May 4 – Heroes

Today we’re focusing on the heart of any story: the characters. We often refer to the protagonist as the ‘hero’ whether or not he/she is heroic. Today, however, we’re going to take that word literally:

The Prompt

Write A Story With A Heroic Protagonist

Tips

  • A hero is not necessarily someone with a cape and superpowers. A hero can be someone who is exceptionally talented in one or more areas and who uses those talents.
  • A hero can be great at one thing and ordinary (or clueless) in other areas: Adrian Monk is  almost incapable of living a normal life, but his OCD and his fears make him an exceptional detective; Elizabeth Bennett is not rich or beautiful or titled, or any of the other things that mattered at the time, but Jane Austen’s famous heroine endures because she is witting and quick and funny; Slippery Jim in Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat is a rogue, but a charming rogue.
  • Think about characters you love from fiction. What is it that you like about them? Are they funny? Smart? Brave? Brooding? Tortured?
  • Think about characters you dislike. Why? Are they whiny? Angry? Glib? Uncaring?
  • What raises the feature you love about that character to the next level?
  • Think about people in your life that you love or abhor. What features and characteristics do they have that you envy/loathe?
  • How could you create a character that has a stand-out characteristic (one that you love) that shows the reader the best of humanity? That gives the reader something to aspire to?
  • What mannerisms will your character have? What expressions will they use? How will they talk?
  • What single adventure could this character have in a story that highlights their most heroic feature?

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Plot Twists To Avoid

  • The heroine/narrator is revealed to be a cat, dog, car, possum, tree or ghost!
  • A partner’s mysterious arrangements turn out to be for a surprise party
  • The perpetrators murder plan backfires and s/he eats the poison
  • A woman meets up with a handsome “stranger” for a steamy rendezvous and it turns out to be her husband
  • Someone nervous about a first day at school turns out to be the teacher; or about a wedding, the vicar; or an interview, the interviewer.
  • A woman spots her boyfriend/man of her dreams with a beautiful blonde lady – who turns out to be his sister
  • Anything involving twinsA murder/death actually turns out to be part of a play rehearsal

via Fast Fiction Guidelines – thats life!.

 

This is a great list of plot twists to avoid, found in the Writers’ Guidelines for an Australian magazine.

(The rest of the guidelines are good, too. I like the bit where they point out that too many characters and a story gets confusing. They recommend topping out at four.)

 

Although, it has to be said, the thrawn and perverse side of me is very tempted to write a series of stories in which one or all of these things happen, just to see if I could have fun with them. (Hey, the poison one worked for The Princess Bride…)

[Write On Wednesday] Laughter

Following up on the recent theme of emotional writing prompts, here’s one that’s good for a laugh.

smile!
smile! by Lin Pernille Photography LLC, on Flickr

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features Laughter

Tips

  • Laughter can be cleansing, hysterical (in a bad way), nervous, comradely, cruel. Pick one, or cram as many as possible into one story.
  • Think about the physicality of laughter at the moment it happens.
  • Think about the emotions the memory of the laughter (happy or cruel) elicits later.
  • Use the moment of laughter as a plot device. It is the start or the end of something. It is some place/time/state your character wants to get back to or escape from.
  • If you’re showing laughter-following-a-joke, take a tip from Joss Whedon’s Firefly. He has a couple of scenes where he skips the joke and cuts straight to the characters laughing uproariously at whatever was said just off camera. That saves the audience from having to analyze the joke (“was it really that funny?”) and allows them to watch how the laughing characters react and interact. It allows for the sense of catharsis from the laughter without having to share the writer’s sense of humor. (Watch for the dinner scene in the episode Out Of Gas, around the 5:00 min mark).

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Anger

Continuing a trend from last week and the week before, here’s another prompt that leads you into plot via your main character’s emotion.

Rage Wallpaper
Rage Wallpaper by Thoth God of Knowledge, on Flickr

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features Anger

Tips

  • You can start your story with an angry outburst then spend the rest of it unpacking what prompted the rage, or exploring the consequences of one person’s rage for all the characters around them.
  • You can build up to a big, angry finish — showing your character giving in to something they’ve been fighting all the way through the story.
  • Think about how you have experienced anger in your own life — both in yourself and observing it in others.
  • Try to get inside the head of someone who has a very different ‘anger vector’ than yourself. (If you’re a ‘push me for weeks until I explode’ person, think about writing a character who is a ‘rage and forget it’ sort).
  • Remember there is such a thing as righteous anger.
  • To avoid the story becoming too intense, use the concept of the opposite emotion to show that your character(s) is/are capable of other emotions too. (What is the opposite of anger? Depends on the type of anger, doesn’t it? It might be charm, or humor, or kindness, or gentleness.
  • How can you tell a story that includes one character containing two opposing attributes. Think about what a character like that wants and go from there).
  • What kind of language will you use? Animal metaphors? Short, choppy sentences? Dialogue? How will you avoid clichés?

Go

 

[Write On Wednesday] Joy

Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy

Continuing on from last week’s prompt about a character experiencing an emotion, this week we’re focusing on Joy.

joy!
joy! by atomicity, on Flickr

The Prompt

Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy

Tips

  • How to define ‘joy’? I’m going with ‘a momentary experience of intense happiness’, though CS Lewis famously mixed that feeling of happiness with one of ‘longing’ in his definition of joy.
  • The main character does not have to be the character experiencing the moment of joy. They can be an observer.
  • How do the characters observing the joy-filled character’s behavior react? Do they reflect the joy? Do they feel bereft because they lack it? Do they envy the other person? Do they show that directly by being sad, or do they bury it and act like a jerk?
  • Will the joyful moment happen at the beginning of your story and kick off all the events that follow? Will the character be sustained by the fleeting sensation or spend a miserable existence in a futile attempt to recapture it?
  • Will you build up to the moment of joy at the end of your story (huge climax? Happy ending?)
  • What does it actually feel like to experience (or witness) joy?
  • What kind of a character could really use a little joy, and how can you put them in a situation where they experience it? Do they deserve it? Does that matter?

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Character Counts

Woo-hoo! One week into the StoryADay May challenge and you are still turning up. Good for you!

(Seriously. More than talent, persistence is the thing that is going to make writing a fulfilling, successful and worthwhile pursuit for you.)

Take a moment to reflect on everything you learned about your writing last week. Try to keep the things that worked, but stay flexible and open to more experimentation in the weeks ahead.

This week we’re going to focus on different elements of the story, starting today with Character.

The Prompt

Write A Story Where Everything Hinges on Your Character’s Most Desperate Desires

Tips

  • If you need some help coming up with things your character might desire, here’s a series of writing prompts based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
  • Spend some time with a blank sheet of paper, before you write. After you decide on your character and their need, jot down 15 scenarios that could grow from that desire. (Writing 15 different scenarios means that you’ll blast through the obvious storylines straight away, then you’ll get to the weird and interesting ones that will make your story sing. Keep going until you have 15 even though the last three will probably be truly terrible.) Pick the one that interests you most, then start writing.
  • Make the desire all-consuming (for this instance, the duration of this story). Focus on this moment in the character’s life. Mine it for details, humor, horror, whatever you can get out of it.

Go!

Don’t forget to comment below to tell us how your writing went (or share an excerpt, or link to your story on another blog) or join us in the community and do your Victory Dance.