Sept. 16 – The Widower

The Prompt

They had been married sixty years. She always did the cooking, laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning around the house. He has just returned home after the funeral and finds himself alone to figure it all out for himself.

Go!

Deanna Denny is retired after many years of working in Human Resources. She became interested in writing in 2014 and started her blog with opinion pieces but has since been exploring different forms of writing. She has taken Writing 101 through WordPress, and Gentle Introduction to Meter through Allpoetry.  Deanna will be joining the Story A Day challenge to adventure into short stories. You can follow Deanna’s journey into writing at deannadenny.com.

Be sure to leave a comment below.

Sept 15 – Tension Tuesday

A Blind Date

For today’s prompt we’re looking at romance. In today’s world of Internet dating, there must be many more blind dates than ever before. But meeting someone you’ve never met in person before can still be very tense. Exchanging emails is not quite the same thing as talking face to face.

The Prompt

Write a short story about two people meeting up for the first time. They may have emailed, texted, tweeted or whatever, but this is the first time they’ve met face to face.

Tips

  • This doesn’t have to be all dialogue, and preferably not a lot of backstory.
  • Chose two characters looking for love, they may be young, middle aged or old. Not too much description of each, it’s the interaction we are looking for here.
  • One of the key words to consider for this story is EMOTION, what are they thinking and feeling. This may require an element of head hopping, but try to keep it to a minimum.
  • Even if they have exchanged emails, letters (does anybody still write letters?) starting off may be awkward. Who says what first? What sort of questions do they ask first.
  • It doesn’t have to be in the present, you could set it in earlier times.

OK, now stop swooning and start writing!

Malcolm Richardson has been writing creatively for the last ten years. After a slow start focussing on a novel, which is still only half completed he has concentrated on short stories over the last few years. One day the novel may be resurrected, but his current focus is entering short stories in competitions. Malcolm is a latecomer to blogging, but his Story a Day stories can be found here.

Make sure to post a comment below, with a link to your story.

 

Sept 13 — Odd Couples

There’s nothing that spices up a story quite like a dynamic relationship between characters. If your creations are too similar and want the same things, your story loses a lot of potential conflict and momentum. But if characters are opposites forced to work together, your story suddenly has the potential for fireworks.

The Prompt

Write about an odd couple. No, your characters don’t have to be an actual romantic couple. They can be siblings, classmates, friends, enemies, or anything in-between. But you do need to have a couple (two people), and they do need to be at odds. Their personalities and their motivations should be dramatically divergent. Try to exaggerate their differences and see what action transpires. 

Tips

  • Your story doesn’t have to focus heavily on conflict. It can just take a look at your characters’ relationship, and how their differences cause them to interact with each other.
  • If you do choose to go for conflict, it doesn’t have to be violent or angry. It can be a gentle disagreement between best friends, or the quiet break-up of a long marriage. There should, however, be enough conflict to make the story interesting.
  • What makes your characters different? Is it age? Wealth? Ability? Religion? Personality? Make sure to clearly define your characters’ differences and use them to shape your story’s plot, including motivation and resolution.
  • Do these characters hate each other? Love each other unconditionally? Are they ambivalent towards each other? Do they need each other? They shouldn’t be neutral. If their emotions are dynamic, their relationship will also be dynamic.
  • Does your couple have a fraught history?  Or maybe they’ve just met each other and already regret it. Think about the story of their past together. How did they get to this point?
  • How about a punk rock father and his conservative bookworm daughter? Or a pair of criminals that can never agree on how to execute their crimes? Or a husband who desperately wants a child pleading with his wife who doesn’t even want a goldfish?

Go challenge some reader expectations, really work those differences, and have fun!

If you used this prompt, please comment below with your stories and your thoughts. There are many more guest prompts to come.

Sep 10 – The Tunnel

The Prompt
Today’s prompt has your main character is about to enter a tunnel, what sort is for you to decide but here are some tips

  • The Tunnel – You are in control.  Is it dark or are there lights along the walls or roof ?  Is it long and winding or can you clearly see the thrs ugh to the other end?  Is it running through a cliff face making it impossible to go over or round because there’s a sheer drop to the ocean below, or through a mountain.  Set the scene.
  • Are memories of those childhood fears of the dark and/or enclosed spaces triggered.  Or perhaps the entrance ignites an excited sense of adventure, the sort that can be lost with the responsibilities of adulthood.
  • Is your main character alone, or with company?  Does this add to the fear or confidence or make it worse?
  • Are they in a vehicle or walking?
  • If in company, why are they at this point and what is the tone of conversation?
  • This could be cHildesheim good fun, a comedy or a bit of a thriller. Which is it to be?
  • Maybe they are being chased. If so are they the good or bad guys?
  • Once  through dops the fun end,  maybe they man age to lose their pursuers and have a clear run to freedom.
  • Let your imagination place you right there .  What first came into your mind when you read the title of today’s prompt?  Run with it. Don’t think too hard or long about it, sit down start typing and just…
    GO!

