Do you want to spend this September becoming more creative, more productive and happier? [1. Extra happiness not guaranteed]
Want to end September with a stack of short story drafts to edit and share? Continue reading “StoryADay September 2018 is coming”
This month I’m giving you prompts that work in different ways to support your long-form fiction/novel writing. This week we’re looking at the micro-cultureS in your novel’s world.
Write a story that explains how the culture of your novel’s setting evolved
Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi
Have I I convinced you to dig into your novel’s backstories yet? Leave a comment to let me know what you’re thinking and what you’re writing.
This month I’m giving you prompts that work in different ways to support your long-form fiction/novel writing. Today’s prompt digs deep into your protagonist’s past.
Photo credit: GôDiNô
Write the story of the childhood event that scarred your character
Go!
Photo credit: GôDiNô
What did you write about? Leave a comment!
Over the past few weeks I’ve been encouraging you to write stories for special occasions to make sure you are writing year round, but also as a way to attract the attention of editors.
And that is started to make me feel a bit uncomfortable.
StoryADay has always been about the early stage of the process…the creative work, not the publishing and selling part. Sometimes friends ask me why I don’t publish anthologies or run competitions here at StoryADay.
It’s not by accident.
I passionately believe that you don’t do our best work when we’re thinking about who might buy a story or what a judge might think.
We do our best work when we are writing for the love of it, or for ourselves, or for one person we think will enjoy this story.
(That’s not to say that we shouldn’t pursue publication or that there is anything wrong with wanting that. It just pays to focus on the work first.)
So this week I’m encouraging you to set aside all thoughts of editors and publication credits and write for the love of writing and for the love of someone special.
Write A Birthday Story for Someone You Love
Go!
If you try this exercise I would LOVE it if you would come back and leave a comment. How did the writing go? Did the process feel different from other stories you’ve written? How did you feel about the story itself?
Today’s post is part of series of posts encouraging you to write stories for minor holidays.
Writing and submitting a story for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day or Christmas, means you’re up against a lot of competition in an editor’s inbox. Everyone writes for those holidays. But editors still love a timely, topical story. Why not take advantage of the myriad of minor holidays, to give your story an edge?
“Minor holidays”, in my mind, can also mean one-off anniversaries. I’m not saying there won’t be competition for these ones, but if you write your story far enough in advance you could ride the crest of the wave.
Write a story for one of 2019’s big anniversaries: the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci’s death; the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth; the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings; the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Big Anniversaries”
Today’s post is part of series of posts encouraging you to write stories for minor holidays.
Writing and submitting a story for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day or Christmas, means you’re up against a lot of competition in an editor’s inbox. Everyone writes for those holidays. But editors still love a timely, topical story. Why not take advantage of the myriad of minor holidays, to give your story an edge?
(Listen to the podcast where I tell you why I think this is important)
Write A Story Centered Around A Solstice
Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Writing For The Solstice”
Today’s post is part of series of posts encouraging you to write stories for minor holidays.
Writing and submitting a story for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day or Christmas, means you’re up against a lot of competition in an editor’s inbox. Everyone writes for those holidays. But editors still love a timely, topical story. Why not take advantage of the myriad of minor holidays, to give your story an edge?
Write a story for National Handwriting Day on January 23
Continue reading “[Write on Wednesday] National Handwriting Day”
When I was 12 years old and living in Scotland, I had a friend whose parents were English. We walked home from the bus stop together every night, chattering away in colorful local accents and colloquialisms. But as soon as my friend reached her front door, she would call out, “Hallo, Mummy, I’m home!” in the most pukka English accent you could ever hope to hear.
She didn’t even know she was doing it.
Maybe it’s because I have my parents staying with me at the moment, but I’ve been thinking about the ways our characters change, depending on who we’re with. My McCarroll tendencies come out while they’re visiting. I become more laid-back (or as my husband calls it ‘late’), and more spontaneous (or ‘disorganized and indecisive’). Even my accent gets more Scottish (see last week’s podcast).
I’m sure my parents are equally bemused by my ‘sudden’ need to know what everyone’s plans are for the day, since nobody in our family ever really had plans until the last minute (see? Spontaneous!).
So today I want you to explore that, with your character.
Write a story that shows you character in three different scenes, interacting with people who bring out different sides of their character.
Leave a comment and let us know how it went
One of the only ways to get better as a writer is to learn to revise our stories. This month, at StoryADay we’re focusing on revision. Keep reading for a free lesson on how to achieve the right revision mindset, and for news about this year’s StoryFest!
