[Writing Prompt] Don’t Fight With Strangers On Social Media

Fighting creativityA few days ago, I commented on a Twitter post about a hot-button issue. I don’t normally do that, but I thought I was making a neutral, expanding-the-argument kind of comment.

You can tell where this is going can’t you?

Yeah.

Someone read my comment and assumed I was saying something I wasn’t; pigeon-holed me as someone from the completely different end of the ideological spectrum; and proceeded to make snarky, personal comments every time I tried to defuse the situation.

I had that hot-and-sweaty, blood-pounding-in-my-face, pit-in-my-stomach sensation we all remember so well from the injustices of being a misunderstood 12-year-old.  I wasted hours constructing careful answers and psyching myself up to open up my Twitter feed, wondering if I would find an olive branch or a minefield.

It wasn’t fun.

It sucked all the creativity out of my day.

It was such a waste of time.

And the irony of it was, I had, that very morning, reposted Austin Kleon’s advice not to pick fights with strangers on social media!

The Prompt

Find an issue that you COULD have a fight with someone about on social media and instead, write a story.

Tips

  • Make it something you really, really care about.
  • Have a protagonist and an antagonist who feel strongly about either side of the argument.
  • Give the antagonist a legitimate reason to feel that way — don’t make them a cardboard cut-out/cartoon villain.  (This might be hard, but will result in a better story, and a better you!)
  • You don’t have to be sympathetic to the opposing point of view, but you do have to grant some humanity to the person who holds that view. Grace them with some nuance. It’ll make for a better story, and it’ll intrigue the reader.
  • It will make your story and its outcome surprising and  memorable.
  • Consider leaving the story slightly unresolved. Life usually is. Maybe there is a moment when one (or both) characters have a glimmer of understanding (or of seeing the other person as a real human), or maybe they miss that moment entirely.
  • When working with two sides of an issue, you can show how the ‘good’ character could easily become the ‘bad’ character if only they…{insert the line your character will not cross here] and vice versa.
  • Because this is a short story, focus on one angle of an issue, one comment, one moment in the character’s lives.
  • Maybe let the exchange play out on a simulated social media exchange.
  • Maybe have the characters in another time and place, debating face to face, or through some completely different medium.

 

I promise you that, if you write a story instead of picking a fight with a stranger on social media, you’ll have a better day than I did last week 😉

 

[Write On Wednesday] Four-Part Story

I’m currently fascinated by a short story experiment being run by Penguin Random House.

They’re running a series called “The Season of Stories“. You subscribe, and they send you a story every week.

But that’s not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that they serialize the story.

Every day, Monday-Thursday, you receive part of a story.

It’s how short stories were read in publications back at the start of the golden age of short story writing, and it’s something we’ve moved away from. Instead of making them bite-sized treats, we sell short stories by weight, packaged into collections. Then we try to sell them to readers who have been trained on novels.

(No wonder short story collections don’t sell well!)

With a novel, you, the reader, carve out some time to plunge yourself into a story world, allow yourself to be pulled along by cliffhangers, spend time getting to know the characters.

Short stories aren’t like that.

Readers, in general, don’t know what to do with a short story collection, but anyone can open their email and read a quarter of a story. Especially one that has been well-crafted.

Today I want you to practice crafting a story that will keep bringing a reader back for more.

Stories naturally break into four parts: inciting incident, rising action, midpoint shift, then climax/conclusion/resolution.  Each part must end with a kicker that leaves the reader wanting more (yes, even the end).

The Prompt

Write a story that can be read in four parts. Focus on creating mini-cliffhangers at each quarter point.

Tips

  • The Seasons of Stories shorts have ranged from 600-1900 words per installment. You can choose a length that works for you.
  • This is a great way to promote your other writing. PRH’s emails come with a ‘if you enjoyed this, read more in this book’ ad at the end. But it never feels ‘salesy’ because they’ve given me a free sample and are simply letting me know where I can find more, if I liked it. Sometimes this link is to a novel by the same author. Sometimes it is to a collection of short stories containing stories by the author. (Now that they’ve trained me to read shorts, they can sell me their collection!)
  • Don’t forget to raise a big story question at the start (remember: you can do this in revisions), that won’t be addressed until the climax/end. Do this in addition to the mini-cliffhangers at the end of each section.
  • If you need some examples, check out The Season of Stories. It’s free.
  • I heard about this from Daniel Pink’s newsletter. If you like this, consider subscribing to that. It’s a short read and he shares interesting stuff like this, every other week.