Vanessa ‘Rosie V’ Cooper is mum to five and Nanna to two wonderful (though rather noisy and ‘full on’) children/grandchildren. In Feb 2016 she will begin a degree course with The Open University in English Literature and Creative Writing.   Check out how she’s faring so far at one of the two sites she is gradually building up: Rosie Speaks About…  or The Book Lover 

September 9 – Will Reader Response Work in Fiction?

Today’s prompt is all about turning a trigger into a larger piece. We’re all inspired by something, and that likely changes daily. Today, we’ll focus on a specific inspiration and then see how each person interprets it.

 

pavane

 

The Prompt

Write a story based on Gabriel Fauré’s “Pavane.”

Tips

• Listen to this orchestral piece written in 1887: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWW7pfXlYLY. As you listen to this song, what do you hear? What do you see? What kind of a scene does this song provide a soundtrack for?

• I chose this piece because of my affinity for its modern interpretation by the legendary British band Jethro Tull. Listen to the band, led by master flautist Ian Anderson, perform this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zAWQtM7X8k.

• Feel free to use either version for what you write. In fact, you might find that both provide plenty of needed scenarios.

• When I was in college, I took an education class where we learned about reader response. We discussed how to encourage students to write nonfiction essays by playing music, showing them art, and having them listen to or read short pieces of fiction or poetry. I’m curious to see how this might translate to fiction, and I think music is the best option for this experiment.

• If neither version moves you enough to inspire you to write a story, you might consider finding an instrumental that means something to you. Use that song to encourage your muse.

Let’s do this—and have fun!

Post a comment to the blog to let us know what you wrote about (including linking to your story on your own site or elsewhere) and/or join the community and post in the Victory Dance group.

 

Christopher Stolle is a professional book editor and sometimes writer. You can find his stories for this month at https://storiesbystolle.wordpress.com, and you can find some of his recent poems at https://www.facebook.com/stolle.poems. He has published dozens of poems in several countries, and he has written two nonfiction books for Coaches Choice: 101 Leadership Lessons From Baseball’s Greatest Managers (2013) and 101 Leadership Lessons From Basketball’s Greatest Coaches (2015). He finds inspiration in cooking, taking long walks, and ASMR videos. He lives in Richmond, Indiana—the cradle of recorded jazz.

Sept 8 — Use These Elements

Today’s prompt comes from writer Sarah Cain, who suggested a list of elements that your story must contain.

The story should be around 1000 words, but since she’s feeling kind, Sarah has said you can have a limit of plus-or-minus 200 words.

The Prompt

Write a story that includes the following elements: a black-and-white cat, a pot of gold, hair curlers, a terrible storm, a chess game, and a cow.

Can’t wait to see what you do with that!

Sarah Cain is a Philadelphia-based suspense author, and long-time StoryADay participant. Her debut novel, The 8th Circle will be published by Crooked Lane Books in January 2016.

 

Don’t forget to leave a comment!

Sept 6 — Abandoned

Today’s prompt is a look at location. Location can define characters, shape plots, and create conflict. So what happens if your location is a place that has been abandoned, or seems to be abandoned? Who lived there? Who left it? Why?

The Prompt

Write a story set in an abandoned location. It could be a foreclosed house, a closed-down theme park, a ghost town, or anything else. Think about the location’s past and its story, and use those ideas to fuel your plot.

Tips

  • You can focus on how your location came to be abandoned, or you can focus on the consequences of abandonment, or how your characters ended up there.
  • Write about the atmosphere of the location. An abandoned place has a very different feel compared to a crowded city block, or even a lived-in home.
  • Maybe your characters are tied to this location. Why? Did they live there, work there, get hurt there?
  • Maybe you want to go for an  unexpected mood. Not one of sadness, but one of excitement or romance.

Enough of my blabber. Go for it!

If you found this prompt helpful, please share your story and comments below! Stay tuned for more guest prompts.

Sept. 5 — Dark, Gloomy Forest

Today you’re going to drop your character into the depths of a Deep, Dark Forest, and let him or her fend for their self.

You Heartless Author you!

The Prompt

Your character is alone in the woods and finds blighted trees, drooping plants…rot and slime everywhere. It once was beautiful but overnight is turning into a swamp–its not natural. Your character must get to the bottom of this and stop it before something they love very much is threatened also. Extra points if your character actually doesn’t know this forest and ends up getting lost. Maybe the trees have turned evil and… *gulp* developed something of an appetite?

