keep reading until you get to the bit about Aberdeen. (I will refrain from comment as I have family in Aberdeen. But tell me that writing doesn’t leap off the page!)

Ready to let a character trash something?

Go!

Post your writing in the comments, if you dare!

[Writing Prompt] Word List

A silly and simple word-list prompt today:

The Prompt

Write a story that includes the words

Enflame, nugget, jingle, spelling and flight.

Make it short, make it long, but make it happen!

Go!

And when you have written your story comment on this post and let us know how it went.

[Reading Room] The Women by Tom Barbash

At the start of “The Women” the narrator and his newly-widowed father are attending “holiday parties” dictated by the season. It is immediately clear that Andrew, the son, is unhappy with his father’s behavior but rather than baldly state this fact, the author makes Andrew’s feelings plain by showing us not what he thinks as much as what he is noticing.

The narrative style is clever: self-aware first person. Andrew is telling us, the readers, this story in a careful way, as anyone would: trying not to make himself look bad, but bursting all the same to show us his outrage.

“Before long the women were dropping by our house, and I’d see them late at night drinking coffee in my mother’s kitchen…”

But this is not just the sob story of a young man left doubly orphaned by his mother’s death and his father’s actions after it. The story moves on through the first year of his grieving, of his new life. By the following winter, things have started to change for Andrew.

This is a skillfully told story peopled by some engaging characters — and some realistically flawed. It will stay with me for a long time.

You can find it in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 and it was originally published in narrativemagazine.com

[Writing Prompts] 2 Points of View Part II

You’ve made it! Fireworks #1Congratulations to anyone who wrote at all this month and I’m prostrating myself on the floor before any of you who are sitting down to write your 30th story. Really. I bet you’ve learned a ton this month, right?

The Prompt

Take the story you wrote yesterday (or any day) and rewrite it from the perspective of another character in the story.

Tips

  • Remember that the only ‘truth’ in a story is the truth as your protagonist sees it — preferably an emotional truth.
  • Remember that your former protagonist is now only a supporting character. Everything you show about that character should only serve your new protagonist’s point of view (even if you KNOW why the former-protagonist really slapped the old lady, in this version you should probably only show the new protagonist’s perception of that act).

And now:

Thank you so much for coming along on this journey this month.

I’d LOVE to hear about what you’ve learned. If you can take a moment, please send me an email (julie at storyaday dot org) and tell me one thing you discovered on your journey this month. (Perhaps it’s about how or when you work best, perhaps it was about the ideas that came to you, perhaps it was about how to carry on after a bad day…)

If you’re subscribed to the Daily Prompt email, don’t think I’m going to leave you stranded. You should still receive one email a week (on Wednesdays), to keep you writing throughout the rest of the year.

If you want to keep up with the news about the next StoryADay challenge (May 2013) make sure you’re on the Advance Notice List. I send occasional emails to this list, mostly with news about the upcoming challenge.

If you’d like to hear from me occasionally about writing courses, ebooks and other creativity-enhancing goodies, make sure you’re on my Creativity Lab list. It’s an even more infrequent mailing which goes out only when I find a great tool I want to share with you (hint: there’s a big thing coming in October, which will help you keep writing and polishing stories throughout the year). Join the Creativity Lab List here.

And lastly, thanks again for joining in. It give me so much pleasure to see people writing and getting joy from putting in the work!

Keep in touch and keep writing,
Julie

[Writing Prompt] 2 Points Of View Part I

We’re almost at the end of the month! Congrats to anyone who has written at ALL this month and HUGE, HUGE congrats to those of you who have 28 stories already. Two more and you achieve SuperHero status!

The Prompt

Write a story with more than one character today, so that tomorrow you can rewrite the story from the other character’s point of view.

Tips

Remember that the ‘truth’ of the story is not so much in the details of the events as the details of how the protagonist tells/sees the story.

[Writing Prompt] World Building

Writing a story is more than just throwing some characters into a situation and seeing what happens. A good writer builds a whole world around the story of the characters.