Now, go and write your story.

Come back and tell me how it went!

 

[Write On Wednesday] The One Thing They’d Notice

Today’s prompt was inspired by an exercise in Donald Maass’s latest book The Emotional Craft of Fiction. You can find the whole exercise on p.22 of that book.

The Prompt

Write a story featuring two characters in the same location. Pick a detail that only your protagonist would notice and weave it into the story. 

Tips

Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] The One Thing They’d Notice”

Write On Wednesday – After The Happily Ever After

How many times have you made a change in your life, only to backslide? Do you ever wonder will happen to a story’s character after the credits have rolled?

The story is over when the character has mastered the challenge. But the story, for your character, is not really over. They live their life, in the shadow of everything that came before.

The Prompt

Write the story of a character’s NEXT struggle, after the ‘happily ever after’

Tips

  • You could take a character from someone else’s stories, or from a folk tale (write a sequel to Cinderella or Gone Girl)
  • You could write the sequel to a story you’ve written in the past
  • Questions to ask yourself: what did the character have to overcome to succeed in the original story? What did they desire? How did they suddenly become sure they could win? What has changed, since then? Are they struggling with the same thing, in a new setting? Are they struggling with new issues, as a results of the original win?
  • For example: Cinderella was struggling against her step-family, who wanted her to fail. What will life be like for her in the castle? Her new husband presumably wants her to succeed at being Queen. Does she have what it takes? Does everyone in the castle want her to succeed? Is there a big event coming up that she must host? What lessons can she take from her first challenge into this new one? Is she battling feelings of insecurity as well as outside forces?
  • In my story The Girl Who Circumnavigated The Globe In An Act Of Her Own Making, my main character’s desire is to communicate; to present herself to the world on her own terms. Within the scope of that one story, she does it. She feels good at the end of the story. She has a plan. But what about when she next goes back to Earth? Will she see her ‘victory’ as something fanciful and worthless? How will she deal with the frustration of being prejudged by everyone all the time, again? I could write that story today.

Go!

Write on Wednesday – Unexpected

I’m sitting in Manhattan, about to go to see “Hamilton”. (squeeeee!) I just realized I hadn’t written a prompt for this week so here’s my birthday-treat-inspired prompt:

Write a story we might know (e.g. The story of a Foudning Father) but in an utterly unexpected style (e.g. A hip hop musical about the First Secretary of the Treasury…)

Settings – A Writing Prompt from Josh Barkan

Writing exercise: (20 minutes)

Choose a place that you know well, which you have strong feelings about. Describe that place, first when you are in a happy mood. (10 minutes) Then describe the place when you are in a sad mood. (10 minutes)

What difference did you note?

Writing exercise: (30 minutes)

What is described in a particular setting often depends upon the point of view of the story. Describe a real park you have visited, first in the first person point of view through the eyes of a young man or young woman in love (15 minutes), and then through the eyes of an old widow or widower (15 minutes).

What differences in setting did you notice, even though it was the same park?

 

Tips:

The purpose of these exercises is to realize that setting is never neutral. Setting descriptions are subjective. So your setting should always evoke a mood. Think of your setting as another character. The setting should help us feel the mood of the scene you are describing. If there is conflict in the scene, then the setting should be described harshly, in a way that evokes the harshness of the moment. If the scene is a warm scene, with love, then the setting should reveal that warmth.

 

About Josh Barkan

Josh Barkan is the author of MEXICO. Josh Barkan has won the Lightship International Short Story Prize and been a finalist for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Juniper Prize for Fiction. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in Esquire. He earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught writing at Harvard, Boston University, and New York University. With his wife, a painter from Mexico, he divides his time between Mexico City and Roanoke, Virginia. For writing advice from Barkan and other top-notch short story writers, download Signature’s Compact Guide to Short Story Writing.

 

Write About A Writer – a writing prompt for 31 May, 2017

You’ve made it! You’ve written stories all month long — whether you’ve written every day, or on and off throughout the month — I congratulate you!