Will your character make it out alive?

Start writing, quick, so we can all find out!

Leslie Marie Dawson is an indie author, blogger and artist who revels in stories of fantasy, romance, and comedy. She can be found hiding in her hermit cave with her laptop, a stack of good books, and a glass of water (sadly she’s given up soda). Please stop by her Hermit’s Cave to see the cool things she makes!

Don’t forget to comment below and share what you wrote!

Sept 4 – Friday Favourites 1

Hi, all! I’m Monique and I’m going to be posting prompts each Friday this month.

The theme is “Friday Favourites” and means that each prompt will be a generic premise for a story that is also the description of a classic (or favourite!) novel.

The Prompt

A person wakes up, not quite remembering what happened the night before, and is surprised and upset by what they see outside the window.
(The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)

Tips

Change the genre. Instead of science fiction, turn it into a mystery. Or a romance. Or a children’s story.

Where (or when) do they wake up? ‘Window’ can be interpreted broadly.

Have fun!

Monique Cuillerier has always loved to write. She also enjoys procrastination. These two interests are frequently in conflict. Her stories have appeared in Round Up Writer’s Zine, Black Heart Magazine, (parenthetical), and elsewhere. She blogs sporadically (although more frequently during Story A Day!) at notwhereilive.ca

Sept 03 — Lost in a Maze

This prompt will place your character in a maze or a labyrinth. Only you, the Mighty and Invincible Author holds the key to your character’s freedom! *Mwahahaha*

Savor your awesome powers for a moment.

Now, let’s get writing!

The Prompt

Your character is lost in a maze with the instructions to find a very important document or treasure hidden in its center. Or perhaps the character has lost this important thing, and must find it before the wrong person does. Added bonus points if they must battle a minotaur, dragon or fearsome magical villain. 😉

(Never fear. If your story isn’t fantasy, this prompt can still work!)

Alright, Awesome and All-Powerful Author. Its time to get writing.

Now go!

Leslie Marie Dawson is an indie author, blogger and artist who revels in stories of fantasy, romance, and comedy. She can be found hiding in her hermit cave with a laptop, stack of good books, and glass of water (sadly she’s given up soda). Please stop by her Hermit’s Cave to see the cool things she makes!

Be sure to comment below and share what you came up with!

 

 

Sept. 02 – The Pickpocket

The Prompt

Your character’s an extremely talented pickpocket. He learned the skill when he was young and poor. Now he has a good job, a healthy bank account, and a respectable lifestyle, but he thinks it’s a shame to let such remarkable talent go to waste.

Go!

Deanna Denny is retired after many years of working in Human Resources. She became interested in writing in 2014 and started her blog with opinion pieces, but has since been exploring different forms of writing. She has taken Writing 101 through WordPress, and Gentle Introduction to Meter through Allpoetry.  Deanna will be joining the Story A Day challenge to adventure into short stories. You can follow Deanna’s journey into writing at deannadenny.com.

Be sure to leave a comment below.

 

[Write On Wednesday] Invented Languages

This week’s prompt is inspired by this article on lost American slang. There is such richness and yet a foreign feel to the language in the quotes, that I couldn’t stop thinking about using this as a way to spice up my own writing.

(The examples in the piece remind me of both Harold Hill  — The Music Man’s pop-culture references were meticulously researched — and Mr Burns from The Simpsons! It also made me wonder if Disney intended Bambi’s “Thumper” to have a double-meaning for older viewers.)
Slang/Chat/Zyte/Moon/Dase

The Prompt

Write a story in which your characters have their own slang, dialect, similes and metaphors tied in to their time/place/culture.

Tips

  • Feel free to make up the slang. No need for historical accuracy here. Just be consistent within your world.
  • Think about how your characters see life. Are they agricultural? Sports-obsessed? (When I moved to the US I was bamboozled by political articles in newspapers that relied heavily on sports analogies that meant absolutely nothing to me). Are they engineers? Are they space-based?
  • Play with current expressions and change them to fit your characters. In a space opera “How on earth?” becomes “How in the twelve orbiting satellites of Juno?”; the fable of the grasshopper and the ant is transformed into a fable about worker droids and love-bots; etc. In my speculative-fiction novel-in-progress, my atheist-mechanics use expletives like “Great Gears!” where we might use profanity.
  • You can use slang to distance one generation from another (my husband and I are constantly having to explain our bon mots to our children, who are growing up on a different continent as well as a different millennium!)
  • Have fun with this.

Go!

 

Write on Wednesday – And Get Published

…well, maybe.

This week’s Write On Wednesday post is a reminder about this prompt I posted during the 2015 May’s Challenge.

