[Writing Prompt] Two Heads Are Better Than One

Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:

The Prompt

Write a story from the Third Person, Omniscient perspective
Make up your mind!

Tips

  • This is the perspective you know from all the great writers (Dickens, Tolstoy, Pratchett…): the author can say anything, pop inside any (or all) character’s heads, travel backwards and forwards in time, insert herself and her own commentary onto the page.
  • Have some fun with this. Take a scene and tell it from one character’s perspective, then leap into another character’s head and give their read on the situation.
  • Remember to show the first character’s continuing physical behavior from where the second character is standing after switch to their perspective. Your reader will know how the first character’s behavior reflects his thoughts. Will the second character understand or misconstrue?
  • Try out your authorial prerogatives and make a comment about what’s going on (think of that moment when a TV character turns to the camera and talks directly to us, the audience). What does this do to the story? Do you like it?

This can get quite complicated (which is why it works so well for novels). Don’t worry about writing a complete, polished story today. Just play with the POV and see what options are available to you.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Up Close and Third Person

This time, let’s come out of our own heads and get inside someone else’s.
TV Head

The Prompt

Write a story in the Third Person, Limited perspective

Tips

  • Third person limited is a lot like first person except you’re not writing “I”. By that I mean you can only show the thoughts of one person.
  • A good way to remember not to show other characters’ thoughts is to imagine your story as a TV show or movie. All characters apart from the one whose point of view you’re following, must walk across the screen, being observed by him (or her)
  • Try not to use ‘he thought’, or ‘she felt’, or ‘he wondered’. Take a look at this writing advice (allegedly by Chuck Palahniuk) which has some great examples of how to avoid this trap — and why it’s so much more effective when you do

Go!

[Writing Prompt] First Person Practice

I/Eye illustrationWriting in the first person seems simple, since this is the way we talk, write letters, tell our own stories. Introduce a keyboard or a notebook, however, and suddenly we get a bit frozen. So today we’re practicing telling a First Person story

The Prompt

Write A Story Narrated In The First Person

Tips

  • Go and grab a book from your shelf that has a strong main character and that is written in the first person. (Think Bridget Jones’ Diary or Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series or any number of great stories)
  • Remember that in First Person, no head-hopping is allowed. You cannot tell us what any other character is feeling, only how your narrator perceives their words/actions.
  • Decide on one characteristic (or character flaw) that your character will have. Subvert it (or have it get them into trouble) at least once during the story, but try to make it a defining part of the story.

Go!

[Writing Prompt] Third Person, Limited

So did you all have fun with Second Person yesterday?

Today we’re focusing on a perspective that you’ve likely had more practice with.

The Prompt

Write a story in the Third Person, Limited POV

Tips

  • Remember that in Third Person, Limited, you are writing in the ‘he said, she said’ format.
  • You can go inside a character’s head and have them look at the world but you must only ever go inside one character’s head.
  • This is a familiar style from those bubble-gum pink chick-lit books of the 1990 or many third-person mystery series.

    Go!

[Writing Prompt] First Person Story

For the next few days we’re going to be concentrating on point of view. Sometimes it’s tempting to write all our stories in the same kind of voice. Not this week. I’m going to give you a real work out and take you through many different types of voice and story.

Ready? Let’s get started.

The Prompt

Write A Story Using The First Person Voice

Tips

  • The whole thing should be told in the “I” voice.
  • It should, for preference, be a story about something that happened/is happening to the person telling the story.
  • When writing in the first person you can never allow your narrative to stray inside another character’s head. The “I” character can speculate about what other people are thinking, but everything must come from their perspective.
  • If you fancy it, try writing the same story over the next few days, but each day from a different perspective.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Inner Thoughts

Prompt: Write a story in the present tense from a limited third person perspective

The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt or subscribe.


Wolf Hall: A Novel, by Hilary Mantel, is a strange, disorienting read. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but finally I realised what was keeping me off balance: the book is written in the present tense and from a limited perspective: that of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to King Henry VIII. Everything we learn comes either from Thomas’s direct experience or from things he has heard from other people. Sometime he is reminiscing, sometimes observing in the moment, but the present tense keeps the whole experience very immediate.