Make sure to come back tomorrow for three things

  • The June Serious Writers’ Accountability Group — make your commitment to your writing for next month
  • Details about StoryFest — your chance to get your favorite story featured on the front page of StoryADay.org
  • The mini-critique group I’m running next week, to help you whip your stories into shape in time for StoryFest.

But before all that: one more story to go:

The Prompt

Write A Story About A Writer

Tips

  • Feel free to take out your aggressions on me! Feature a writer who turns on their teacher/mentor/professor!
  • Channel Stephen King’s “Misery” and feature a stalker.
  • Take the reader through all the goys and perils of the writing journey
  • Or use the conceit of a writer character to do something that couldn’t really happen in real life.

And after you’re done, write a blog post or a journal entry capturing all you’ve learned about yourself as a writer this month. Resolve to build on your strengths. Keep what you write somewhere safe, so that next time you have a big writing push coming up, you can benefit from all these lessons!

If you share your post online, be sure to send me a link (in the comments below or by email) or tag me on social media!

And don’t forget, StoryFest is coming, June 10-11!

Thank you all for playing along this month. Without you, I wouldn’t be doing any of this.

Keep writing!

Hidden Messages – a writing prompt for May 24, 2017

Today’s prompt was, er, prompted by a brief literary feud that flared up recently.

A TV critic took issue with the latest episodes of the BBC’s Sherlock, complaining that our hero was more James Bond than Conan Doyle’s Holmes. The episode’s writer wrote a response in verse, then the critic wrote back with his own poem. BUT, in the last couple of lines of the poem, he pointed out that he had embedded a hidden message in his words (the second letter of the first word of every line spelled it out).

I was so tickled that I’m stealing the idea (which he stole from Conan Doyle, so I don’t feel bad).

The Prompt

Write a story with a hidden message

Tips

  • You could make the first letter of every sentence spell out a message.
  • You could make the first/second/third/last word of every sentence add up to a secret message.
  • You should probably start by writing out your secret message and then figuring out the rest of the words in your story, so it fits!
  • This will force you to break all the normal rules of your process of storytelling. Don’t be afraid. Be bold. At the very least you’ll learn something about your process!

Go!

A Refusal – a writing prompt

Continuing our week of prompts aimed at creating rich backstory for novelists and short story writers alike, today we create an alternate story for your protagonist.

The Prompt

There is a moment in every story where a protagonist has to make a choice: to take up the challenge of the story or to turn away. Everything else flows from that.

Today, write a story in which your protagonist makes the other choice. 

Tips

  • This will, of course, result in a shorter story than otherwise.
  • It will still have fallout. (Think: It’s A Wonderful Life, Sliding Doors etc.)
  • Examine that fallout in a story.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, or do your Victory Dance in the community.

[Writing Prompt] Medieval Mayhem

Sticking with this month’s theme of writing for publication, today I bring you another prompt associated with a themed issue. This time it’s from Splickety Magazine…

Sticking with this month’s theme of writing for publication, today I bring you another prompt associated with a themed issue.

Splickety Magazine Logo Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Medieval Mayhem”

[Writing Prompt] Sleight of Hand

Yesterday I reviewed Shakedown by Elizabeth Gonzalez, a story that doesn’t seem to be able to make its mind up whether it wants to be about the renovation of an old steam train, or about a fiesty old man in a Pennsylvania mountain town. It’s a wonderful example of a quiet climax: no car chases or bullets flying, but a satisfying story climax nonetheless. Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Sleight of Hand”

[Writing Prompt] Turn A Trope Upside Down

Writing Prompt LogoIn James Blish’s Surface Tension (which I reviewed recently), the author took the idea of space travel and did something a bit different with it: instead of humans arriving on a new planet and terraforming it to suit themselves, they genetically-engineer versions of humanity that would thrive on the planet.

Now that’s what I call ‘subverting reader expectations’. But it’s still a satisfying story that sticks to the rules of an off-planet adventure story (lots of ‘wonder’ and new environments, inter-personal conflict, conflict with the environment, bad guys, a struggle to unite the ‘good’ forces and to survive. Even a little romance.)

The Prompt

Write a story that subverts reader expectations but still works in genre Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Turn A Trope Upside Down”

[Writing Prompt] Interrogate A Character

Today’s writing prompt is ripped straight from my 6th Grader’s homework folder, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant. 

Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

I’m steeped in (as well as 6th Grade homework) Lisa Cron’s fabulous latest book Story Genius, in which she makes the compelling point that you cannot begin to tell your character’s story until you know about their past.