The DIYMFA Anthology/Writer-Igniter deadline is fast approaching. Polish up your earlier story now, or write a new one today.

The Prompt

  1. Use the Writer Igniter tool at DIYMFA to spark a story (grab a screenshot of your result)
  2. Write a story of up to 2,000 words on the theme ORIGINS
  3. Submit to DIYMFA by August 31, 2015 (more details here).

 

Go!

(And good luck!)

[Write On Wednesday] Expect The Unexpected

Sir RaleighThis morning my sister (visiting me in the US from Scotland) took my son out in the pouring rain to continue their ‘learn to ride your bike’ sessions. She’s leaving today, so it was their last chance. They weren’t going to let a little warm rain stop them. I do wonder, however, what the neighbors thought.

Which leads me to today’s prompt.

The Prompt

Think of a character who needs to do a task. Put that task in an unusual location/setting/timing/condition.

Tips

  • If your character needs to bake a cake because her mother is coming over (and your character, of course, has long-standing, complicated issues with her mother), that’s a story. If she’s trying to bake the cake on a spaceship and it has to be ready before her mother spacewalks over from her passing spaceship, that adds a layer of interesting complexity to the story!
  • Perhaps your story opens with two characters, like my sister and son, cycling in the driving rain. What could induce them to cycle in these conditions? Where are they going? What is driving them to do this? How do they feel about the journey? Each other? What is the journey a metaphor for? (Grammatically incorrect, but fun to say out loud. Try it!)
  • What other mundane tasks can you think of? Taking a test. Cleaning a bathroom. Meeting a friend. Now, where can you set these to make them intriguing? Taking a test on the side of a mountain. Cleaning a bathroom in a World War I trench. Meeting a friend in Death Valley.
  • Dig deeply into the circumstances. Ask why these things are happening where/when they are happening. Why would your character be there, trying to do this thing? Will they persevere? Will they give up? Will they whine? Will they fail? What has driven them to this point? Where would they rather be? Why is this interesting to a reader?

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Snowpocalypse

This week, like last week, my prompt is inspired by a submission-call from an anthology.
As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of disaster movies, I couldn’t resist this one.

The Prompt

Snowpocalypse

Tips

  • Cast your mind back a few short months (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, especially if you’re someone that gets hard winters) to the unrelenting, bitter winter. Think about those last few weeks of winter when you can barely remember what the world looks like in anything but monochrome. Remember how it made you feel. Think about how long it took to simply get out the front door when you can’t go out without fourteen layers of clothing.
  • Put a character into this setting. Are they happy? Are they longing for spring?
  • Come up with a reason why spring isn’t coming. Maybe it’s something like Narnia’s White Witch. Maybe it’s climate change. Maybe your character is on a planet where perms-winter is normal.
  • Make something change. It can be the character’s desires, the weather patterns or the environment they’re in (if the dome cracks and the air outside is 40-below, that’s a crisis your character’s going to have to deal with)
  • When something has changed, put your characters to work (together is good. Even more fun if they have conflicting personalities) to solve the problem or face their doom
  • One of the best ways to launch yourself into ‘show not tell’ is to put characters together and let them talk about what they see, what they want, what they fear. Put two or more characters into your setting and get them talking as soon as possible.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] About Time

Today’s prompt was inspired by a call for submissions from Main Street Rag Anthologies. They are currently reading submissions (until July 31) for an anthology called “It’s About Time”.

I don’t normally encourage you to put the cart before the horse (and think about publishing before you’ve got through the creative process) because it can be stifling. However, there’s nothing wrong with writing with a particular market in mind, as long as you don’t let it cripple your creative side. So forget about the anthology for the next hour or two, and just think about the prompt.

The Prompt

It’s About Time

Tips

  • This could be a phrase someone in the story says. They can be annoyed or they can be jubilant.
  • This could inspire a twisty, time-travel story.
  • Perhaps you will write a thoughtful story about aging or the passage of time, or historical processes.
  • If your short story starts to get away from you, challenge yourself to turn it into a Flash Fiction piece. Trimming a story to meet a 1,000 word limit really helps you see the essentials. (I did this recently. I ended up expanding the story again, after I’d created the Flash version, but it was much easier to keep the story on track, after I had forced myself to strip out all the tangential rambling!)

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Two Different Timelines

Today’s prompt is inspired by a great book I’m reading on story structure. It’s called Book Architecture: How To Outline Without Using A Formula by Stuart Horwitz (who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference recently. If you get a chance to see him speak, I’d highly recommend it. Very engaging and he takes a VERY different approach to the idea of outlining a story from most pro-outline people.)

