[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.

[Writing Prompt] Hidden Depths

Now that we’ve played around with perspective for a few days, let’s turn our attention to character.

Of course you want your hero to be heroic and your bad guys to be evil, but don’t forget that one dimensional characters are unrealistic and unsympathetic.

So what’s the solution? 

The Prompt

Give Your Character a Flaw

The key to giving your character an interesting flaw is to let the readers see the potential for failure early on. 

If your heroine is a devoted mother and that is going to be the thrust of the story, let the readers see her having a moment of resentment, of longing for her former freedom. Raise the stakes by giving her chances to regret that feeling later, when her children are in peril. It’s not who she really is, but it was a very human impulse. Your readers will empathize both with the impulse and the regret. 

If your hero is a wise-cracker, hint that there is a serious reason underneath. 

The same goes for the evil witch in the office, who makes your main character’s life a misery. If she is all bad, the reader will get bored with her. If she has a hint of a redeeming feature (even if it is that she is hilarious), the readers will have more patience for her necessary appearances in the story.

Just don’t go overboard with this. It’s a short story. A quick hint early on is all you should need to put on the page. 

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] Second Person

Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:

Write a Story In Second Person

This is probably the least-used of all the points of view and with good reason. It’s not one we’re used to reading because it’s tricky and informal and potentially distracting.

So what is ‘second person’? It’s when the story is told with “you”, where the narrator puts you in the position of the main character.

If you’ve ever played a role-playing game (or a first-person video game) this perspective is going to come a lot easier to you than if you have never read it before. In role-playing games, the games master reads a scenario to the other players, putting them in the scene:

“You walk into the room and know, immediately that something is wrong. There’s a huddled shape in the shadows at the far side of the dim, low-ceilinged space and strange markings on the floor. You turn to leave but the door has slammed shut behind you. There is no handle.”

That’s all very well, but how do you stop a story from reading like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book: a series of descriptions? Well, here’s a passage from Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City” that shows you how you can incorporate action, reflection and dialogue into a second person story. In this scene, the main character is in a nightclub.

In the bathroom there are no doors on the stalls, which makes it tough to be discreet. But clearly you are not the only person in here to take on fuel. Lots of sniffling going on in the stalls. the windows are blacked over, and for this you are profoundly grateful.

Hup, two, three, four. The soldiers are back on their feet. They are off and running in formation. Some of them are dancing and you must follow their example.

Just outside the door you spot her: tall, dark and alone, half hidden behind a pillar at the edge of the dance floor. You approach laterally, moving your stuff like a Bad Spade through the slalom of a synthesized conga rhythm. She jumps when you touch her shoulder.

“Dance?”

So yes, it is an unusual written form. It is, however, the way we often talk (“So, say your mother-in-law was coming over and she’s always having a go at you about the state of your bathroom, but her baby boy has never been seen to life a Clorox wipe in his life…”)

No need to be intimidated. Try out the second person and see what it does for your writing, your tone, the storytelling possibilities. Pay attention to how much description and dialogue you use in this form and how much of it seems interior. Is it significantly different from how you usually write?

Have fun with this and…

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] Third Person Limited Perspective

This week’s prompts are all about point of view and narrative voice.

The Prompt

Write a story from the third person limited POV.

Tips

“Third Person, Limited” means that, unlike yesterday, your narrator never says “I did this”, rather you talk about “he went to the door”, “He opened it.”

The ‘Limited” part means that all the judgements and assumptions, all internal thoughts are limited to those of the character through whom you are telling the story. No popping out of Dave’s head to jump across the room and tell us what Mandy is thinking as she looks at him. The only thing we’re privy to is what Dave thinks Mandy might be thinking about him.

Within this framework you can still play with the form: your limited persona can be like Nick Carraway, reporting on Jay Gatsby’s life, rather than telling us about his own adventures. You can give your limited persona the ride of her life through a whitewater canyon and let us see it all from her perspective.

Third person limited is great for short stories, because it lets us – the readers – identify with one character, and ground the story somewhere. You don’t have much space in a short story and the last thing you want is to confuse your readers (unless, of course, the whole point of your story is to confuse your readers!). Letting them get to know a character by showing their reactions to events, puts you half way to rooting for (or against) the protagonist.