It’s a delightfully obvious (and surprisingly overlooked) observation that ought to be front and center in every writing class. So here we go.

The Prompt

Interview a character from one of your stories. Find out as much as you can about their past and what formed the character they possess on Page One of their story.

Continue reading “[Writing Prompt] Interrogate A Character”

[Writing Prompt] Steal A First Line

The Prompt

Steal the first line of your favorite book and write a totally different story

Tips

  • Don’t agonize about your ‘favorite’ book. Just go to the shelf and pick one.
  • Type out the first line and then think of ways you can take that introduction in completely different directions.
  • Read Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Lady Astronaut of Mars, for an example of how you might do this. Or listen to the audio collection it comes from.
  • Consider writing a tiny, flash-fiction story that you can start and finish today.
  • If you’re brave enough, post your story in the comments.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Regrets, I’ve Had A Few

With Our Eyes Wide Open...This week’s writing prompt is completely stolen from the first story in the 2016 edition of The Best American Short Stories (edited by Junot Diaz)

In the story, a man visits his elderly parents. A chance remark reminds him of an incident in his childhood where he was clearly in the wrong, and someone else suffered.

Without being heavy handed, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie allows her character to reminisce, taking us through a bright moment in a child’s life, before showing the act the man would later regret. There is very little commentary, just lush scene-painting and evocation.

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by one of your regrets

Tips

  • Write this story using a nugget from your own past: an act or words of which you were later ashamed.
  • Alternatively, combine a story you heard from someone else with the emotions you felt when you did something wrong.
  • Don’t use this as a vehicle to feel sorry for yourself, now. Rather, use your experiences to conjure up for the reader the feelings, the physical experience of your shame.
  • Don’t write this autobiographically (unless you really love memoir). Give your feelings to another character.
  • Consider giving the feelings of shame to a character who is very unlike you, and see how they would react to facing the consequences of their own actions.
  • Try to not consciously teach the reader a lesson. Instead, explore the experience and let them draw their own conclusions.
  • Try to evoke the experience of doing something you know to be wrong, getting caught, or getting away with it but regretting it anyway, in ways that a reader might recognize from their own experience (that’s why I suggest focusing on the physical reactions).
  • If the point of storytelling is to connect with other readers, sometimes its our worst experiences that give us the vivid emotional memories that allow us create a vivid story.

[Writing Prompt] It’s Time For Holiday Stories

It’s Write On Wednesday Day! (That’s really clumsy. I’m going to have to never do that again!)

Thanksgiving dinner decor
Photo by Karin Dalziel


The Nov/Dec/Jan holiday season is fast approaching. I know you don’t want to think about it, but if you’re interested in putting out a short story for the holidays, this is actually kind of last minute.

Publications have long lead times for date-specific stories, so if your holiday stories aren’t already written, now’s the time. Magazines and online pubs LOVE themed stories (Christmas stories; New Year issues; Thanksgiving horror stories!).

Or perhaps you’d like to create a story for friends and family to say thanks for all their support (or: na-na-na-na-na-na-you-see-I-wasnt-lying-around-watching-daytime-TV-all-year).

The Prompt

Write a story tied to a Nov/Dec/Jan holiday

Tips

  • You can use this to flesh out characters from a longer work in progress.
  • You can include characters from your real life.
  • You can use this as a calling card/thank you note/Christmas letter if you send holiday greetings cards
  • Mine your own memories, but don’t feel you have to write memoir. Take an incident from one of your family holidays and recast it on a steampunk airship or a city made of living bone towers or at the Tudor court.
  • Don’t feel it has to be a narrative story. One of the delights of the short story form is that it can be much more than that. Consider writing a list of holiday gifts your character has to buy, complete with passive-aggressive commentary; or a series of increasingly frantic tweets from the Thanksgiving dinner table…
  • Create a compelling character and set them in a ridiculous situation, or a ridiculous character and put them in a banal situation.

Have fun with this. Amuse yourself. Remember, nobody ever has to see this story, so you can be as cruel or as kind as you like!

[Writing Prompt] Tell A Friend

This month’s theme, here at StoryADay is “Accountability”.

