Day 5- Tell a scary story by Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud sets up the scene for a horror story (perhaps?)

The Prompt

Molly heard her mother’s car pull into the driveway. She closed her math book and ran to the front door. The two hours she spent between the end of school and the time her mom came back home from work were always lonely.

She met her mother at the front door.

“Hi Mom!” She gave her a hug.

“Hey sweetie.” She set down her purse and her keys. “What are you doing?”

“Homework!”

“Well go finish it up and we’ll watch a movie when you’re done, okay?”

Molly was about to head back to her room when the door opened again. Her mother came in, again. “Hi, Molly!” She joined the first in the kitchen — two carbon copies of each other. They didn’t see each other or seem to know the other was there, but they kept talking cheerfully to her. And then a third came in. And a fourth.

Molly crept slowly back to her room. The kitchen was full of their happy talk, all their words running over each other. She hated nights when this happened. She slid under her bed and put her hands over her ears. She hated what came next.

Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud is the author of The Strange, Wounds, and North American Lake Monsters
Find him on Twitter at @NBallingrud

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

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Day 4- 100 Word Story by Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy encourages you to keep things short


After the meaty, narrative stories of the past few days, I have a fresh challenge for you today: write something extremely short that still can be defined as a ‘story’

The Prompt

Write a story in exactly 100 words

Beware don’t expect this to be fast, just because it’s short.

Writing a complete story in 100 words takes a lot more time than any average 100 words in the middle of a longer story.

Crafting a complete story in 100 words is not easy. It is, however, quite satisfying.

Tips

  • Super-short stories have to pack an emotional punch in very few words. Concentrate on one moment, one incident, that holds huge significance for a character: the moment they first made eye contact with their baby; seeing the first crocus of spring after a hideous winter full of drama and despair; standing on stage in the moment of silence before the applause starts…
  • You’ll want to save the majority of your words for the build-up to the climax. Think about how many words you can afford to spend setting the scene (maybe 25?) and how many you want for the resolution (10?). Can you create a resonant story in 65 words?
  • Choose adjectives carefully. You don’t have much room.
  • Make words do double duty. Instead of saying ‘he walked across the room, shaking with rage’, say ‘he stalked away’, saving five words. You might even be able to cut it further by making “Stalked off” a complete sentence.
  • Don’t feel you have to hit 100 words on the first pass. Write the story, then go back through and intensify things by making your verbs more active and pruning as much dead wood as you can.
  • Imply as much as you can. Leave gaps. Let the reader work a bit.

As you may have noticed by this point, it’s a different kind of challenge to write a story every day than it is to work on the same story every day for a month.

If you haven’t started collecting Story Sparks yet, now would be a great time to start writing down stray thoughts and observations as you about your day.

You’re doing great, but we have 27 more ideas to come up with, before the month is over.

Future-You will thank Past-You as they browse through all the ideas you’ve collected along the way, while away from your desk!

Julie Duffy

Julie is the founder and host of StoryADay May. She creates challenges, courses and community for writers at StoryADay, on podcasts and conferences. She often relies on Past-Julie. Sometimes it even works out well…

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

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2023 Day 3 Check in

A vlog about how my StoryADay May is going…

Today’s prompt is here

I found today’s prompt challenging, perhaps because I was feeling the pressure to write about something weighty and important, which made me feel intimidated and stuck. But then I remembered my collection of Story Sparks, and I found inspiration in a personal experience that I gave to a different character.

I decided to write the story in third person and present tense to make it more experiential for the reader. This was different from what I had been writing the past couple of days, which were more narrative in form.

Through this experience, I was reminded of the importance of just getting started with writing. Even though parts of the prompt made me resist at first, I found that I had unknowingly incorporated them into my story.

Trusting yourself as a storyteller and putting words on the page, even if they feel choppy or imperfect, can lead to magic in your writing.

So, don’t fret about finding the perfect topic or having everything planned out. Just start writing and let the interesting stuff happen. Nobody needs to see it, and you might just end up with a big, stupid grin on your face like I did.

Keep writing, and stay tuned for tomorrow’s prompt on keeping things short!

Day 3- Character Pulls Focus by Tommy Dean

Tommy Dean leads your character through a story

The Prompt

Start a story with a character in the middle of a conversation, where everyone knows something the main character doesn’t know.

Allow the main character to ignore the people around him. Use the setting to reveal something about the main character.

Let the main character gives us snippets of who the characters are around them.

Eventually, let one of the other characters get through to the main character!

Let the main character know seeing the room around them differently.

How does this added context force the main character to act/react?

How do they better understand the other characters in light of this revelation?

Tommy Dean

Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022). He lives in Indiana, where he currently is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022, Monkeybicycle, Moon City Press, and numerous other litmags.

His interviews have been previously published in New Flash Fiction Review, The Rumpus, CRAFT Literary, and The Town Crier (The Puritan).

He has taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, the Barrelhouse Conversations and Connections conference, and The Writers Workshop.

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

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2023 Day 2 Check in

A vlog about how my StoryADay May is going…

Day two of the challenge and I’m feeling great.

But, I made the classic mistake of not planning ahead, so I spent the first half hour doing admin instead of writing. I’m going to fix that tomorrow by planning my morning better.

The prompt today was from Mary Robinette Kowal:

“What’s in your character’s pocket?”

I used characters from my work in progress and wrote a self-contained story that I can later use as a scene in my novel. Other participants are using the challenge to push forward their work in progress in various ways.

What will YOU do?