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] Third Person, Omniscient perspective

Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:

Write a story from the Third Person, Omniscient perspective

This is the perspective you know from all the classics (Dickens springs to mind): the author can say anything, pop inside any (or all) character’s heads, travel backwards and forwards in time, insert herself and her own commentary onto the page…

Have some fun with this. Take an episode and tell it from one character’s perspective, then leap into another character’s head and give their read on the situation. Try out your authorial prerogatives and make a comment about what’s going on (think of that moment when a TV character turns to the camera and talks directly to us, the audience).

This can get quite complicated (which is why it works so well for novels) but give it a bash and see what you come up with.

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] First Person POV

You’ve done it! You’ve made it to the end of the first week! I hope you’ve met or come close to your goals. But if not, this is the perfect time to sit back and figure out what went ‘wrong’, what you can learn from it and how to press forward.

And now, on to today’s prompt.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, writing in third-person, or first person, or inside or outside your character’s heads. So this week we’re shaking things up. Ready?

The Prompt

Write A Story Using The First Person Voice

Tips

  • The whole thing should be told in the “I” voice.
  • It should, for preference,  be a story about something that happened/is happening to the person telling the story.
  • When writing in the first person you can never allow your narrative to stray inside another character’s head. The “I” character can speculate about what other people are thinking, but everything must come from their perspective.

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] Space

The Prompt

Pick a spectacular or vivid interior space. Set your story in it, paying attention to the space and how it might shape your narrative.

Tips:

  • Perhaps your space is large and cavernous and something whispered at one end can be easily overheard at the other.
  • Perhaps your hero is visiting his grandmother who has a lifetime of tchotchkes cluttering every surface. How does that affect him and can he say what he came here to say?
  • Does your heroine need comfort, but find herself in a sterile home decorated by her acclaimed but distant architect husband?

Use a few details of an interior setting in your story today to suggest what’s going on with your characters.

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] Slow It Down

Stories have settings, characters and action. Great! Easy. Let’s get writing!

A-hem. One of the hard parts of writing is getting the pacing of a story correct. You need to slow things down and speed things up in the right places. It may seem counterintuitive but the place to speed up is often in the set up. Readers don’t need a lot of set up. You (and they) can fill in the details as you go along. Again, oddly enough, the place to slow down can be the moment when you reach the action.

Trained by Hollywood as we are, we tend to think of ‘action’ as fast-paced, the bit where the cars come screeching down the hill, the rocket blasts off, the volcano erupts. But in a story, the ‘action’ is simply ‘the stuff the characters do in an effort to get what they want’.  When your characters start taking action, that might be a flag for you to slow the reader down, tease the moment, with some details, thoughts, frame-by-frame storyboarding of the scene.

The Prompt

Take a moment, right in the heart of the action of your story, and increase the tension by slowing it  wa-a-ay down with granular details.

Tips

Some examples:

Take us through every muscle that tenses as the hero prepares to run;

Take us inside a woman’s head for every random thought that flits through it between the words “will you marry me?” and her answer (“Did I leave the iron on? Oh gawd, I cannot believe I thought about that right now. Look, he’s on his knees. He’ll ruin his trousers. Focus, woman! Look at his face. That mole really needs checked out and oh no, this moment has gone on too long. Must answer. Must answer. Should I cry? I don’t think I want to cry, but it seems like the kind of thing I should do. I wish he’d stop staring at me like that…”)

Detail the painstaking preparations the surgical team makes, in silence, before the lifesaving operation.

 

This might not be the most successful story you ever write, but it’s a worthwhile technique to practice. You might just find a brand new tool to put in your writers’ toolkit.

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] – Time

Write a story that hinges in some way on time: the passage of, warping of, misperception of, freezing of, measurement of, gadgets for tracking, etc.

Hooray! Day 5 and you’re still coming back for more. Hope the writing is going well, but if not, keep plugging away at it. It’ll come. Why not read and comment on someone else’s work to inspire you?

Since this is a time-limited writing challenge I thought it was about time we wrote, well, about time.

The Prompt

Write a story that hinges in some way on time: the passage of, warping of, misperception of, freezing of, measurement of, gadgets for tracking, etc.

If you need a little inspirations on the workings of time and our obsessions with it, try this collection from the British Museum.