(If you haven’t yet declared your goals for the month, leave a comment in this month’s SWAGr post and tell us what you’re going to do with your writing for the rest of this month)

Today’s writing prompt includes a  built-in accountability trigger.
Phone

 The Prompt

Contact a friend, right now, and tell them that you’re going to write a short story in the next 24 hours. Tell them you’ll send it to them,  or at least check in when you’re finished. Then, write 500-750 words about a character you think that friend will love (or love to hate)

Tips

  • Keeping the story super-short gives you a better chance of finishing it
  • Focusing on your friend (someone you know well) helps you winnow the choices. What will THEY enjoy? (Too much choice is paralyzing. Eliminate every possible character or situation that wouldn’t interest this particular friend. Then start writing)
  • Remember that a short story revolves around a single moment in which something changes for your character.
    • The moment can have happened just before the story starts (in which case you’re dealing with the aftermath and the character’s choices about how to deal with it)
    • The moment can happen at the end, when we know enough about your character to be able to predict how they’ll react (or at least enjoy wondering)
    • The moment can happen in the middle, in which case you get a chance to show us the before and the after.
  • With such a short story you don’t have much room for backstory. Write it as bare as you can. You can punch it up with details and dual meanings, as you re-read and re-write it.
  • OR write a longer piece, if that’s what works for you. Just be sure to GET TO THE END OF THE STORY. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be finished. (“You can fix just about any problem in revision, but you can’t revise a blank page.“)

 

[Writing Prompt] Seek Beauty

Following this month’s theme of Refilling The Well, I’ve thrown some pretty unusual writing prompts at you, including Don’t Write Anything and Rip Off Another Writer.

In that vein, I’m bowing down to Julia Cameron today, and borrowing her concept of Artist’s Dates, popularized in her book The Artist’s Way.

The Prompt

Seek out something beautiful/inspiring today.

Tips

  • You don’t have to write a story inspired by the thing you find. Just seek it out. View the world with curiosity and try to find something that makes you go ‘wow’.
  • You might want to take a trip to an art gallery or a movie theater, or you might simply want to lie under a tree and look up at the sky through the leaves.
  • You might want to listen to live or recorded music. Or watch your baby for half an hour while she sleeps.
  • Breathe. Soak it in. Notice all the details of the Thing and of your reaction to it.
  • Wallow.
  • Then go back to life, refreshed.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Inspired By…

This week, make sure you’re reading some writing you really love; writing that inspires you. It’ll help with all your writing, and especially with this writing prompt.

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by, or in-the-style-of a piece of writing you love

Tips

  • Don’t try to impress me. Pick something you really, really love (something that gets you excited) whether or not you think anyone else would respect it. If you love it, pick it (in the immortal words of this century’s new bard: “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love“)
  • Analyze the heck out of a piece of writing you love, and recreate it with new characters and a new setting. Or just pick a character/author you love and write a loving fanfic tribute.
  • Don’t worry about making it good. Just try to recapture, for your potential reader, the emotions you felt when reading the piece that inspired you.
  • It doesn’t have to be a short story. Write anything. Perform something. Just get creative. Focus on the excitement of creating something.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Don’t Write A Story

In honor of this month’s theme, here at StoryADay, of Refilling The Well, I’m issuing a very odd writing prompt:

The Prompt

Don’t write/watch/read any stories today

Tips

  • You’re probably a writer because you love stories/reading/storytelling.
  • Since you decided to become a writer, your ‘work’ is storytelling, and so everything related to stories is now tinged with a different color.
  • You used to relax by reading a good book, or watching a good show, but now those things make your subconscious go “oy, my character development isn’t as good as this” or “oo, I could do that in my third act…”
  • You need to find, and indulge in, activities that are completely unrelated to writing/storytelling.
  • Think about things you used to love to do as a kid (yes, I know, I know. I mean *apart from reading*). Did you like to roller-skate? Dance? Skip? Play tennis? Play piano? Sing? Knit? Paint? Build things? Garden? Hang out with friends? Lip synch?
  • Pick one and try it. Clear 30 minutes out of your schedule and do something completely unrelated to storytelling.

Go!

 

P. S. Leave a comment to let us know what you picked and whether or not you felt rejuvenated afterwards.

 

[Write On Wednesday] Happy Birthday!