Take a story you have written before and rework it, today
If you took part in StoryADay May this year, our annual story showcase is scheduled for the weekend of June 23-24. (See previous versions of StoryFest here)
To take part, make sure you’re on the mailing list (sign up below) and watch your inbox for information about how to submit your favorite story and recommend one by another StoryADay writer. (No, there’s no ‘judging’ or selection process, you simply nominate one of the stories you wrote during StoryADay May this year.)
Welcome to your first post-May prompt of 2018!
We’ll meet every week to write a story. Feel free to share in the comments, or just tell us what you wrote about (if you’re saving your story for publication).
Write about an artist (not a writer) struggling with a personal and a professional challenge on the same day
What did you write about today? Leave a comment!
Here we are: the last day!
Today I’m sharing the final Superstar post with everyone, because I think everyone needs to take a moment to celebrate!!
I hope that you have found this illuminating, frustrating, exhilarating…
I know there were days when you weren’t thrilled with what you write and that there were days when you surprised yourself or made yourself really happy.
More than that, YOU know that you have 31 days under your belt, of writing whether you felt like it or not.
(Even if you didn’t write every day, I’m willing to be there were days this month when you wrote when you didn’t want to and you finished a story even when you thought it wasn’t worth it and that act of finishing showed you that you can do this.)
You’ve pushed yourself and I want you to take some time today to make some notes about what you’ve learned, about your rhythms of writing; about how things work for you.
I can give you advice, and Stephen King can give you advice, and none of it really matters. It’s great to put yourself in a community of people talking about things that matter to you, and you can learn from other people’s examples, for sure, but the only way to discover how you write, is to write.
At the end of this 31 days, you’ll have learned something about your rhythm, your practice of writing.
Write a story about a creative person who has just completed, or is in the throes of completing a massive creative effort.
(And yes, this can be autobiographical).
Youc ould tak us thorugh the manic process of trying to finish up the work. You can show us their post-event hysteria/collapse. You can have them reflecting on the effort.
Pay attention to the physicality of it.
Go anywhere you want with this.
It doesn’t have to be serious. It can be self-indulgent (you’ve earned it!)
I hope this has been a great experience for you.
Write your story today and then take a moment to blog or journal or tweet or whatever you do to celebrate and share.
Take some time to really revel in the fact that you have devoted these 31 days, regardless of how much you were able to turn up, or how often you were able to write, or how good your stories were, you devoted this month to paying attention to your inner writer.
You have these materials now, you can come back at any time and dive back into these prompts, the meditations, the forum. You’ve met these people who have gone through this experience with you and you’ve made some connections. I hope you will stay in touch with each other. Having a cohort of people to help each other out is an amazing thing. These people who know and like you will be your biggest boosters, so stay in touch. Take advantage of the fact that you have this group of people how have shared this experience with you.
(And if you weren’t part of the Superstars group this time around, keep watching your inbox for the next opportunity. I’ll be running this again in September and next May, at the very least.)
Make your plans for the rest of the year. As you’re writing your celebratory blog/journal entry and going through the worksheet about what you’ve learned this month, think about your plans are for the rest of the year, the rest of the next five years…
Think about how you can put into practice. everything you’ve learned in this month to honor your urge to write to be creative, to write. If you need to be part of a group of people who commit to writing regularly, then you’re going to need to find a group. It might be the SWAGr group–come along on the first of the month, and make sure you’re on the SWAGr notifications list by signing up at the bottom of this page. Maybe you need a real-life group fo people who meet in a cafe on Saturday mornings and does a write-in. Find one. Look on Meetup.com. Start one!
Whatever you need, figure it out, commit to doing it.
Set yourself some goal. Make most of them attainable, but think about having one big, scary, outrageous goal. Think about the steps you can take to get yourself closer to realizing that goal, or at least working towards it.
Thank you for coming along on this journey. I learn a lot from you, and from producing these materials, so I really appreciate you being here. I love getting to know you and building this tribe of people who are on each other’s side as we strive to be writers everyday, not ‘someday’.
Write your story today. Journal about your experiences this month. Watch your inbox for more information from me in the months ahead, and most of all…
Keep writing!!
And don’t forget to sign up to receive reminders about the Serious Writers’ Accountability Group (SWAGr) below!
What are your plans for the months ahead? What would you like to see here at StoryADay to help you reach your goals? Leave a comment (or a link to your blog post) below.
Welcome back to the penultimate day of your month of extreme short story writing.