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.

[Write on Wednesday] – Mnemosyne Remembered

Hollywood is all about the ‘reboot’ these days: taking familiar characters from fairy tales and comics and even TV series, and telling their stories again, in a new way.

It seemed only appropriate to ask you to write a story that features Mnemosyne, Greek titan, mother of the nine muses, and the figure responsible for the telling of all the tales (and committing them to memory) before writing was invented.

Mnemosyne by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

“Of the female Titanes they say that Mnemosyne discovered the uses of the power of reason, and that she gave a designation to every object about us by means of the names which we use to express whatever we would and to hold conversation one with another; though there are those who attribute these discoveries to Hermes. And to this goddess is also attributed the power to call things to memory and to remembrance (mneme) which men possess, and it is this power which gave her the name she received.”

-Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 67. 3 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) source

 

The story also goes that Mnemosyne was the daughter of Gaia (Earth) and Ouranos (Sky). It also says that Zeus spent nine consecutive nights with her and nine months later the nine muses were born. Later still, she watched over a pool in the underworld that was named for her. When people arrived in the underworld they would first drink from the waters of the Lethe (Forgetfulness) to forget all that had come before and then drink from the waters of Mnemosyne (Memory) so that he could remember what was to come.

The Prompt

Write a story in which one of your character shares some traits or life experiences with Mnemosyne.

Tips

  • Perhaps she IS Mnemosyne in a modern, futuristic or fantasy setting
  • Perhaps she only has one of Mnemosyne’s gifts: maybe she works for companies as a ‘namer’ of new products. What power does that give her? What does it cost her?
  • Perhaps she has a fast and furious romance with epic consequences.
  • Perhaps your Mnemosyne works as an counsellor for new immigrants to Mars, or elderly people, newly-arrived at a nursing home.

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: Mnemosyne, Remembered  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-Dc

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about the mother of the muses #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-Dc

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-Dc

See my story – and write your own, today: Mnemosyne Remembered #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-Dc

 

[Write On Wednesday] Subtle Signs

Over at Wikipedia, today’s Picture of the Day is At Breakfast by the Danish artist L. A. Ring.

Apart from being quite beautiful, the picture is a study in subtlety. According to the accompanying text, the artist is supposed to have surrounded his model (his wife) with subtle signs of his affection for her.

The Prompt

Write a story in which the objects surrounding your characters reflect how they feel about each other.

Tips

  • Your characters don’t have to love each other. They might be enemies with jagged, broken window in the background of your scene.
  • Don’t overload your story with details like this, but pay attention to the surroundings and include one or two clues.
  • Or, alternatively, you can go crazy with this. Be silly. It’s just an exercise!

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: Subtle Signs  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-CW

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about subtle signs in the background #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-CW

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-CW

See my story – and write your own, today: Subtle Signs #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-CW

[Write On Wednesday] – What A Girl Wants

I used to get hung up on The Big Idea: having something to say; writing a story that was somehow meaningful.

It wasn’t until I tried to write a story a day for the first time, back in 2010, that I realized: the idea doesn’t come first.

The idea (the theme) often doesn’t come until the end of the story when you suddenly realize what it is your characters have been yapping on about for the past few pages.

The character — what the character wants, what the character doesn’t have, and why — are where the story happens.

The Prompt

danglies
"Danglies" by Keera Russell
  • Today, come up with a character (could be based on someone you know).
  • Think of one thing the character really wants and doesn’t have. (It doesn’t have to be a life-changing thing. It could be a pair of diamond earrings.)
  • Make this ‘want’ the central motif of the story.  I think you can learn a lot about a person by how they deal with what they don’t have.
  • Tell the story of a moment, a day, an incident in the life of this character.

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: What A Girl Wants  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-zy

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about what your character wants #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-zy

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-zy

See my story – and write your own, today: What Your Character Wants #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-zy

[Write On Wednesday] Storytelling in Real Time

This week’s prompt revolves around taking a very short span of time (impossibly short) and stretching it out over the length of a complete short story.

Quick question before I get onto the prompt. We’re having a discussion on the Advance List about the possibility of doing a bonus StoryADay in September. I’d love it if you could share your level of interest in this poll

[poll id=”2″]

Thanks! Now, on with the prompt!

