The Prompt: Write the story of an inanimate object.
This prompt was inspired by a conversation with a StoryADay Superstar who had been waiting for a package to arrive for weeks. We speculated about what it had been up to on its travels, and now it’s your turn.
Write the story of an inanimate object
The Prompt: Write a story with a pivotal scene where your a character tastes a food they haven’t tasted since childhood.
Write a story with a pivotal scene where your a character tastes a food they haven’t tasted since childhood.
All the prompts this month are designed to stand alone or support your novel habit! Use them to spark standalone stories or to unstick your work-in-progress.
Just because it’s short doesn’t mean a story can’t be complex.
Write a story in which the protagonist and antagonist are two sides of the same coin.
In Part 2 of my interview with Angela Ackerman, co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus and host of Writers Helping Writers, we talk about how to use details to write great characters, immerse readers in your story, and even figure out your plot.
Links:
Writers Helping Writers: http://stada.me/whw
One Stop For Writers: http://stada.me/osfw
A character who knows less than the reader tries their best to deal with a problem they don’t fully understand.
Simon Rich is is an American humorist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has published two novels and three collections of humor pieces, several of which appeared in The New Yorker
His message to the StoryADay community: “God speed everyone. Let’s keep writing if we can.”
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you got on and what you’re writing about
Think about three different characters going into a situation who need three different things to happen in it. Now, all of these things will conflict with the other needs. Think about how they will ally with each other and thwart each other in conversation and subtly trying to influence each other. But only one character can get what they want. Now… go!
Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author. His novels and over 50 short stories have been translated into 17 languages and he has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He has a fabulous Patreon campaign where you get original stories once a month. He is also the author of one of my favorite new writing guides, It’s All Just A Draft, which I talked about in this podcast episode.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you got on and what you’re writing about
We are one month away from StoryADay May, people! This is not a drill.
Actually, yes, it kind of is.
This is THE PERFECT TIME TO WARM UP your writing (take it from someone who didn’t, the very first year I ran this thing. I thought it would be smart to save all my ideas until May. Um, wrong!)
One of the easiest ways to get into the flow of writing is to minimize the amount of stuff you have to invent. So today I have two prompts for you, from the archives, which help you take that ‘write what you know’ thing and have a little more fun with it than if you were simply journaling.
Read through these two prompts from the archives and decide which one is most interesting to you.
When Your Character Is Like You
When Your Character Is Not Like You.
Pull out your Short Story Framework and brainstorm that story. Then: write!
Try to get to the end of the story today. Bonus points: write to the other prompt tomorrow!
Remember, if the story is getting away from you, to limit it only to the essential characters, settings and details. Just enough to paint a picture for yourself.
Also: don’t worry if this story is not ‘good’. It’s only a draft.
If you share you story somewhere (and here’s why you might not want to) post a link here so we can come and read it.
Leave a comment to let us know what you wrote about today, and how it went!
Two characters with very different habits and routines come into contact
How did you get on yesterday? Did you write a story?
This is when the challenge gets really tough: the novelty has worn off and the end of the month seems a long time away. But keep going! If you keep writing through this week, you’ll still be writing at the end of the month and that is going to feel really good.
Lean on the support in the comments, to spur you on!
Today’s exercise owes a lot to Donald Mass’s book The Emotional Craft of Fiction.
Yesterday I challenged you to write about an incident earlier in the life of a character you’d come back to, today.
Today I want you to bear in mind the inner struggle of that character, once they’ve had time to create some damaging behaviors based on the incident in yesterday’s story.
Now, pick an action, a physical act, that they can perform in this story. Make it significant to the character.
My example: in Die Hard, when John McClane picks up a photo of his family (back when they were a happy family), he winces, and it shows us everything we need to know about what this character wants, and what’s standing in his way (hint: it’s his own behavior).
Add a moment like that to your story today. No inner-monologue. No telling the reader why it’s significant. Just use all our senses to pull us into the moment.
Check back every day for more prompts, and don’t forget to come back and leave a comment to celebrate your writing successes, every day!
How did you get on yesterday? Did you write a story?
Remember, set your own rules, and stick to them. If you miss a day, don’t try to catch up. Just keep moving forward!
Today’s story owes a lot to Lisa Cron’s book Story Genius, in which she talks about how childhood beliefs can become problems for adult characters.
Behaviors that protected your character as a child (for example, an abandoned child’s tendency to keep people at a distance, or conversely to be too clingy, doesn’t serve them well as an adult.)
Every character needs an inner conflict, to make them interesting.
Today write a vivid story about something that happened early in life to a character you’ll come back to, tomorrow.
Check back every day for more prompts, and don’t forget to come back and leave a comment to celebrate your writing successes, every day!
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