Story Moods

There are so many decisions to make when you start to write a story.

Narrowing down your choices is a great gift you can give yourself. Today I’m giving you an exercise that will help you narrow down your choices when you sit down to write.

Story Moods

There’s more to story than genre, character, plot, and dialogue, happy or sad endings, and pacing.

There’s also what I call ‘mood’ – whether a story is a romp, spooky, upbeat, thought-provoking, depressing, scary, inspiring, uplifting…

Tiny Task

Today, set at timer for 5 minutes and

  • Write a list of the types of moods you enjoy reading and might want to aim to write, during May.
  • Choose examples (from short stories, novels, TV, movies, music, visual arts) that capture the mood you’re trying to describe
  • Make a few notes about what elements contribute to the mood.

Keep this somewhere safe.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What moods do you gravitate towards? Is there anything you definitely don’t want to be feeling much of, during the challenge? How can you remind yourself not to write stories that trend that way?

[Writing Prompt] Mood Altering

Today, if you normally find that your stories come out one way, try to write a different way.

The Prompt

Write Against Your Normal Type

What I mean by this is simply: if your stories are usually sombre, try to force something flippant. If you normally go for comedy, try drama. If you write romance and happy endings, kill off a hero today. If you normally write paranormal stories, today try something rooted firmly in the real world.

It may not work, you may find that it feels awful, or you may discover that you’re much, much better at writing something other than what you THOUGHT you were meant to write.

Go!

And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.