Day 9 | The Prompt by Lara Hughes

The Prompt

Begin with a confined space. This could mean physically cramped, or that your character is constrained such that they must—for whatever reasons—remain in place for a spell. (A cave and a mandatory business dinner both confine in their own way.)

In this space, a phone that does not belong to your character rings loudly, in succession, at least ten times. (This is about five nonstop minutes of ringing.)

Questions to consider:
To whom might the phone belong? What does the ringing trigger in your character? Who will or will not answer it? Who is on the other end? What do they want? How is the phone silenced and what consequences might result?

Whatever the answers:
It can no longer be ignored.

Enjoy mining the conflicts and compelling needs this may spark. Happy writing!

Lara Hughes

Lara Hughes is a recipient of the 2025 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. Her fiction has appeared in Best Debut Short Stories 2025 (Catapult), The Arkansas International, and is forthcoming in the Indiana Review. She holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University and currently lives in Nashville, where she is at work on a novel and short story collection.

www.LaraHughes.com

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

9

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

 

Day 8 | Like a Sore Thumb by Gabrielle Johansen

The Prompt

Think of a time you saw something that was so out-of-place that it made you wonder, “How did that happen?” Answer yourself with a story.

Examples: A rolling suitcase abandoned at a busy intersection, a street bicycle propped against a tree in the middle of a national forest, a woman in a ballgown riding the bus, a green velvet chair sitting on an elevator in an office building, a standing mirror in a pasture, a tree with hundreds of small bits of glass and poppets hanging from its branches, a dragon statue in a hospita, two teenage girls dining at a cafe where all the other tables are filled with Shriners.

StoryADay Challenge Handbook logo

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Gabrielle Johansen

Gabrielle writes all stripes of fantasy and still believes in magic.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

 

8

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Day 7 | Dip Your Toe into the World of ‘Memoiries’ by Heidi Clausius

The Prompt

Write about an experience from your past that impacted you.

It can be from any period in your life. It must be something that happened. It can be a good memory or something difficult. The task is to bring your reader into your story with you.

Be experiential by using your senses. Describe your surroundings in detail; sights, smells, sounds, the touch or feel of something.

What were your physical and emotional responses? Help us related to how you’re feeling by taking us into it.

Reflect on something you learned from the experience, or something you didn’t see when you were in the midst of it that you do, now.

StoryADay Challenge Handbook logo

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Heidi Clausius

Heidi Clausius is a professional pianist, teacher and writer from Toledo, Ohio. She is currently working on her memoir, Year of the Nocturne. A story from her book was recently published in For the Love of Memoirs, “An Anthology of Emerging Authors.”

Heidi has been a member of Story a Day, Superstars since January 2021. She loves traveling with her family. You can find her at www.HeidiClausius.com

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

7

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

 

 

Day 6 | Talking to Animals by Max Delsohn

The Prompt

Write a story that entirely or mostly consists of a human character talking to an animal.

StoryADay Challenge Handbook logo

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Max Delsohn

Max Delsohn is the author of the short story collection, Crawl, which was named a November 2025 Indie Next pick and a Best Book of 2025 by Vulture, Them, Debutiful, Electric Literature, and Chicago Review of Books. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.maxdelsohn.com

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

6

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

 

Day 5 | Stranger than Fiction by Jared Lemus

The Prompt

Look up “funny news stories” or find as many local newspapers, real estate magazines, Craigslist ads, or NextDoor posts as you can. Which headlines speak to you? Some of my favorite from the last year are: “Urgent! Stolen Turkey!!!!!!” from NextDoor, “Man in Chicken Outfit Robs Supermarket” on my local news channel, and “Raccoons are at it again” on a Facebook post. Don’t read the story; make it up based on the headline.

StoryADay Challenge Handbook logo

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Jared Lemus

Jared Lemus is a Guatemalan-American author and finalist for the PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short story collection for his book, Guatemalan Rhapsody. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Story, and elsewhere, and his debut novel, Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring, is forthcoming with Ecco-HarperCollins in the Spring of ’27. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

5

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Day 4 | Use These Words by Julie Duffy

The Prompt

Your prompt today is to find a way to use all of the following words in a story. (The words are taken at random from Mary Oliver’s “Upstream: Selected Essays”):

  • poems,
  • winged,
  • faith,
  • bog,
  • darkness,
  • summer,
  • more,
  • many,
  • course,
  • equally.

The point of this is to lower the stakes for you, so that you can write something without worrying about making it a work of art. With these constraints in place, it’s a triumph to simply write a coherent story. In the process, you’ll be practicing all the skills you need in your storytelling life: showing up, puzzling out the story, staying at it until you reach ‘the end’; character creation; putting obstacles in their way; creating conflict; resolving the puzzle; putting some sort of ending on the piece…


You’ve already given yourself permission to write. Now give yourself permission to write something imperfect. (It’s a valuable skill!)

StoryADay Challenge Handbook logo

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. You can find her most recent story in the May/June 2026 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. If you’re struggling with your writing or your writing practice, Julie offers coaching sessions (One-off troubleshooting or multi-session packages):

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

4

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version