The Prompt

Write A Story That Contains More Than One Timeline

Tips

  • Here’s a Flash Fiction example of the kind of thing I’m talking about: Comatose by Megan Manzano
  • In Book Architecture, Horwitz offers a couple of great tips for keeping multiple timelines from becoming confusing: 1, anchor your reader in the ‘present’ timeline before jumping back to a flashback and b, keep your flashbacks moving in the same chronological order (i.e. start at one point in the character’s experiences and move in one direction from there. He uses the movie Slumdog Millionaire as an example of this structure).
  • Here’s a longer, and more complex story that has multiple timelines: The Weight Of A Blessing by Aliette de Bodard (the timelines here are The Present, After The Last Visit With Her Daughter; The Recent Past, During And In-Between Her Three Visits With Her Daughter; and The Far Past, During The War. All of them combine to illustrate the theme of the story while unpacking the details of what the heck’s going on (kind of).
  • For today’s exercise, try doing the minimum: weave two timelines together, and keep each one moving in a particular chronological direction.
  • This might take more time than the usual Write On Wednesday “write it fast and loose” kind of exercise. What the heck, take the whole week.
  • Try taking a story you’ve written before and reworking it this way. Choose one you’re not happy with, or that you never finished Good candidates are stories that sank under the weight of their own backstory. Split out the backstory and tell it in flashback.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Going On A Journey

This week’s writing prompt: Take Your Character(s) On A Literal & Figurative Journey

Enjoy the journey, not the destination.
Yesterday, I wrote about Richard Matheson’s classic short story Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

It got me thinking about journeys as a vehicle (sorry!) for a story. In his story, Matheson included tons of detail about the plane travel in the early ’60s. The claustrophobic feeling of the setting wasn’t accidental: it mirrored the character’s internal issues beautifully.

Today I’m inviting you to do something similar.

The Prompt

Take Your Character(s) On A Literal Journey

Tips

  • Choose a mode of transportation that you can write about in detail. (Have a lot of time for research? Sure, write about Mary and Joseph on a donkey in Roman-occupied Palestine. Short on research time? Use the last trip you took as source material).
  • Think about the mode of transportation you have chosen. Does it represent freedom or escape? Is it comfortable or torturous? Is it difficult or easy? (Horse back riding sounds like fun, but if your character is facing his third day on a horse in freezing drizzle and you have a different story!). Is your character driving or at the mercy of others (literally and figuratively?)
  • What does your character want/need? How can you use a literal journey to pad out the significance of that?
  • What changes in the middle of the story? Can you use the vehicle/travel to raise the stakes? If the bus breaks down or the horse bolts, or the passenger tempts the driver to break the speed limit what are the implications for the character? How can you make it worse? Don’t be afraid to go deeper/further/more whacky (you can always scale back in the revisions if it seems too crazy).
  • In the end, does your character end up where he wanted to go? Literally? Figuratively? Did your character end up where they needed to be? Are those the same things?
  • Think about the imagery and language you use (see yesterday’s Reading Room post, about how Richard Matheson chose his words to enhance the tone of the coming story).
  • Write a quick first draft.
  • Go back through the story and see if you can heighten the sense of place with different senses, different word choice. See if you can make things worse (or better) for your character.
  • If you’re brave enough, post your story in the comments (but not if you’re planning on submitting it anywhere else).

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Occasional Places

I just read this charming blog post from an online friend (and fellow knitter & writer). She talks about her recent trip to France and shares some of her husband’s fabulous photos.

Celtic Memory Yarns Blogspot

It got me thinking….

The Prompt

Write a story set in a place you have visited

Tips

  • Ideally this should be a place you have vivid memories of, so you can use little details to color the story — for example, in Jo’s post (above) there are all kinds of details that a French person make take for granted (the sweet peas growing wild in the verge; the red dust in Camargue), but that bring the setting alive for readers.
  • It doesn’t have to be anywhere exotic or ‘foreign’. It can be your favorite corner of your local park, as long as you remember to give us the local flavor: what is the light like? What can your character smell? What color/material are the nearby buildings?
  • Do remember to tell a story. Don’t just write a description of the place. What kind of person might be there and why? Do they want to be there? Why? What would you expect to be happening in this place/at this time? What if something completely different happened? Why? With what result?

Go!

May 31 – Scenario – The Windswept Plain

The Prompt

Your story starts with a character standing on a windswept, desolate plain. How did they get there? What do they want? And what is that on the horizon, and why is it getting closer?

You’ll notice that I haven’t provided a lot of (any?) scenarios during this month of writing prompts. That’s because I firmly believe your own ideas will provide more meaningful stories. The writing prompts I provide are merely a way to help shape your thoughts about the things that matter to you.

Today, however, I think you’ve earned a bit of a break.