This is more than setting: it’s also the soundtrack, the slang people use, the color palette of the rooms, the social hierarchy hinted at…

The Prompt

Spend Some Time Painting A Realistic World Around The Edges of Today’s Story

The most obvious place to find examples of this ‘world-building’ is in science-fiction (especially futuristic or space stories) and fantasy. Each of these genres has to define everything for the reader from social structures to the shape of the vehicles, to the way gravity works in this world (think Harry Potter’s wizarding world and its unconventional public transport, or Star Wars vs. Firefly in how they handled the sound of space ships.)

But every story needs a certain amount of ‘world-building’. In a Hercule Poirot story we are in a world of drawing-rooms and exotic locales, and a certain class strata. In 50 Shades of Grey, we are introduced to a world where certain people define the shape of their relationship with detailed contracts.

Pay attention to the details of your world today.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Ageism

Today we’re going to take a look at a character from the perspective of age.

The Prompt

Write About A Character In A Different Age Group

By “different age group” I mean either someone who is not the same age as you or someone of an age that you don’t normally write about. Also, you can decide to write about someone in an age band that no-one ever writes about (well hardly ever. Not ‘never’. It’s a big universe…)

Tips

Get inside the skin of the character
Don’t write ABOUT their age, just let them BE that age
How does their age affect their thoughts, reactions, physicality, the scope of the story setting?
How do other characters react to them, and is that affected by their age?

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Reading Room] “Ziggurat” by Stephen O’Connor

This week I’m listening to “Ziggurat” by Stephen O’Connor, which I found on the NPR Selected Shorts podcast. (It’s read by Tim Curry who does a fantastic job. It’s worth a listen. You can find it here.)

It tells the story of what happens when the Minotaur encounters a new arrival in his Labyrinth, a computer-savvy girl who affects him an an entirely unexpected way.

It’s a wonderful example of how to take a hoary old story and make it fresh and relevant and laugh-out-loud funny — without descending into slapstick — and poignant and full of suspense without being a mystery.

The author has a light, deft hand with description. At one point the girl is teaching the Minotaur to play pool (yes, really!) balances a particular brand of pool cue on her foot and the whole thing seems as real as a dank, mythical Labyrinth can seem. When he is leading the girl somewhere (and not, to their mutual surprise, eating her) the imagery is full of eating-imagery (“gnawed through the rocks”, “digested”).

Well worth a read ( Author Julie DuffyPosted on Categories Inspiration, Reading RoomTags , , , Leave a comment on [Reading Room] “Ziggurat” by Stephen O’Connor

[Writing Prompt] Cross Dressing

Today (and by the way, Day 25?! You’re still turning up and giving this a shot on Day 25? You amaze me!)…ahem. As I was saying. Today we’re going to try a little cross-dressing, just for fun.

The Prompt

Write A Story From The Perspective of the Opposite Gender

…and if you’re in the habit of writing from the opposite gender’s POV, feel free to take this as an opportunity to write from the perspective of your own gender for a change.

Tips

*Remember that a character of the opposite gender does things other than button up their shirts the ‘wrong’ way.
*Show us some of the interior life
*Change the speech patterns you’re tempted to use (guys don’t generally want to talk things through the way women can)
*Feel free to teach me a lesson by writing a very feminine man or a masculine woman — hey, it’s your story.
*Go more than skin deep.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Mood Altering

Today, if you normally find that your stories come out one way, try to write a different way.

The Prompt

Write Against Your Normal Type

What I mean by this is simply: if your stories are usually sombre, try to force something flippant. If you normally go for comedy, try drama. If you write romance and happy endings, kill off a hero today. If you normally write paranormal stories, today try something rooted firmly in the real world.

It may not work, you may find that it feels awful, or you may discover that you’re much, much better at writing something other than what you THOUGHT you were meant to write.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Fanfic

Yet more stealing! After stealing from actors on Friday and songrwiters yesterday, today I’m just going to advocate just plain old ripping off your favourite authors today.