After setting you free yesterday, I’m putting a few more limits on you again today.
Take a story that you wrote earlier this month, and tell it from a different point of view
The point of this prompt is to show you that sometimes a story benefits from being told in a different way. Noir stories work in first person because that’s what we’re used to. Something set in a Victorian era works well in Third Person Omniscient because that’s how Dickens wrote–it’s what we’re used to.
Use this prompt as an excuse to play with a story and make it richer, through voice.
Here we are, the final three days of this extreme month of writing.
It’s so impressive that you’re still here, that you’re still writing, that you’re still coming back to this.
I know you have stories you want to tell, that the world needs to hear.
Your experiences, your outlook, your way of expressing yourself, are unique in the history of the world and I’m so glad you’ve come this far, and you’re still writing.
And I know you’re going to continue to write, because you’ve come this far.
Today I’m giving you a prompt that might seem a little lazy from me, but there’s a reason.
Write the story that you’ve been hungering to write.
I’ve been very proscriptive this month, telling you what you write, and you’ve been writing for four weeks. You’ve got stories in your head that are nipping at your brain, whispering “tell me!”, so today I’m setting you free.
Tell one of those stories.
Leave a comment to let us know what you wrote today
This is the kind of writing prompt that puts so many limits on your story that you can’t worry about making the story good. Sometimes you end up with a good story, but the silliness of the prompt removes all pretension and blocks.
Your story must include these words; ink, previously, work, breeze, seven, run, delicious, example, spontaneous, barb.
This is a fun one to share in the comments!
Start a story that begins with the ending, then immediately jumps back in time.
e.g. “It all started 12 hours ago.”
Think of this as the way someone might shoot a heist movie: a character is being led out in handcuffs and a voiceover says, “It all started 12 weeks ago.”
(In a short story you probably need to keep the scale in hours as this means you don’t have too many scenes.)
Don’t worry too much about getting this perfect. Feel free to be cheesy. Just have fun. Leave a comment to let us know how you got on!
Today’s prompt lets you practice your dialogue and thinking about communicating your characters’ motivations to the reader.
One character is trying to sell something to another character. .
This could be metaphorical: they are trying to sell them an idea.
It could be literal: they’re trying to sell them a car.
Leave a comment letting us know how it went (and what you decided to sell!)
Day 4, Week 4!
Write a story about someone whose boss is doing something contrary to the main character’s morals.
Today I want you to write a story about a character whose boss (or somebody important to them, with power over them) is doing something illegal/unethical. How will your character react?
This week’s theme is, in part, to encourage you to try out stories that use each of the types of story threads from the MICE quotient.
Tell a story that features a disappearance
This could be an Intrigue/Idea story. At it heart it has a question, or a mystery or a big idea.
It could be the disappearance of a person, a cultural phenomenon, or of the bees, or of Arctic Ice. Or it could be something more nebulous. Your story could be serious or slapstick. What will you come up with?
What did you make disappear? What kind of story did you write? What tone did your story take on, today? Leave a comment and let us know!
Choose a detail that only your character would notice in this story
(This exercise is borrowed from Donald Maass’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction, a book I highly recommend.)
Think about your character’s past, so that you know what matters to your character, what background they came from.
As an example, I noticed a vase in my in-laws’ house because my parents had the same one. It was really the only notable thing about the vase! It tells you something about our relative backgrounds that our parents chose the same decor…
You might pick something with more emotional resonance: a smell, a song, a flower.
Tell a story about your character that includes a detail that tells us something more about your character.
Welcome to Week Four!
This week I’m providing you with story starters, to give your imaginatiosn a little kickstart.
Your character wakes up in a space they don’t recognize.
They could wake up in a white van, a locked room, or anywhere that is completely different form their everyday. This gives you the opportunity to explore your character in interesting ways.
There may be other people inside the space, outside the space, interacting with them, or not.
Have fun with this, today!
Write A Story As A News Report
This could be a TV report with a panel of pundits yelling at each other, a reporter on the street, the voice of a producer in your anchor’s ear…
Or, this could be a traditional newspaper report.
Remember to tell a story, though! Then tell us all about it in the comments.
Write A Story In The Form Of A Series of Letters
Remember to leave a comment to let us know how you got on!
May is far from over! Don’t give up now. And if you’ve just discovered StoryADay May, it’s not too late to jump in. Here’s today’s prompt, and you can find a new episode of the podcast here: Is It Time To Quit? (spoiler: no!)
Tell A Story ‘Direct To Camera’
This is probably going to be in first person.