This is a particularly fun story to post in the comments at the blog or in the community forums, to see how everyone wrote completely different stories from the same scenario prompt. Give it a try!

The Prompt

Your story starts with a character standing on a windswept, desolate plain. How did they get there? What do they want? And what is that on the horizon, and why is it getting closer?

Tips

  • This story can take place anywhere, at any time and with any kind of protagonist.
  • It could be a space opera, a farce, the climax of a tense kidnap story told in flashbacks, a mystery, a comedy, a romance or a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Whatever your taste runs to.
  • You don’t ever have to explain why the character is there or what is approaching. You can focus on the character, his/her emotions, memories or senses and still have a satisfying story.
  • Your story can stay on the plain or, if you’re not the outdoorsy type, have your character scuttle into the huge building right behind her that we couldn’t see in the ‘opening shot’ of the story.
  • Consider sharing this with other people in the community who are writing to the same prompt. If you ever had any concerns about not being able to write anything ‘original’, sharing the results of this prompts should cure you of that!

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

 

And that’s it! You’re done.

No matter how many days you wrote (or didn’t), your writing thanks you for hanging in until the end. Now, print out your Winner’s Tiara, color it in, put your feet up and demand that every one treat you like royalty (the good parts, not the bloody-revolution-parts).

Then come back here tomorrow to check in with the June SWAGr crew, and make your commitments to your writing for next month. (I’m thinking: a few days of more relaxed writing and some revision, to start with.)

Also, I’ll be posting details about next month’s StoryFest, where we get to share our favorite stories from the past month. So don’t be a stranger!

Guest Prompt from John Dixon

John DixonJohn Dixon’s first novel Phoenix Island was not only the inspiration for the CBS series Intelligence (starring Josh Holloway), but was this year awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. (Well-deserved, too! It’s an excellent book!). John is a former Golden Gloves boxer, youth services caseworker, prison tutor, and middle school English teacher.

Like the expert in horror and all-things-creepy that he is, John gave us a very creepy prompt.

The Prompt

Write a story about someone trying to escape a subterranean space.

Go!

Day 30 – The Impact of Art

The Prompt

Write a story about the impact of art

Writing means a lot to you. You’ve been doing it every day for weeks now. You’ve made it a priority. How does that feel?

There are probably other art forms that move you just as much (Music? Art? Dance?). What would you do and who would you be if you were forced to live a life without art?

The Prompt

Write a story about the impact of art

Tips

  • You may imagine a world where art is forbidden (all art or just the particular type your character wants to commit).
  • You can imagine an artist who is blocked for another reason.
  • What does the lack of art do to that person?
  • Has he/she known what it was to be an artist and lost it?
  • Has he/she never known and are they living a life they thought was OK. How do they discover the missing piece? What impact does that have on the rest of their life?
  • Perhaps your story will be about an art teacher impacting the life of an impressionable kid.
  • Your story need not be a narrative story. Perhaps it is a chilling set of rules to be imposed by an oppressive authority. Perhaps it is a list of titles of work in an art show or exhibition or that have been found in an archaeological dig.
  • You might write about the conversation between an ancient artist and the modern day observer.
  • What does art mean to you? Put that into your story.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt from Gabriela Pereira – with submission guidelines

 Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 7.36.08 PMGabriela Pereira is the Chief Instigator at DIYMFA.com, the home of the do-it-yourself MFA in creative writing. In her new podcast series she has interviewed everyone from agents, novelists, writing teachers to marketing and networking guru Guy Kawasaki! You should definitely check that out!). She is hard at work on a DIYMFA handbook due out next year from Writer’s Digest Books.

This prompt is a little bit different today — and it comes with the possibility of publication.

Over at DIYMFA they’re launching an anthology and the only stipulations are that you write to the theme and use the custom-built Writer Igniter feature at DIYMFA to somehow spark your story. It’s a fun little slot-machine of a prompt generator that Gabriela had custom built for her site. It’s kind of irresistable…DIYMFA.com logo

The Prompt

The theme for the anthology is ORIGINS. The deadline is August 31, 2015, so you have plenty of time to brush up whatever story you sketch out today.

The rules are as follows: spin the Writer Igniter (no more than three spins!); take a screenshot of your result (ALT + Print Screen on Windows; CMD + SHIFT + 4 on Mac, then draw a box around whatever you want to capture); then write a story.

The finished story should be up to 2,000 words. See more guidelines for submission here.

Go!

May 29 – Back To Front

The Prompt

Write a story starting with the climax and working backwards to find out how we got there

This prompt might be easier for plotters than people who prefer to discover as they write. Then again, it might not. Let’s find out.

