Day 21- Chat to the Future by Julie Duffy

Your character writes a letter to their future self, in today’s StoryADay writing prompt

The Prompt

Sometimes when we are writing characters we forget how much they change, not just in the course of our stories, but in the course of their (fictional) lives.

Today, go back to last week’s story (What If by Leslie Stack) and imagine your character at the moment before everything started to go wrong, before the thing they regret and wished they could fix.

Have that younger version of your character write a letter to their future self, 10 years hence. (Your character might do this because they are given an exercise in a writing class, a leadership seminar, or it could be inspired by hitting a life milestone, a birthday or graduation, or even by reading an article like this.

What do they hope for their future self? What can you include (knowing what you know, from that earlier story) that will be bittersweet or amusing or ironic? What do they expect their life to be in 10 years?

And just to keep things interesting, like Wilfred in that link above, keep the letter to 280 words.

Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is the founder & director of StoryADay. She writes stories and used to be famed among her far-flung friends, for writing epic letters. If you’d like to receive electronic letters from her, on the topic of writing, make sure you’re signed up at StoryADay!

day 21 bingo

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

[Writing Prompt] Lower The Bar

Following on in last week’s vein of celebrating wins (and making wins easy to achieve), this week’s prompt is to write an odd little story.

It’s hard to imagine how to make this challenge work well, so just get it finished! (You might surprise yourself)

Then celebrate.

Girl leapfrogging friend Photo by Tiago Thadeau on Unplash

The Prompt

Write a story in a cypher: where the first word of each sentence is the REAL message

Tips

When you have finished do something to celebrate. It can be as simple as grinning for five seconds, or doing a little dance (I like a victory dance, myself). The important thing is to take a moment to revel in the good feelings you get from meeting your goals.

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!

097 – Short Story Forms

This month I’m focusing on short story form.

Watch out for a few mini-episodes coming your way, with more details on some short story forms.

Also in this episode, I recommend Jane Friedman’s new book, The Business of Being A Writer [http://amzn.to/2DyhhYL].

Another new episode of Write Every Day, Not “Some Day”