This week I read a great new novel called Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. One of the many remarkable things about this novel is that almost all the events in the novel happen on one afternoon.

I heard the author talking about this. It was a deliberate decision on his part, a challenge to himself to see if he could (with very few exceptions) avoid flashbacks or set-pieces that happened out of the timeline of the book’s one day. He also didn’t want a mystery or huge amount of suspense to pull readers onward. I was so intrigued that I had to get hold of a copy and see how he pulled it off.

Of course, he did it by Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Storytelling in Real Time”

[Write On Wednesday] Portrait of the Artist

Writers are inspired by many things, not least of all: other writers and artists.

This week I saw a blurb for a new book called “How Georgia Became O’Keefe“. [1. Isn’t that a great title?]

And it immediately suggested this week’s prompt:

Becoming “X”

(where “X” stands for an artist or author)

The Prompt

Write a story featuring an author you admire (or hate) and how they became an artist, or how a moment in their life sparked their definitive work (this can be completely made up. No need to do any research. Just use your imagination.

Other options:

  • Create a fictional encounter between the author and your main character
  • Write a fictionalized “autobiography” or diary entry by the author,
  • Go the “Possession” route and have your characters researching the artistic development of a writer and having their own adventure along the way.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).

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: Portrait of the Artist  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yu

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a chance to ‘meet’ your fave author #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yu

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yu

See my story – and write your own, today: Portrait of the Artist  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yu

[Write on Wednesday] Why Would You Say That?!

Communication

It happens all the time:

  • You say one thing, your boss hears another.
  • Your kid’s teacher tells him to finish an assignment by Friday, he tell you Monday.
  • He says he’s busy, she hears “I don’t love you anymore”.

Miscommunication is part of life. It can lead to hilarity or it can be tragic. Crises can be averted, or opportunities can be missed. A story based on miscommunication can be frustrating or poignant.

The Prompt

Write a story where two characters misunderstand each other.

Tip

  • Try to make the miscommunication something that couldn’t easily be solved if the characters simply ‘fess up and talk like adults. Keep them apart, have someone interfere, find another way to make the miscommunication believable.
  • Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).

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: miscommunication  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ym

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about miscommunication #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ym

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ym

See my story – and write your own, today: Why Would You Say That?  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ym

[Write On Wednesday] Changing Seasons

Sprinkler

I don’t know about you, but where I live, the season has definitely changed.

A month or so ago, the weather was changeable, spring-like and hanging on to the old season. Now we are fully into the next season: hot, humid, and surrounded by school-free kids running wild through the backyards.

The Prompt

Set a story on a day when your character notices the season has changed.

Include details in your story that let the reader know how this new season expresses itself in your character’s setting. (And, if you’re writing something futuristic, on a space station, it can be the turning of a new season without any reference to weather at all. Humans have a way of dividing up time and marking it off on the calendar.)

Use the change of season to echo some significant change in your character. Be as subtle or obvious as you please.

Tips

• Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).

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: Changing Seasons  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yh

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about change #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yh

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yh

See my story – and write your own, today: Changing Seasons at #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-yh

[Write On Wednesday] Passages

Just a number

Today is my birthday!

It’s a big one too: one of those round numbers that everyone finds so significant. The big four-oh.

When I saw it coming I decided to emulate a friend of mine and and throw myself a party. Another friend is running away to a secluded beach when her time comes next month.

 

We humans love to mark our lives with milestones like this: New Year, birthday, anniversaries, this-time-last-year-s. The milestones can be happy or sad, full of surprise or deeply disappointing.

The Prompt

Write a story in which a character reaches, anticipates or reminisces about a milestone. 

How does she react? Is it as meaningful as everyone said it would be? Does he run towards it or shy away from it? Does it change anything?

 

Go!

 

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).

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 about milestones!  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ya

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is all about milestones! #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ya

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ya

See my story – and write your own, today: Passages at #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-ya

[Prompt] Picaresque

I first came across the term “picaresque” when I was about 13 and assigned “Catcher In the Rye” to read for school.

It meant, I learned, a story about a journey: literal or figurative, or ideally both.

Today I’m traveling to New York for Book Expo America 2012 and while I’m taking a literal journey, your assignment is to

Write A Story In Which Your Hero Takes A Literal And Figurative Journey

Go!

