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?
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!
I saved this one for last (in the plot prompts series) because it has the potential to be the most fun of all!
If you’re a writer, the chances are you think a lot (too much?) about everything that happens to you. And you probably remember every little slight anyone has ever perpertrated upon you.
Now’s your chance to have your revenge.
Today you will write a revenge story. (Use examples from real life if you like!)
If you want to keep your main character sympathetic, make sure they’re seeking revenge for something outrageously unfair and that the bad guys are really bad. And make sure that your main character doesn’t just slide through the revenge process unchanged.
Of course, it doesn’t have to end well for your main character. Maybe they start out nice-but-wronged and end up avenged-but-twisted. Or maybe your protagonist is a real bad apple, to start with.
As usual, keep the scale of your story small: focus on one incident – probably the moment of confrontation. Start right in the action and show the backstory in dialogue, allusions, images. Bring the story to a climax and show us how it has affected your main character as s/he walks off into the sunset.
Go!
Thanks to James Scott Bell for a week’s worth of inspiration. Check out the StoryADay.org exclusive interview with JSB, his Plot & Structure
This week’s prompts are inspired by ‘plot patterns’ from James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure
Today your hero is restless. S/he can’t simply live the way everyone else does. Your hero needs to go on a quest.
Whether this quest (and what they seek) is literal or figurative, make sure the goal is something absolutely critical to their survival, and the obstacles huge.
(In a short story you may only be able to give them one obstacle as the set-piece but you can use the action & dialogue to
If you pay attention to doing this, you’ll end up with a complete story, not just a trailer for a novel
Go!
This prompt is inspired by ‘plot patterns’ from James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure
Your prompt today revolves around a protagonist who holds him/herself apart from the rest of their society. Perhaps they are an anti-hero, perhaps a loner, perhaps an introvert in a family of extraverts.
Make something happen to tempt/force this person out of their alone-ness. Will they step into their society during the action of the story? When all is resolved will they stay involved or retreat once again?
Go!
This week’s prompts are all inspired by ‘plot patterns’ from James Scott Bell’s Write Great Fiction – Plot & Structure.
Write a story in which your protagonist is being chased by someone or something. If you choose to show what/who the hero is running from, make sure that pursuer has a vested interest in catching the hero (make it their obsession). Will your hero get away? Stay on the run? Find a safe haven? Convince their pursuer it’s all been a terrible mistake?
Go!
One of the nine plot patterns highlighted in James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure
The love story.
(A billion romance readers can’t be wrong!)
You don’t have to write a traditional romance to be writing a love story. There’s a love story embedded in almost every story you read or watch. From Homer’s Odyssey to Homer and Marge Simpson, love is in the air.
All that is required for a love story is for two protagonists who are in love, and an obstacle to that love. Resolving the obstacle, one way or another, is the plot of your story.
To avoid writing a schlocky, saccharine formulaic romance, “one or other of your lovers [should] grow as a result of the pattern,” says Bell.
Go!
WRITE ABOUT A NON-HUMAN CHARACTER
Can you write a non-human character without making it react like a human? How would a table/tree/robot/alien think? How would it speak? How would it react compared to the reactions of someone born and raised in the West in the 21st Century?
Can you write a truly non-human character?
Go!
DELAY THE APPEARANCE OF THE MAIN CHARACTER
Sometimes it’s a problem to create enough suspense in a short story to keep the reader engaged. An interesting way to do this is to delay the appearance of your main character until quite far into the story. This follows on from yesterday’s prompt where you kept your protagonist off-sceen. This time, however, you can build them up and then allow them to take the stage.
How does this feel? Better? Did you keep the tension going even after the character appeared?
Keep Your Main Character In The Wings
Go!
NEVER LET YOUR CHARACTER APPEAR
Write a story in which the main, most interesting character never actually appears ‘on-stage’.
Everything the reader learns about the character should come in opinions, comments and conversations between other characters in the story. What do we learn about them? How important do they become? How difficult is it to keep them ‘off-stage”?
The Hidden Protagonist
Go!
LET YOUR CHARACTER TALK
Tell a story where everything we learn about the character comes from the things they say.
Does what they say match up with what they mean? Iin what ways do they lie about themselves when the speak? How do people react?)
Tell Us About Your Character Through Their Voice
Go!
This week all the prompts are going to focus on Character. Here’s the first:
REWRITE A CHARACTER FROM YOUR PAST
Pick a character, a real person, from your past. Put them into a story. Be as kind or as cruel as you like (you might want to change their name…)
Use a real character.
Go!
PICK A SONG TITLE AND USE IT AS YOUR STORY’S TITLE
Scan this page quickly and pick a title that leaps out at you. Browse around a bit if you need to but use the rule of three: if you haven’t found something on the third page, tough. You’re stuck with it. Pick one and write the story.
Use the title as the title of your story. (It can be very, very tenuously connected to your story.)
Steal someone else’s title for your story
Go!
Get A Graphic Prompt From Flickr
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Pah! I say pictures need us to tell their stories.
Flickr’s “Explore” page is a great place to find arresting images that suggest a scene or a character or a story. Click around, refresh the page, until you find an image that stops you in your tracks. Look at it for five minutes. If, at the end of that time, it hasn’t suggested at least one story or character you could love, move on to another image.