The Prompt

Write a story in the present tense, from a limited third person perspective

Tips

In Wolf Hall it is sometimes hard to follow what is going on, because of course, the main character’s thoughts don’t pause to explain. He thinks of one person, who reminds him of another, and the reader has to trust that — at some point — it will be explained who these people are. or what that place was, and it will all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.  Don’t be afraid to confuse the reader, especially on your first draft. Leave out more than you put in.

Here is an excerpt from the novel to help you see how the author tells the story from Thomas Cromwell’s perspective:

 

Monday morning the dukes are back. Their instructions are to turn out the occupants this very day, because the king wants to send in his own  builders and furnishers and get the palace ready to hand over to the Lady Anne, who needs a London house of her own.

He’s [Cromwell] prepared to stand and ague the point: have I missed something? This palace belongs to the archdiocese of York. When was Lady Ann made an archbishop?

But the tide of men flooding in by the water stairs is sweeping them away. The two dukes have made themselves scarce, and there’s nobody to argue with. What a terrible sight, someone says: Master Cromwell balked of a fight. And now the cardinal’s ready to go, but where? Over his customary scarlet, he is wearing a traveling cloak that belongs to someone else; they are confiscating his wardrobe piece by piece, so he has to grab what he can. It is autumn, and though he is a big man he feels the cold.

 

See? It’s a bit confusing, not always knowing who ‘he’ is, but once the reader settles into the style, it becomes enjoyable, puzzling out what Thomas Cromwell is thinking, what he is observing and what he is admitting (to himself and others). Don’t be afraid give your readers this pleasure.

 

The Rules:

  • You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
  • You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  • Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  • Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: Inner Thoughts #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Inner Thoughts! #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner

See my story – and write your own, today: Inner Thoughts at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-inner

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.

[Writing Prompt] Ageism

Today we’re going to take a look at a character from the perspective of age.

The Prompt

Write About A Character In A Different Age Group

By “different age group” I mean either someone who is not the same age as you or someone of an age that you don’t normally write about. Also, you can decide to write about someone in an age band that no-one ever writes about (well hardly ever. Not ‘never’. It’s a big universe…)

Tips

Get inside the skin of the character
Don’t write ABOUT their age, just let them BE that age
How does their age affect their thoughts, reactions, physicality, the scope of the story setting?
How do other characters react to them, and is that affected by their age?

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.

[Writing Prompt] Cross Dressing

Today (and by the way, Day 25?! You’re still turning up and giving this a shot on Day 25? You amaze me!)…ahem. As I was saying. Today we’re going to try a little cross-dressing, just for fun.

The Prompt

Write A Story From The Perspective of the Opposite Gender

…and if you’re in the habit of writing from the opposite gender’s POV, feel free to take this as an opportunity to write from the perspective of your own gender for a change.

Tips

*Remember that a character of the opposite gender does things other than button up their shirts the ‘wrong’ way.
*Show us some of the interior life
*Change the speech patterns you’re tempted to use (guys don’t generally want to talk things through the way women can)
*Feel free to teach me a lesson by writing a very feminine man or a masculine woman — hey, it’s your story.
*Go more than skin deep.

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.

[Writing Prompt] First Person POV

You’ve done it! You’ve made it to the end of the first week! I hope you’ve met or come close to your goals. But if not, this is the perfect time to sit back and figure out what went ‘wrong’, what you can learn from it and how to press forward.

And now, on to today’s prompt.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, writing in third-person, or first person, or inside or outside your character’s heads. So this week we’re shaking things up. Ready?

The Prompt

Write A Story Using The First Person Voice

Tips

  • The whole thing should be told in the “I” voice.
  • It should, for preference,  be a story about something that happened/is happening to the person telling the story.
  • When writing in the first person you can never allow your narrative to stray inside another character’s head. The “I” character can speculate about what other people are thinking, but everything must come from their perspective.

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.

[Prompt] May 25 – Shifting Perspectives

Today’s prompt is a little different. It’s going to show you just how much difference Point of View can made.

Rewrite A Story From A Different Perspective

Take a story that you have written (either this month or at some other point) and rewrite it from a different point of view. If it was third person, limited, try making it first person, or third person omniscient. What new avenues of empathy does that open up for you? What new language can you use (see this article for useful examples).

