Today’s Story Spark/Writing Prompt is an example of how you can use events from your real life (I was really under the weather, as you can hear).
There are lots of events we’d rather not live through in our lives. Why not exorcise the demons, by inflicting them on our characters.
Things going to easily for your character, as they scale the rockface to rescue the kitten? Make them do it while battling a nasty head cold! Boss cut back your hours? Throw the same challenge at your protagonist and let them act out your wildest revenge fantasies or let them be the best, most resourceful version that you hope you will be. Inspire yourself!
That was when I saw the first ‘holiday’ themed products in my supermarket (and yes, I mean the twinkling-lights, snow-covered, jolly fat-man type holiday),
And I know I’ll start seeing Valentine’s displays soon.
As a consumer it drives me a little crazy.
As a writer, it’s a great reminder.
Holidays are part of the fabric of our lives
It pays to plan ahead if you’re creating something with a date-related theme!
When it comes to end-of-year holidays my personal bias is towards Christmas & New Year, but there are so many other holidays to celebrate. Which will you choose?
The great things about including a holiday in a story are:
They are evergreen: you can recycle them every year! (Think about how rich Maria Carey has become from that one song…)
They are universal: no matter what culture we come from we all have those days where people come together, eat too much, face family members and friends they don’t really want to see, see people they haven’t seen for years, have fights, make up, fall in love, and get nostalgic.
It’s an instant character-motivation-creator: around a holiday you always have some people who are sad, some people are excited, and some people who are a little too into it…
If you are writing in a secondary or fantasy world, including this universal human experience in your story enriches the culture you’re creating. It feels real when your characters’ lives are complicated by ritual events they may have strong feelings about (even if it’s just to be frustrated at the interruption to their quest!)
Instant Drama
One of the best ways to get to know people is to see how they act under stress.
One of the best ways to stress your characters and find out who they are, is to throw them into the mix with people they wouldn’t necessarily choose to be with.
Can you think of a better way to do that, than to send them a holiday party? 😉
What holiday will you include in your next story? Is it real or fictional? What is your favorite holiday? Leave a comment!
You did it! Now let’s see if your character has THEIR wish granted…
The Prompt
Grant your character’s deepest wish, today
You’ve done it!
You started this month with the desire to write more, write better, and build your writing practice.
With commitment (and probably some imperfect execution) you’ve arrived here, at Day 31 of StoryADay. That’s a huge accomplishment.
As you write your story today, think about how it feels to get what you wanted.
Of course, reality never quite matches up with how we imagined the perfect outcome (for example, I imagined that this year I wouldn’t crave Sundays ‘off’ from my own challenge. This did not turn out to be true…)
For your character, feel free to use the old fairy-tale caution to be careful what you wish for.
For yourself, however, I’d remind you that achievements begin with two things: a vision of how things could be; and a decision to work towards that better future. You used both to write, this month.
CELEBRATE!
Whether you wrote three stories or 31, you Imaginedyourself as a writer, you Wrote, you Refinedyour practice, you Improved your craft, you Triumphedand, if you’re still reading this, I’m pretty sure you Engaged with the community.
You’re living the I, WRITER life.
If you’d like to keep Repeating this successful pattern, take the next steps with the self-paced I, WRITER Course, available now – a program of writing life and craft workshops that reinforces everything you’ve worked to build here.
Build your writing practice
Develop your craft
Start when you’re ready, go at your own pace
To celebrate the end of StoryADay May, if you join I, WRITER before my birthday on June 13, 2023, I’ll send you an invitation to join one of our Superstars Critique Weeks (valid until March 2024), at no cost (a $147 value).
Tomorrow, I’ll be back in your email inboxes one final time, related to StoryADay May 2023, to send you a self-assessment form, so you can capture what went well and what you will do differently as a result of everything you’ve learned on this journey.
This is one of the most valuable documents you’ll create for yourself and I recommend repeating the practice after every project, in future.
For now, sit back and bask in the your successes as a StoryADay 2023 Winner!
Julie Duffy
In 2010 Julie was a frustrated writer, who decided that writing a StoryADay in May would be a great way to kickstart her writing practice. 13 years later, it seems she was right. The rest of the writing world quickly caught on and now May is known as Short Story Month! Julie is the author of writing handbooks, articles, podcasts, workshops and courses, as well as a short story writer, and ‘Book Boss’.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Here’s your final Game Piece (you’re amazing!). Save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Start your story with the character walking away from a situation (figuratively-speaking) and then explain how they got there.