The Prompt

Write a Fanfic Story

That’s it. Steal from your favorite writers, screenwriters, people in your writing group, me, whoever.

Tips

  • Don’t break any ‘rules’ of the world that you are writing in.
  • Have fun.
  • Don’t try to get this published. That would be a breach of the original author’s rights. Just have fun with it.

    • f

    Go!

    And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Story Of A Song

Today you’re going to do a little more burglary. Yesterday I encouraged you to steal from an actor, today I’m encouraging you to steal from a songwriter [1. Note that if you do this, it’s technically a derivative work and you can get into trouble if you decide to publish. If you want to avoid that, change the names and only ever acknowledge being ‘inspired’ by the song. If the song is an old folk song, and in the public domain, however, you’re in the clear. Publish away!].

The Prompt

Write The Story Of A Song

Tips

  • There are plenty of ballads out there that tell a story from the Me & Bobby McGhee to Copacabana. Tell the story of the main characters or something that goes on in the periphery.
  • Other songs conjour a mood but don’t tell you the specifics (“Whiter Shade of Pale” springs to my mind)
  • Some songs have a strong central character that we might like to follow through another day (Maybe “Born This Way” or “Somebody That I Used To Know”)
  • Put the song on repeat and try to capture the mood of the song as you write.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Describe A Character

In today’s story, we’re going to focus on a very particular type of descriptive writing

The Prompt
Creating a Character Your Readers Can “See”

As you write about your character today, make sure he or she is three-dimensional. You don’t have to tell me how tall they are or whta they weigh, but paint a picture of them that is so vivid that the reader can’t help but form a mental imgae of them

Tips:

  • Describe the way they walk.
  • Have your character use a signature gesture or two.
  • Show how they move their body.
  • Allow other characters to notice things about them.
  • For this exercise free to steal mannerisms from an actor or a TV character (I’m thinking Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes or, perhaps even better, Martin Freeman’s long-suffering Watson).
  • Make your choice of words carefully: see if you can make them reflect what you are trying to convey without using adverbs (‘stalking’ instead of ‘walking quietly, like a predator’).

 

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Descriptive Writing

These prompts are designed to help you go further with your daily story than a simple ‘idea’ might. If you’re having trouble coming up with that idea, check out the Story Sparks post.

Today we’re going to focus on your descriptive writing. Every story has some sort of description in it[1. Unless you’re writing some kind of post-modern experimental work that isn’t designed to please an audience in which case you’re excused.].

The Prompt

Write A Story in Which Every Piece Of Description Is Designed To Elicit An Emotion In The Reader

Ideally, the emotions that you are forcing the reader to feel are the ones the protagonist is experiencing.

 

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Dialogue Attributions

We’ve been focusing on dialogue – from realistic to stylized.

Today we’re going to work on the thorny issue of dialogue attribution. Should you say “he said” or “he whispered seductively”?

How about neither?

The Prompt

Write a story that is dialogue-heavy but features no dialogue attributions at all.

You know what this looks like, right? Picture a fast-paced thriller where the protagonist and his boss are talking about the probability that the volcano will explode, or the Russians will invade. The conversation pings back and forth, snaking its way down the page without a ‘he said’ in sight. Or maybe it’s a romance where, one hopes, it’ll be pretty clear who’s saying what and to whom. But you never know…

Tips

  • This is easiest to do if only two people are involved in an exchange at a time and if it doesn’t go on too long.
  • It is possible to make it clear who is speaking by having very strong characters (one curt, one longwinded; one snarky, one sweet)

How long can you make the exchange run before it becomes hopelessly confusing and you have to insert a stage direction?

(Remember, this is just a fun exercise.)

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompts] Stylized Dialogue

Sometimes it can be inappropriate (or boring) to write realistic dialogue. If you are Aaron Sorkin or Shakespeare or R.A. Salvatore you probably don’t want your characters having humdrum conversations littered with everyday grammar. You’re creating a world, a fantasy kingdom, an idealized version of reality. Your characters’ speech, word choice, syntax and rhythms should reflect that.