20120606-082116.jpg

[Prompt] May 31 – Best Friends and Endings

Today is the last day of StoryADay!.

I don’t know about you but I’ve had a blast – not just writing but meeting up with old friends and making new ones. And now the challenge is ending. So I decided to make the prompt celebrate both those things:

Write a Story Featuring Your Best Friend

and

Give It A Kick-Ass Ending

This can be a fictional version of your real life best friend, or it can be a story about best friends, but make us love the hero as much as you love your very best friend ever.

Put problems in her way, kick him when he’s down, then let him rise up towards a kick-ass, crowd-cheering, fist-pumping ending. Make us care and make us cheer. Imagine the best, funniest, more heart-warming, most satisfying ending you would want for your real-life bestie, and let your character live out the dream.

Go!

(But don’t forget to come back and for StoryFest,  to read a whole bunch of StoryADay short stories. Bring your friends!)

[Prompt] May 30 – The Climax

We’re almost there…but not quite. You might call this The Climax: that moment right before the resolution. So today’s prompt really has to be:

Focus on writing a great climax

The climax is the action the protagonist chooses to take after facing the moment of crisis, where he or she is pushed to the edge with no way out.
–Candace Kearns Read

(If you need to ‘cheat’ and take a previously-written character or plot for this one, that’s fine. If that helps you move through the early parts of the story quickly enough to focus all your energy on writing a great climax.)

This is a great moment to show that thing I’m always banging on about: the journey of the character. How has she changed since the beginning of the story? Or how have we?

Remember, the climax is not the resolution (that comes tomorrow, sob!). The climax is action packed (even if the action is internal, or is, in fact, inaction). No wishy-washy stuff here. This is the moment to let your characters shine.

Go!

[Prompt] May 29 – Make Your Hero Heroic

Congratulations. You’ve been writing stories all month. You’ve written more short stories this month than most writers write in a decade [1. This is not a scientific fact. But doesn’t it seem likely, doesn’t it, what with the elves slacking off?].

My guess is you’re getting pretty good at this by now. Sure some of your stories will be ragged urchins hanging around the door making you feel guilty — with their unfinished clothes and dirty faces. Some will remind you of those relatives you never talk about because…well. But some, oh, some will be your new best friend, shiny and guaranteed to make you feel a flutter inside every time you think of them: grateful they are here, amazed they came to you, flattered that their attractiveness somehow rubs off on you now.

And more than this, you have learned a ton about your own strengths and abilities; your favorite styles; the things you never tried before; the ways you can present a character; and, hopefully, that other people love your stories even in their rough-and-ready StoryADay form.

If you’re still writing at this stage, you’ve already figured out how to not be scared of writing, how to sit down every day and do it, and you’re pretty confident that you can squeeze out three more stories and bask in the warm June glow of victory.

So I’d like you to make things just a little harder for yourself today.

Don’t just write a story.

Write a story with a real, compelling, heroic main character.

Take some time to think about how you will present your main character.

  • Is she more compelling than anyone you meet on an average day? Is she funnier? Weaker? Stronger? More scared? Required to be braver?
  • How will you highlight his strengths and weaknesses? Through inner-monologue? Other people’s reactions to him? Other people’s conversations about him?
  • How will you put your main character through the mill? What flaws will that reveal,  and how will you make the readers still your hero?

Give the world a new hero today.

Go!

[Prompt] May 18 – Description

Today we are going to focus on description.

Yesterday’s dialogue-heavy prompt probably resulted in very little descriptive language (unless your characters were poets). Today we’re going to remedy that.

Write a story where you concentrate on descriptive language.

Pick a tone and try to stay with it throughout the story (rich, natural metaphors lathered on, Tolkein-style; sardonic observations from your main character; floral imagery, the soundscape or ‘smellscape’ of the world your characters are walking through…). Or perhaps you’ll identify which of your characters’ perspectives we are in by giving your descriptive writing a different tone for each character.

Make us feel, smell, hear, see, touch and taste your world today. But don’t forget to make it a story (beginning, middle, end, action, moving the characters forward).

If you need a little inspiration, read this letter written by an aspiring screenwriter (he got the job).

Go!