The Prompt

Write a story starting with the climax and working backwards to find out how we got there

Tips

  • Don’t worry about being cheesy and writing “meanwhile” or “five minutes earlier”. This is meant to be a fun exercise. Allow yourself to have some fun.
  • It still all starts with a character. Think of a character who wants something, doesn’t want something else and put them in their worst nightmare situation.
  • It can be something as overdone as finding themselves in their pajamas in a school hallway. Maybe she’s an adult, face to face with her mortified teenage son and all his classmates. Have her talk to someone (perhaps directly to the reader) and start to explain how she found themselves in this mess.
  • In each subsequent scene, start things off with another mystery (the character, still in her pajamas, and we still don’t know why) is on a bus, no, at the wheel of a bus. Explain how she got into that situation and what happened to the real driver, let it run into the school wall and her jump out to find help, then skip back to another, earlier scene. This time she’s running down the street (again, in her pajamas) away from an irate grandmother, who is shaking a walking frame at her. Explain that one and leave her at the bus stop, then flip back to the moment before she annoyed the grandmother; the moment when she discovered she was on her front step in her pajamas with he keys on the other side of the door. Explain how she went from there, to annoying granny, to being forced to seek shelter on a bus, whose driver was incapacitated, to whatever happened to get her into the school. Then, once last scene could show her very normal, serene morning: a morning in which she decides to stay in her pjs just a few minutes more, only then there’s a knock at the door.`
  • This doesn’t have to be a farce. Think of movies like Memento and Looper. Feed the reader little bits of information. Keep them disoriented.  Or think of
  • Pick your own character and nightmare scenario and…

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt from Marta Pelrine-Bacon

The Blue Jar, novel coverToday’s prompt comes from Marta Pelrine-Bacon, who was a StoryADay participant in its first year, 2010. She is an artist and the author of The Blue Jar (a novel about two teen girls in trouble). She’s also a mom, wife, teacher, cancer survivor, and coffee-addict.

The Prompt

What is a picture (a photograph or a painting) that you love or at least that has caught your attention?

Write about the artist or the subject. What happened just before or after the scene in the image? (If possible, share the image with us too.)

Go!

May 28 – Non Human

The Prompt

Write a story with a non-human protagonist/main character

Perhaps you’ve tried this all ready this month, but I’m going to bet that most of your stories have featured homo sapiens. Let’s switch things up today:

The Prompt

Write a story with a non-human protagonist/main character

Tips

  • You could imbue an inanimate object with a character OR simply follow it through a series of owners’ hands, telling their stories as you go.
  • You could write about aliens
  • You could tell the story of an animal. Will you anthropomorphize the animals (like Beatrix Potter?) or will you tell their story from a more animalistic viewpoint, all smells and sensations and urges?
  • What conflict will drive your story? Imminent danger? Longing? Adventure? Relationships?

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt from Charlotte Rains Dixon

Your main character can have anything in the whole world that she wants. Anything!

Charlotte Rains Dixon headshotCharlotte Rains Dixon is a writer who has made the jump from non-fiction to fiction with her new series of mysteries, the Emma Jean books (the first is available now). Her short stories have been published in The Trunk, Santa Fe Writer’s Project, Nameless Grace, and Somerset Studios. Check out her blog for writing tips and inspiration that are very much in tune with the ethos here at StoryADay.

The Prompt

Your main character can have anything in the whole world that she wants. Anything! Doesn’t matter if it is illegal, immoral, or illicit. Explore what that thing is, why she wants it, and perhaps most importantly, what the consequences of getting that thing might be.

 

Go!

 

(Remember, all prompts are optional and you certainly don’t have to do two stories, or combine the prompts, on days when there’s a celebrity guest.)

 

May 27 – Character Study – Fill In the Blanks

The Prompt

A [adjective, unlike you] [noun, like you] decides to [action – something reasonable] except [something unreasonable]

It’s getting late in the month. Either you’re ticking along with no problems or you’re getting a little desperate by now. Either way, this fill-in-the-blanks prompt should help you come up with a story today.

The Prompt

A [adjective, unlike you] [noun, like you] decides to [action – something reasonable] except [something unreasonable]

Tips

  • Here’s my example: a fitness-obsessed 40-something woman decides to train for a marathon except her husband objects.
  • I’ll have to drill down into why her husband might object, what kind of woman is she, what she thinks running a marathon will do for her, what she will never do, what she needs to do, what the state of her marriage is now and will be if she ignores his objections, if that matters to each of them. Then I’ll have to decide on her voice, whether she is strident, aggressive, funny, charming, wheedling, whiney, a doormat. I’ll have to decide when to enter this story (when she tells him her plans, when she’s already half way through the race reflecting on how she got there, when she’s in divorce court, retelling the story…)
  • You can flip the ‘unlike me’ and ‘like me’ and the ‘reasonable/unreasonable’ tags if that makes the process more fun for you.
  • Even the most mundane of ideas can become something wonderful if you think hard enough about pieces and let the characters come alive.
  • Don’t over-write this. Think hard, then imply. Remember, if you’re telling a story to your best friend, you don’t give her much backstory, and you certainly don’t give her both sides of the story. Write this story that way.
  • This story will work best if you let one voice ring out strongly, with all the whitewashing and self-justification we do without noticing!