You can choose to rewrite someone else’s story for this exercise (as long as you promise not to try to get it published and get yourself — and me — for breach of copyright for producing unauthorized derivative works) but it’s better to try this with one of your own. I’m not actually terribly worried about us getting sued. It’s just that rewriting one of your own will show you just how much the same story, written from a different point of view, changes even when written by the same person.

I strongly suggest choosing a story you are already happy with, for this exercise. If you already love the story, you’re much more likely to enjoy playing with it from a different point of view. Or you might hate doing it, but remember: you’re not deleting anything. You’re just doing an exercise.

Go!

[Prompt] May 24 – Epistolary

Not quite a POV today, but still playing with character and point of view, today’s prompt is a secret love of mine:

Write an Epistolary Story

I’ve always loved stories played out through letters  – though now you can tell these stories in emails, phone texts, even Facebook updates and Tweets if you want to update the form. (Here’s an example from the very first StoryADay May, written by Amanda Makepeace).

You can write this as a series of exchanges between two or more people, or as letters, diary entries, or text messages from a single person (as in Amanda’s story).

  • What if you discovered a cache of letters in the attic of a house you just bought. What would be in the one-sided conversation?What would be missing?
  • What if you were a 13 year old who has finally got  on to Facebook?
  • What if you were an increasingly-enraged citizen writing letters to the editor of your small-town newspaper?
  • What if you were caught in a flame war in an online forum and all we, the reader, get to see is what goes on the screen?

Go!

[Prompt] May 23 – Third Person, Omniscient

Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:

Write a story from the Third Person, Omniscient perspective

This is the perspective you know from all the classics (Dickens springs to mind): the author can say anything, pop inside any (or all) character’s heads, travel backwards and forwards in time, insert herself and her own commentary onto the page…

Have some fun with this. Take an episode and tell it from one character’s perspective, then leap into another character’s head and give their read on the situation. Try out your authorial prerogatives and make a comment about what’s going on (think of that moment when a TV character turns to the camera and talks directly to us, the audience).

This can get quite complicated (which is why it works so well for novels) but give it a bash and see what you come up with.

Go!

 

[Prompt] – May 22 – Third Person Limited

This week’s prompts are all about point of view and narrative voice.

Write a story from the third person limited POV.

“Third Person, Limited” means that, unlike yesterday, your narrator never says “I did this”, rather you talk about “he went to the door”, “He opened it.”

The ‘Limited” part means that all the judgements and assumptions, all internal thoughts are limited to those of the character through whom you are telling the story. No popping out of Dave’s head to jump across the room and tell us what Mandy is thinking as she looks at him. The only thing we’re privy to is what Dave thinks Mandy might be thinking about him.

Within this framework you can still play with the form: your limited persona can be like Nick Carraway, reporting on Jay Gatsby’s life, rather than telling us about his own adventures. You can give your limited persona the ride of her life through a whitewater canyon and let us see it all from her perspective.

Third person limited is great for short stories, because it lets us – the readers – identify with one character, and ground the story somewhere. You don’t have much space in a short story and the last thing you want is to confuse your readers (unless, of course, the whole point of your story is to confuse your readers!). Letting them get to know a character by showing their reactions to events, puts you half way to rooting for (or against) the protagonist.

Go!

 

[Prompt] May 21 – 1st Person

This week’s prompts are all going to focus on Point Of View.

 

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, writing in third-person, or first person, or inside or outside your character’s heads. So this week we’re shaking things up. Ready?

Write A Story Using The First Person Voice

The whole thing should be told in the “I” voice, and preferably should be a story about something that happened/is happening to the person telling the story.

Go!

[Daily Prompt] May 8 – A Different Perspective

It’s May 8 and we’re working through our second weekend already. I’m guessing the shine might have worn off this challenge a little by now and that you could be struggling.

(It’s not easy to come up with a fresh idea every day!)

So today, give yourself a break. Go back and find a story you’ve already written. Now, tell the story from a different character’s perspective.

Try to make the tone of the story totally different: the length of the sentences, the pacing, the rhythm, even the events, if the second person remembers them differently.

Rewrite One Of Your Own Stories From A Different Perspective

Go!