Write as if you’re writing to your best friend, or talking directly to a police officer, or relaying this to a room of strangers.
if all else fails, stand in front of your phone and tell the story. Tell a real story or a fairy story. See what this does to your writing.
Leave a comment and tell us how it went today!
Write a story today in which the reader only hears one side of the conversation
This could be a telephone conversation, a text conversation, a series of social media updates, a series of letters, whatever.
Bob Newhart telephone does this in telephone calls
Watch Neil Gaiman read his story Orange here or read it here
To see four excellent examples of a 100 word story, hop on over to the publisher’s site now. Or pick up the book from Amazon or request it from your local indie bookstore.
Today we continue our look at short stories as not-mini-novels and play with them in ways you can only play with short stories!
Write a story completely in dialogue
It’s probably best to keep this to two characters because it’s harder to have more than two characters, without attribution.
I want you to keep it straight in our heads, who’s talking, simply by the way they talk.
A guy who works on Wall St should sound different from a farmer from a rural area.
Don’t forget to leave a comment and tell us what you wrote today!
Today’s bonus prompt comes from Elise Holland, writer and editor of the 2Elizabeths online literary magazine
There are so many excellent contests available to short form writers.
Sometimes the clear-cut parameter of a deadline serves as inspiration, and
many contests are genre specific, creating a built-in, detailed prompt.
In order to provide a precise prompt, I suggest looking into submitting
your work to Nowhere Magazine’s Spring 2018 Travel
Writing Contest. Beneath the prompt, you will find my tips on how to find
writing contests, and how to use each set of submission guidelines as
future prompts.
Until May 31, 2018, literary travel magazine Nowhere is seeking
contest submissions from young, old, novice, and veteran writers.
Specifically, they are looking for stories with a strong sense of place.
Send your fiction, nonfiction, or essay, but be certain to specify which
genre your work falls into at the top of your manuscript. Submissions
should be kept between 800 – 5,000 words in length. The contest winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Nowhere. For further details and
to submit your work, visit the magazine’s website here.
About Elise Holland
Elise Holland is the editor of 2 Elizabeths, a literary magazine
focused on poetry and short fiction, with an emphasis on romance and
women’s fiction. Her work has been published inWriter’s Digest Magazine, The Writer’s Dig, and at DIY MFA. Find Holland online at 2Elizabeths.com.
Welcome to Week 3! You’re still here! I’m very impressed…
This week we’ll be looking at some of the fun ways short stories can be written that are nothing like mini-novels.
Write A Story In The Form Of A List
This is a great refresher after a week of deep narrative work.
Go and have some fun!
Today we continue with the third of my ‘fairy story’ structures: Hansel Gretel.
Start with a life-changing moment and lead your characters through the story to show us who they become.
Hansel and Gretel starts off with a bang: two kids, alone in woods, abandoned!
What are they doing to do?
After the big opening, all their struggles teach us about the kids’ characters. By the time Gretel finally kicks the witch into the oven, grabs her brother and they make their way out of the witch’s cabin, we know enough about these kids to know they’re going to be OK.
How can you replicate this for your characters?
This is a big week at StoryADay: we’re creating a lot of skills that will help you build stories throughout the rest of the month and beyond. Stay tuned!
And don’t forget to leave a comment to let us know you’ve written, how it’s going, and what you’re learning.
Today’s story structure is a little more balanced, and is illustrated by the Ugly Duckling story.
Use the Ugly Duckling Story To Write A Balanced Story With The Life-Changing Moment In The Middle
Unlike in Cinderella, the Ugly Duckling’s life-changing moment comes in the middle, and then the author spends the second half of the story revisiting situations like the ones that led him to the crisis point. Where he met cruel children at the start, he meets nice children after his transformation. Where he met mean animals at the start he meets kind animals after his transformation. Where his family was horrible to him at the beginning, he gets to reconcile with his mother at the end.
This means we get to see what kind of character the Ugly Duckling has even after his transformation. This structure is a good one to use when your character’s struggle is mostly internal.
To make life easier for yourself, unfold the story in the opposite order to the way you built it. Nest the encounters, like this:
[mother] [animals] [children] [CRISIS] [children] [animals] [mother]
For the next three days we’ll be writing stories based on their strcuture. Today’s will be very familiar to anyone who’s heard the words ‘three act structure’ or ever heard of “Cinderella”.
Write a story in which your hero wants something, tries and fails to get it, and eventually has their life-changing moment at the end of the story.
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