In which I trick you into sending me cake…

It’s my long-suffering husband’s birthday today! (Happy birthday, dear!) In honor of that, here’s your prompt:

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features A Birthday

Tips

  • You can take this in any direction: happy, creepy, silly, romantic, horrific…go wild.
  • You could go a little ‘memoir’ on this: recount the story of your best or worst birthday.
  • “Birthday” can be interpreted to mean anything from an actual human birth, to the day a supercomputer is switched on, to the anniversary of some other significant event.
  • Feel free to send low-carb cake recipes.
  • I just put that one in to see if you were still reading. But seriously: cake recipes. Nomnomnom.

Go!

Guest Prompt From Gabriela Periera – Famous Last Words

This prompt…exercises your brain in a new way.

Today’s prompt comes from the Chief Instigator of the DIYMFA program, Gabriela Pereira. Always full of writer-craft goodness, you should definitely be checking out DIYMFA.com, always full of writer-craft goodness, and the wonderful weekly DIYMFA Radio podcast.

The Prompt

Famous Last Words

Most prompts give you a place to start and let you take things from there. Today we’re going to flip the equation. I’m going to give you a last line and you need to write toward it. In other words, your assignment will be to write a piece that leads you to that last line.

The reason this prompt is so useful is that it exercises your brain in a new way. As writers, we’re used to taking a kernel of an idea and running with it, but it’s a totally different proposition to have a fixed ending and finding your way to it.

You may someday find yourself in a situation where you need to use this skill, like if you know your ending but haven’t figured out yet how to get there. This prompt is great practice for doing just that.

Take the last line from your favorite book or choose one from the list below. Now write a short piece that ends with that line.

1. No one has claimed them yet.
2. “Let me tell you about it.”
3. Everything must go.
4. “Make me pretty.”
5. And it was still hot.

These are all last lines from actual books. Can you guess which books they came from? Answers are below.

1) From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
2) Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
3) Feed by M.T. Anderson
4) Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
5) Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Gabriela Pereira Author Pic
Gabriela Pereira, DIYMFA.com

Gabriela Pereira is the founder of DIY MFA, the do-it-yourself alternative to a Masters degree in writing. She is also a speaker, podcast host for DIY MFA Radio, and author of the forthcoming book DIY MFA: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community (Writer’s Digest Books, July 2016). For more info and email updates, sign up for her newsletter.

[Write On Wednesday] Dreadful Dialogue Tags

Conventional writing wisdom (these days) says that the mark of an amateur writer is to use colorful dialogue tags instead of a simple ‘she said’. Nevertheless, teachers continue to foist alternatives to ‘said’ on our children. Today’s assignment is designed to show you just how ridiculous that can become.

 Have fun!

And, if you’re near King of Prussia, PA, tonight, come out to the StoryADay Live! “Un-Dreadful Dialogue” workshop  hosted by the fabulous Main Line Writers’ Group!

Thumbnail of 100 words poster - alternatives to saidThe Prompt

Write a story featuring lots of dialogue. Every time you attribute speech to a person you must use one of the ‘alternatives to said’ from the sheet.
(Click to enlarge)

Tips

  • Make sure you rely entirely on the tags to convey the emotion, leaving the dialogue itself bland and without character.
  • Bonus points for making all your characters sound the same.
  • Be as ridiculous as you like.
  • This exercise works particularly well when your subject matter is serious or shocking.
  • This whole exercise is designed to show you how ridiculous dialogue tags can wreck a serious story.
  • (Remember, “he said” and “she said” become invisible when you use them well. These tags never will.)
  • Make sure every single utterance has a tag, whether or not you need one. (e.g. in the case of two people speaking, you can often get away with no tags at all, especially if the conversation is short and the voices are distinct.)
  • Read it (and weep).

 

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Steal A Title

A Month of Writing Prompts 2016Big News! This prompts for this year’s StoryADay May challenge are now available for pre-order as a Kindle ebook! (More formats forthcoming)
If you’re the type of person who likes to plan ahead, go ahead and pre-order your copy today. It’ll land in your Amazon account on Saturday, April 23, (automatically downloading onto your Kindle or Kindle app on your phone) giving you a week to ponder the prompts before the challenge begins.

Stuffed with all-new prompts—including material from my StoryADay Live workshops on story structure and conflict—and headed up by a section that shares road-tested tips for surviving a month of short story writing!

And now, on to this week’s prompt.