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 26 – Joy In The Mundane

The Prompt

Write a story rooted in the small moments of everyday life.

I studied history at university.

Most people think of history as big lists of dates and kings and revolutions and war. My favorite moments in studying history were when someone directed my attention to the tiny things that allowed me to see how people really lived, what they were really like, in the foreign country of the past: shopping lists for Venetian guilds that provided clues as to which festivals they took part in (and when); journals by minor figures aboard ship in the early years of the European exploration of the Americas; how the plays and literature of a period could tell us about everything from economics to gender politics…

Big things happen in our world every day. I listen to news radio dry-eyed all morning, and yet (every damned week) a three minute segment on Fridays makes me cry. It’s StoryCorps, a project in which ordinary people interview each other about things that have mattered in their lives. It ranges from personal testimonies about 9/11, to an old couple reminiscing about their courtship 50 years earlier.

The Prompt

Write a story rooted in the small moments of everyday life. 

Tips

  • Think of the things that give you pleasure: a beautifully prepared dish of tasty nutritious food; a warm bed; the moment the sun dips below the horizon; the sun shining on a cut lemon on your kitchen counter. Write a story rooted in, starting from, or ending at that moment.
  • Read poetry that celebrates the mundane and relates it to bigger questions: for example, Birches, by Robert Frost or The Flea by John Donne. You don’t have to write poetry to make a small, everyday thing enough to power a whole story.
  • Listen to a StoryCorps interview and use it as the basis for a story.
  • Look around you right now. What can you see? What objects give you pleasure? Why? Imagine a character who gets similar pleasure from that object. Why? How can you make the story more universal? Focus on the tiny reasons for joy and write a story inspired by that.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 25 – Character Fit For Purpose

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

 

This is inspired by an idea shared on the Writing Excuses podcast. They did a wonderful series of shows about how to make a character more sympathetic without making them inhumanely good/evil. Check out the first of the shows.  

Conflict can be “Oh no! The world’s about to end! How do we stop it/escape?” or it can be “Oh no, my mother-in-law’s coming for the holidays and she’s insufferable”, or it can be “I need to do something I really don’t want to do because…”

One way to create sympathy for a main character and keep the conflict in the story, is to use the character’s abilities (or lack thereof) to show how they are a good fit, a mediocre fit, or a terrible fit for the challenges they face.

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

Tips

  • Your character can be a good fit for the challenges but hindered by circumstances (Superman and his need to keep his true identity hidden).
  • Your character can be a poor fit for the challenge he faces, but willing to give it a shot (Bilbo, in The Hobbit. He is certainly not the Burglar Gandalf claims him to be, but he gives his best to the adventure, in spite of being a poor fit for the life).
  • Your character is a reluctant hero. He has the skills and the opportunity, but doesn’t particularly want to be a hero (Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element — in fact, Bruce Willis in a lot of roles!). What inner conflict is stopping him from helping resolve the outer conflict? What will change his/her mind?
  • What if your character is really, really good at one thing and is suddenly thrust into a world/situation where all their skills mean nothing…at first? Can they adapt? Can they find a way to use their skills? Can they partner up with someone whose skills compliment their own? Can you find a way to let them use their existing skills in the end, so they don’t seem like a pathetic character?
  • What if your character is the sweetheart who glues together an otherwise incompatible team of highly skilled, irascible experts?
  • Make us root for or against a character by showing how they employ their talents (or fail to).

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 24 – Epistolary Stories

The Prompt: write a story in letter form

I have an unexplained and abiding love for stories-in-the-form-of-letters, so if you spend any time at StoryADay.org you’re going to see this one again and again, sorry!

The Prompt

Write A Story In Letter Form

Tips

  • This can be a single communication or a series
  • It doesn’t have to be letters. It could be Tweets, Tumblr posts, office-wide memos.
  • The story can unfold from a single author’s point of view, or you can show more than one side of the story, by using multiple authors.
  • If you need inspiration, read famous letters here, here, here or here

Examples::

Handwritten love letters:

Letters from famous authors to young fans

15 Best Resignation Letters

A list of popular Epistolary Novels

(Just don’t spend too much time reading them!!)

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.