[Prompt] May 27 – Dialogue

Today it’s time to work on our dialogue.

Write a story that focuses on writing realistic dialogue

I’m a fan of the podcast Writing Excuses hosted by 3-4 working science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction/comic authors and occasional guests. Even if you don’t write in these forms, don’t let that put you off. It’s 15 minutes long and almost always inspiring.

The reason I mention this is because of their episode with guest Jon Scalzi who gave an excellent, and kind of hilarious theory of why dialogue often comes out sounding less than realistic. I recommend you listen here, but the embarrassingly-accurate gist is that writers spend a lot of time reading. That means that when it comes time to write dialogue we have a tendency to write it as if we are, well, writing it. We don’t tend to write how people really talk, with all the interjections, interruptions and selfishness of people in everyday conversation.

So lets try to capture some of that in our stories today. Let’s write how people really talk and not how we wish they would.

Go!

[Prompt] May 26 – Dramatic Monologue

Aren’t there times when you wish you could just say your piece without anyone interrupting you? Well, today’s the day — for your protagonist, at least.

Write A Dramatic Monologue

Have your protagonist tell their story out loud, in a self-aware way. Make it clear that they know they have an audience – whether or not you spell out why. (Perhaps they’re telling their story to the first police officer on the scene, perhaps they’re talking to a grown-up grandchild, or recording their story for StoryCorp’s National Archives project). You can have them refer to the reason, or simply ramble on.

Make it clear that this is their story and that no-one is going to interrupt, then let them go.

  • Will your protagonist be scrupulously honest, or portray herself in a good light, her enemies in a bad light? Will that be subtle or blindingly obvious?
  • Will your hero use humor? What emotions will he betray?
  • Does the language your character use tell us something about their personality, their upbringing, their age?

Go!

[Prompt] May 25 – Shifting Perspectives

Today’s prompt is a little different. It’s going to show you just how much difference Point of View can made.

Rewrite A Story From A Different Perspective

Take a story that you have written (either this month or at some other point) and rewrite it from a different point of view. If it was third person, limited, try making it first person, or third person omniscient. What new avenues of empathy does that open up for you? What new language can you use (see this article for useful examples).

You can choose to rewrite someone else’s story for this exercise (as long as you promise not to try to get it published and get yourself — and me — for breach of copyright for producing unauthorized derivative works) but it’s better to try this with one of your own. I’m not actually terribly worried about us getting sued. It’s just that rewriting one of your own will show you just how much the same story, written from a different point of view, changes even when written by the same person.

I strongly suggest choosing a story you are already happy with, for this exercise. If you already love the story, you’re much more likely to enjoy playing with it from a different point of view. Or you might hate doing it, but remember: you’re not deleting anything. You’re just doing an exercise.

Go!

[Prompt] May 24 – Epistolary

Not quite a POV today, but still playing with character and point of view, today’s prompt is a secret love of mine:

Write an Epistolary Story

I’ve always loved stories played out through letters  – though now you can tell these stories in emails, phone texts, even Facebook updates and Tweets if you want to update the form. (Here’s an example from the very first StoryADay May, written by Amanda Makepeace).

You can write this as a series of exchanges between two or more people, or as letters, diary entries, or text messages from a single person (as in Amanda’s story).

  • What if you discovered a cache of letters in the attic of a house you just bought. What would be in the one-sided conversation?What would be missing?
  • What if you were a 13 year old who has finally got  on to Facebook?
  • What if you were an increasingly-enraged citizen writing letters to the editor of your small-town newspaper?
  • What if you were caught in a flame war in an online forum and all we, the reader, get to see is what goes on the screen?

Go!

[Prompt] May 23 – Third Person, Omniscient

Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:

Write a story from the Third Person, Omniscient perspective

This is the perspective you know from all the classics (Dickens springs to mind): the author can say anything, pop inside any (or all) character’s heads, travel backwards and forwards in time, insert herself and her own commentary onto the page…

Have some fun with this. Take an episode and tell it from one character’s perspective, then leap into another character’s head and give their read on the situation. Try out your authorial prerogatives and make a comment about what’s going on (think of that moment when a TV character turns to the camera and talks directly to us, the audience).

This can get quite complicated (which is why it works so well for novels) but give it a bash and see what you come up with.

Go!