The Prompt

Write A Story Containing Stylized Dialogue

The key to making this work is that you must remain consistent in tone through out the piece. If your main character sounds Shakespearean at the beginning, make sure he sounds that way in all his big set pieces.

Of course, you can puncture the style for comic effect but this works best if you break out of the style sparingly.

And just because everyone speaks in a formal or jargon-laden, or poetic manner, doesn’t mean that all your characters should sound the same: far from it. Even in Shakespeare, you still have people who are florid and poetic, and people who are earthy, coarse and abrupt.

Give it a try, have some fun. You may find you’re adding a style of dialogue to your repertoire that you can pull out in moments of high drama in your future writing. If it goes badly, at least you’ll have discovered some of the pitfalls of writing this way and can avoid them in future.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompts] Realistic Dialogue

I don’t know if you’ve been using little or lots of dialogue in your stories up until now. We’re going to spend the next few days looking at dialogue issues, and play with a few different aspects of it.

The Prompt

Write a story that features realistic dialogue

Tips

When writing dialogue, remember that people don’t talk in speeches, not really. And they certainly don’t listen to each other. We interrupt, talk at cross-purposes and misunderstand each other all the time. Capture some of that.

When writing colloquially don’t go overboard with misspellings and missing letters to convey how people ‘really’ talk. Using ‘gonna’ and dropping the ‘g’ from ‘ing’ is fine if you’re trying to show that someone has a really strong accent, but invented spellings risk just making the reader impatient and irritated. Much better to try to capture the rhythm of a locale’s speech or use one or two tell-tale local words, than to try to transliterate a dialect accurately.

Remember to use sentence length to reflect how someone is feeling: short, choppy sentences for someone who is agitated; long, lugubrious sentences for contented fat cats.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Bring On the Antagonists

I know, I know, I included villains and antagonists in yesterday’s prompt, but today we’re focusing on them.

The Prompt

Pick An Antagonist Type

If you’ve been following along with the prompts this week, you’ll already have worked on a flawed main character and a targeted secondary character. That secondary character may even have been an antagonist (a villain). So why am I talking about them again?

It’s one of those venn diagram things. All villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains.

Antagonists’ CheatSheet

The antagonistic force in any story is the thing that is stopping the main character for getting what s/he wants or needs. While it might be Count Olaf terrorizing the Beaudelaire children, the antagonistic force might just as easily be Holden Caulfield’s crippling cynicism. Or maybe it’s Norman Bates’ mother.

Start with your main character. What do they want? What can stand in their way?

  • Internal personality flaws?
  • Something from their past?
  • A person?
  • A physical object? (though usually this generates an internal or external struggle)

Make sure that everything you write about your antagonist illustrates something about its relationship to your main character. We don’t have room, in a short story, for sub-plots.

Kristen Lamb has some excellent posts on this topic, if you need a little more reading.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.

[Writing Prompt] Secondary Characters

It is day 13 of StoryADay September and you have almost made it to the halfway point. How’s it going? What challenges are you encountering? What are you learning about your writing habits? Leave a comment, or get in on the discussion in the forums.

Short stories can feature just one main character. You can totally get away with it. But not all the time.

The Prompt

Play With Your Secondary Characters

What is a secondary character? It’s any character who doesn’t matter to the story if you take out the protagonist.

Everything the secondary characters do in this short story should relate to the protagonist in some way:

  • The villain forces the main character to pursue a course of action
  • The best friend helps the main character figure out what she should do
  • The sweet character storms off, showing up how much of a jerk the main character is being.

As you write your story today make sure to include secondary characters and pay attention to everything they do. if they start to wander off-script, into areas that do not directly relate to your protagonist, stop them! (Promise them their own story tomorrow, if you have to!)

Go!

And when you have written your story,  comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.