[Writing Prompt] Holiday Stories

This week sees both Independence Day in the US and Canada Day in the north of the continent.

The Prompt

Write a holiday-themed story

Tips

It doesn’t have to be related to this week’s holidays. If fact you might want to start planning ahead for autumnal and winter holidays, especially if you’re interested in releasing those stories this year.

Did you know that magazines, online publications and anthologies are starved for date-appropriate stories?

And think about it, these stories are evergreen: release them yourself and talk them up every year on the same date. Or how about putting together a collection of date themed stories and releasing them as themed anthology of your own writing?

We’ve all lived through holidays – from the ones that give you a day off school, to the ones that come replete with custom and tradition and obligation and anticipation. Use your own experiences to bring the story (and its details) alive for the reader, but don’t forget to include a vivid character with a strong desire for…something.

[Writing Prompt] Mining Your Memories

Screen Shot 2013-06-26 at 12.06.54 AMDon’t forget: at 1PM (EST) today (Wednesday) I’m hosting a webinar on how to write, revise and release a story all in one week, with DIYMFA’s Gabriela Pereira. And we have a special announcement. Register Now  

 


Last week Neil Gaiman’s new novel The Ocean At The End of the Lane came out.

I like his books. But I LOVE his online journal. So on reading the book, it was clear straight away, that he was mining his personal memories: both as an adult attending his father’s funeral (which he did in reality a few years ago, and blogged about) and as a child growing up (one county over from where I would grow up during the following decade).

I’m reading the book slowly, but so far here’s what I see: the details. The details — of what the child sees, where the adult goes — are startlingly clear and appropriate to each voice. The adult goes for a drive to avoid the funeral hooplah, and sees the world as it is and how it has changed. The child looks unflinchingly at a dead body until he is hustled away by the grown ups. But he notes, disgruntled, that the body is draped in a blanket from his own bedroom. He takes in details of the body looked unlike the person as they had been, alive. He measures money in how many four-for-a-penny Blackjacks and Fruit Salads it can buy him (the pervasive, child-accessible sweeties/candies of Mr. Gaiman’s and my childhoods!).

The Prompt

Write a story based on one strong image from your childhood — or at least a decade ago

It doesn’t need to be anything as shocking as discovering a dead body. Just take a vivid memory-image and weave a story around it. Have your characters recall details that you recall. Have them feel the way you felt.

For instance, I remember being allowed (encouraged?) to visit an elderly neighbour of ours when I was very young. I went round one day and saw, in a window above her living room window, a stranger, cleaning her windows from the inside. This person was wearing a white, sleeveless top, hair slicked back, cheeks red. I can remember that the house was attached to other houses on either side, built of brick. The windows were sash windows. The door was up a step from the long path that ran between two strips of lawn. There was a garden gate made of wood with one of those metal latches you have to lift to open it. I still remember the physical sensations I felt when I said…

I *know* this character. I know the mistake she’s about to make and her reaction to it. Now, can I put that into a story where it turns out that the person upstairs is not who Mrs McKay thinks it is? Can I have my character go on to make a similar but bigger mistake? Can I have her triumph over her personality flaws, or will she be defeated by them?

What memory will you write about?

[Writing Prompt] Guest Prompt from Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Today’s prompt is from writer, illustrator and all-round good egg Debbie Ridpath Ohi, who shares one of her Daily Doodles with us today to help inspire a story. Thanks, Debbie!

The Prompt

It Wasn’t Me!
Cartoon dog looking guilty

Tips from Julie

  • Use the words or picture in any way that seems right to you
  • If you’re not an animal person, you don’t have to use the dog.
  • If your’e not an animal person, you should consider using the dog anyway. (Hey, this is about stretching yourself, right?)

Debbie Ridpath Ohi (http://DebbieOhi.com) writes and illustrates books for young people in Toronto, Canada. She is the illustrator of I’M BORED by Michael Ian Black, published by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, chosen by The New York Times as a Notable Children’s Book. Debbie has current and upcoming book projects with Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Random House. More info about Debbie and her projects: http://debbieohi.com. Her blog for writers/illustrators:http://inkygirl.com. Twitter: @inkyelbows.

[Writing Prompt] Game-ify

I love stealing inspiration from other sources.

The Prompt

Write A Story Based On A Character or Scenario From A Game

Tips

  • This could be a scenario from a video game or a board game (what if you WERE Mario — or met him on the road? What if you were Miss Scarlet. Were you framed?)
  • What if you really were living on a farm, trying to meet all its demands, like Farmville?
    What if you were a character in a Sims-like game and gradually started to realize that was the case?
  • Think of any game you’ve ever played and use it as a jumping-off point for a story.
  • If you think you might publish the story, be sure not to step on anyone else’s copyright (you could use a different “colored” character from a mystery board game that was definitely not Clue/Cluedo)

[Writing Prompt] By The Numbers

This prompt was inspired by a link Dan Blank shared. Apparently there’s weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the artistic community about how the rise of data is crushing creativity.

The gist is: storytelling is changing. We’re not writing or consuming stories the same way. What does that mean for creativity?

Personally I think it’s awesome. Some of the best stories I’ve read in recent years eschewed the straight narrative (this happend, then that happened, crisis, climax, resolution, the end). One was written as answers to a police investigation, some have been written as lists, or tweets. A recent best-selling novel is written in second person, as a faux self-help book.

Of course, the straight narrative will always have its place, and it’s certainly a helpful structure on which to hang a story (more on that tomorrow), but it can help us stay out of a rut if we try new things. So:

The Prompt

Write a Story That Uses Numbers To Shape The Structure.

Tips

  • You might time-stamp each of the ‘scenes’ within the story
  • You might write snippets of things that happen in different houses in one street, using house numbers to break up the flow. Pull the whole thing together with one theme or by having one character who pops up in each different house for some reason.
  • You can use weight: the weight of a feather, the weight of a newborn, the weight your main character was at 15, then the weight she is at 30 and what that means. The weight a crane can lift.
  • Use multiple numbers in your story to tie together each scene (or break them apart).
  • Have fun!

[Writing Prompt] Social Speech

Can you imagine your life without email, Facebook, Twitter, text messages? Can your characters?

Can you imagine your life without email, Facebook, Twitter, text messages?

Texting Oasis
Photo by John Frassinet

Can your characters?

If you’re writing contemporary fiction and your characters are still calling and popping round to see each other, you might want to rethink that.

This is something new in life and newer in fiction. How to integrate this stuff into the narrative? It’s an exciting chance to do something new. But “exciting” and “new” can also mean “challenging” and “fraught with clunky first attempts”.

Why not get your first attempts out of the way today?

The Prompt

Write A Story Using A Facebook Timeline

Tips

  • It doesn’t have to be Facebook, but some electronic form of communication should feature prominently.
  • Try to have your characters use the e-communication the way you do.
  • You might want to write the whole story as a series of Facebook conversations (how would you format that?) or texts between different friends (like an update of this phone scene from “Mean Girls”, which must seem hopelessly outdated to today’s teens!)
  • Streams of status updates and back and forth conversation threads (interspersed with direct messages (“who is ‘Janice Atherton’? And why is she commenting on my photo?!”)