Things to Consider
Think of TV shows that start with a dramatic scene then jump back to eight hours earlier and show how the characters ended up there – in this case you can tell the rest of the story in chronological order from beginning to the moment we entered the story (Looks at the camera: this is where you came in…)
Another option is to step back through the day moment by moment, unpacking every event and the event before it, in reverse order. This can be very powerful if you take the readers on an emotional rollercoaster
Or you can do some blend of the two.
The great thing about this is that you know where you’re going, all the way through the story because you know the outcome. You know what you have to set up to make the ‘ending’ work. Even if you never use this story form again, it’s a great exercise that you can use to rough out the end of a novel or longer story, any time you get stuck!
Possible opening line templates:
As [character name] [active verb][setting], they [verbed] a [noun]. [Image]. [Transition] e.g. As Joanne fled the crowded pub, she lobbed what remained of her lemonade over her shoulder. With one last look over her shoulder she saw it arc through the air–globules caught in the security lights like fireworks–and spray across the faces of her three meathead pursuers, momentarily slowing them down. She put on a burst of speed. How had it come to this?
[Vivid details about something disastrous]. And to think, just [time period] earlier, everything had been going so well…
or
A [profession] in a [setting] doesn’t usually end up with [unexpected result], [conjunction]
Winners’ Swag
We’re so close! It’s not too soon to order your Winner’s Swag:
In 2010 Julie was a frustrated writer, who decided that writing a StoryADay in May would be a great way to kickstart her writing practice. 13 years later, it seems she was right. The rest of the writing world quickly caught on and now May is known as Short Story Month! Julie is the author of writing handbooks, articles, podcasts, workshops and courses, as well as a short story writer, and ‘Book Boss’.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Here’s your final Game Piece (you’re amazing!). Save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
We communicate with more than words…let’s explore that today
The Prompt
Write a short story describing your character’s inner reactions/emotions/thoughts to outside events entirely through body description.
Use this ending for your short story. “After he signed the papers, he stood up slower than usual. He almost limped away from the desk and into the corridor.
No, that’s not it.
His head hung to the left a bit, his whole torso’s weight shifted to the right leg for longer than the left one, as if was lugging around a log of wood attached to his left calf. His left knee didn’t bend. His arms, usually swinging, hung limp.”
Steve Maxwell, a fitness instructor, says: “People’s bodies are exactly what their thoughts are.”
Including the body’s reactions to outside situations is a great way to develop depth in characters. It creates a more immediate connection with readers (since they can absorb a lot of implicit information through such descriptions) and makes your writing more effective with just a few details!
How can we show defeat (like in the ending shared above) or anger or love or excitement/fear through body reactions of characters?
Enjoy!
Neha Mediratta
Neha is a generalist currently obsessed with stretching, mind-body-world connection and the spirit’s dwelling place. She writes fiction, non-fiction, takes on editing assignments she enjoys and works with people she admires. She lives by a lake in an overcrowded coastal city with her family and some wildlife. Check out her writing here
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Dig out your Short Story Framework again, and this time let’s plan a story that features a character who might be you, but very much isn’t. Let them react in ways you never would, never could, to whatever obstacles you throw at them.
When trying to get inside the head of this person, it can be useful to think of someone you actually know who is very different from you. Think of someone who does things that you would never do, that you despise, or that you secretly admire. Start with their external actions (what do they do when someone cuts them off in traffic that is so different from what you do, for example.) Backtracked from there to try to figure out what is going on in their head and their heart in that moment.
Put this character in a situation where there is conflict or stress and where their reactions are going to be really different from how you would react. Write the reactions, and as you’re doing so, unpack the story behind this person.
Don’t worry about trying to have a clever plot in this story. It can be something as simple as: this person gets cut off in traffic and how they react. The point of this exercise is to investigate the psyche of somebody very different from you. There’s a danger in always writing characters that are too sympathetic or similar to yourself.
Writing about somebody you dislike or someone unlike you can be very difficult. To make them more sympathetic, give them something there really, really good at. They might be charismatic. They might be really good engineering. But everyone has some areas where they are competent even if they are incompetent in every other sphere that matters to you!
This is not an exercise in writing a villain. This is an exercise in writing someone very different from yourself. It could be someone you admire.
Julie Duffy
Julie is the creator of StoryADay May. She created the challenge in 2010 when she realized she was spending so much time daydreaming about ways she could have lived different lives that she might as well write some of them down as stories!
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
