One of the fastest ways to find your way to the plot of a short story is to come up with a character who wants something and see how they pursue that desire.
Think of a character who wants something really, really badly. Put an obstacle in your way and let them react to it
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!
Two Different Directions
Today’s story should feature two characters or factions who want to go in different directions. Lots of room for character desire and conflict, here!
You can take this as literally or figuratively as you like.
Go!
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!
For today’s Write on Wednesday writing prompt, I’m digging into the archives.
This writing prompt, from 2012, talks about how to use your character’s desires to power a story and contains important tips on how to keep your short story from become a barely-begun novel.
Write a Story In Which Your Character WAAAAAAANTS something
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.
How is your writing going, now that StoryADay May 2019 is over? Are you ready to write a story today? Leave a comment!
Knowing what a character wants, tells us what’s at stake in the story. Conflict between the character’s desire and their circumstances will keep your reader hooked.
Establish, within the first couple of sentences, your character’s desire. Put them in a situation that conflicts with that desire. Tell us how it works out.
It’s important for a reader to know what your character wants.
Once they know what your character wants, is afraid of, would never do, or desperately wants to do, the reader knows WHY they’re reading this story. That will keep them reading.
Keep it simple. In a short story, you can only examine one of your character’s desire.
Yesterday we took your character’s dreams and dashed them in the middle of the story.
Today I want you to take your character, and their desire and cripple them not once, but twice. Of course you get to reward them with a little win in the middle.
Give your character a goal, frustrate them, let them make some progress but let it come at a cost.
Go!
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