The Prompt

Steal a title from a novel or song

Tips

  • You can tell the story of the song, in short story form
  • You can write a completely different story, taking the title and coming up with something fresh.
  • Don’t simply retell the story of someone else’s novel (that’s theft!)

 

[Write On Wednesday] 100 Word Story With Grandparents

Today I’m challenging you to share your story on the new Anchor App (only available for iOS just now, sorry).

The Prompt

Write A 100 Word Story Containing A Reference To Grandparents

Tips

  • This can be a story about grandparents, or it can have the most tangential reference to grandparents (see my story on Anchor)
  • Even if you don’t remember your grandparents, the idea of grandparents saturates our culture. I’m sure you can find some way (syrupy or sarcastic) to write about this!
  • 100 word stories (also known as Drabbles) take some finessing, so I’m going to recommend writing something a little longer, then cutting it.
  • A good way to think about a 100 word story is to have 25 words to set it up, 50 words for the meat of the story and 25 words for the wrap up. It’s not that neat, of course, but the formula is just a ‘way in’.
  • Dribbles often come across almost like form-less poems. The descriptions and characterization certainly owe more to poetry than to novels.
  • If you’re new to Anchor, download it from the app store and go through the introductory ‘first wave’ instructions, then just mash the big red button to record your story. You have two minutes, so you might want to fire up a stopwatch. When you’re finished, you can listen to the finished ‘wave’ and then click the ‘next’ arrow to move to a screen where you can give your wave a caption and a hashtag (use #storytelling and #storyaday so that I can find it and listen). Then listen to other people’s stories and hit the ‘reply’ button (you’ll have one minute to reply. When you’re listening, the app will keep playing content until you
  • If you don’t have Anchor you could always record your story and upload it to your own blog or another audio hosting system.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Change A Headline

Did you ever, as a child, say a word so often that it lost its meaning? (“Basin”, anyone?)
Today I want you to stare at a news headline until it loses its original meaning and lets you play with it.

The Prompt

Take A News Headline And Change A Word Or Two, Sparking A Fictional Story.

Examples

For some reason, to me, this headline suggested some kind of epic fantasy with heroic quests, tasks the hero have been assigned. Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Change A Headline”

[Write on Wednesday] Write what you know

We’re always being told to write what we know but doesn’t that sound the teensiest bit boring?

Still, unless you have a lot of time for research, mining your own experiences can be useful…if you go about it in the right way.

The Prompt

Write a list of things you know about. Pick one. Give that knowledge to a character.

Tips

  • Dig deep as you make your list. Consider all the arcana of your brain’s storehouses.  Don’t discount very, very specific things like “growing up one street across from an elite military academy’s live-fire training grounds, in the 1970s” or “spending vacations in an apartment over my uncle’s store”.
  • Pick something from the middle of your list. The first will be too obvious and everyday (therefore the story will not excite you) and the last one will be too weird, because you were clutching at straws. That one would require too much research and then your short story would never be written (or would demand to become a novel).
  • Consider what kind of character you can give this experience to. Will the wnjoy it? Hate it? Grow up to try to hide it only to have it become important (remember Clarice in “The Silence Of The Lambs” trading secrets about her backwoods upbringing to buy Hannibal Lector’s assistance?)
  • Consider giving your character a sidekick to impress/show off for/frighten/lie to.
  • What does your character want? How can this specialist knowledge help/hinder in their quest. What would they do/never do? What do they need? Where are they at the start and the end of your story (metaphorically and physically).

GO!

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[Write On Wednesday] PostModern Pop Songs

The Prompt: Write A List Of Song Titles You’d Actually Be Interested In Listening To. Write The Story Behind The Song, for one of them.

After you reach a certain age — or stage — of life, it seems like no one writers songs for you any more. You’ve learned a lot of the lessons pop singers seem to be struggling with. Maybe you’re (gasp!) happily married. Maybe the things you struggle with are things other than love and boys and where to go on a Saturday night.

The Prompt

Write A List Of Song Titles You’d Actually Be Interested In Listening To.

Choose One.

Write The Story Of The Character In That Song.

Tips

  • Country music is probably a slightly better role model here than pop. I know there are lots of songs about a more mature kind of love, or about the kind of lifestyle people wish they were living. You could write a wishlist of how your life would look (similar to the country music odes to God, Guns, Mama, Girls and Trucks)

Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] PostModern Pop Songs”