But you can only do this three times. The third time, if you still don’t love the image…tough! You’re stuck with it. Write your story using that picture anyway.
Go!
What would it be like to meet your hero?
Write a story where you main character gets to investigate the answer to that question. This can be as realistic or as “Twilight Zone” as you like.
What if you met your hero?
Go!
Go to the front page of Wikipedia.
Quickly scan the “In The News” and “On This Day…” sections, or even the Featured Article. If something catches your eye, use it as the spark for today’s story.
For example, on the day I’m preparing this prompt I saw “In the News…Two Trains Collide”. That could be a spark for a story about two people on the trains and how they experienced the crash; the story of an investigator sifting through the wreckage – what’s his story?; someone waiting at a station for a passenger who never arrives; a thriller about sabotage.
In “On This Day…” it happened to be the anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant. That sparked these ideas for me: school children in a small northern European country who aren’t allowed out to play one afternoon after the explosion because of contamination fears; rescuers going into hell; a researcher walkign through the nature-reclaimed exclusion zone 20 years later; a local, being interviewed. What it did to her life; the power plant’s thoughts as the disaster unfolks; what if it had gone differently: worse?; a satirical story about a disaster at a solar or wind plant instead…
Grab a story spark from the front page of Wikipedia
Go!
Take an incident from your past – one shining afternoon; one horrible moment — and give it to a character (like or unlike you).
Play it out as it happened or as you wish it had happened. Take it from the beginning through the middle to the end. Make us see it. Make us care.
Relive a moment in time.
Go!
“Where do you get your ideas?”
Every established writer has a tale to tell about being asked that question.
Some of them lie and tell people they order them from an Idea store. Some wearily answer that they think really hard until the ideas come. Still others joyfully shout that ideas are everywhere, what are you crazy? Don’t you see them?!
The truth is, the more you look for ideas, the more you’ll see them. But you do have to look
This week’s prompt is not a writing prompt, but a prompt-prompt. This week you’re going to look for Story Sparks.
We’re just over a month away from StoryADay May. You’re going to need at least 31 ideas (more in case a few don’t work out). I’m not talking about outlining your stories, or even coming up with great ideas, just about writing a list of sparks for stories, or places you can find those sparks.
Ray Bradbury in Zen In The Art of Writing, talks about one method of gathering what I’ve come to think of as “story sparks”:
“I began to gather long lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These nouns were provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface.”
Today, set a timer for as long as you can manage (ten minutes? 20? Half an hour?) and then use that time to write down as many Story Sparks as you can.
Write down:
Capture three more story sparks every day for the next week: eavesdrop, read obituaries, browse the front page of Wikipedia, bookmark quirky photographs, read poetry, delve into medical textbooks, looks, listen, smell, breathe in the world around you. Capture three sparks from all that living you do every day.
Share in the comments a source of story sparks that you discovered or found most productive.
Need more help? Get the ebook that grew out of this article: Breaking Writers’ Block, A StoryADay Guide
Sometimes it’s fun to write about big, grand, dramatic themes: war, a break-up, a life-changing event.
But sometimes the most effective stories come from a meticulously detailed moment in everyday life: someone opens a letter, someone puts down a phone, someone opens a door.
Of course, what matters in stories like these is character: how does your character anticipate, react; what’s at stake?
Write a story in which you examine a small moment from every day life and illuminate something – about your character or about the world. Keep the inciting incident mundane, and the consequences too, if you can. But show us something big about life.
Tips
- You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
- This week, DON’T post the story in the comments — but do leave a comment saying you wrote something.
- Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Can you find the story in everyday things? #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-everyday/
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Everyday Experiences: #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-everyday/
Come and keep your writing resolution with this week’s prompt: #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-everyday/
I wrote my story today – will you write yours? #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-everyday/
This week’s prompt comes with a built-in market to submit your work to after you’re finished: Six Sentences. I subscribe to their daily stories by email and I often find it inspiring to wake up to a micro-story written by someone else. Surely, my brain says to me, you could manage a story in six sentences today.
The challenge of course is that even (especially?) a six-sentence story has to have a beginning, a middle, a end, a clever idea, some action and (incredible, instantly) engaging characters. Micro-stories often have a twist to give them a kick, but they don’t have to – as today’s submission shows.
Write a story in six sentences.
Six sentences.
You can do that, right?
Tips
- You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
- This week, DON’T post the story in the comments — but do leave a comment saying you wrote something.
- Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!
Submit your story to Six Sentences!
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Could you write a six sentence short story? #WriteOnWed #storyaday
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is Six Sentences: #storyaday
Come and keep your writing resolution with this week’s prompt: #WriteOnWed #storyaday
I wrote my story today – will you write yours? #WriteOnWed #storyaday
Today, my parents braved airport security, 3000 miles and a five-hour time difference to come and see me. All the frantic running around is over, all the last-minute things are done, and now we are sitting — tired and smiling — in the same room at last.
(P.S. I can imagine reunions that do not end as happily. You?)
Remember, prompts are optional (but it’s fun to read everyone’s different takes on each prompt)
If you saw the comments on last week’s post 6 Reasons You’ll Never Be A Writer, you’ll know that one reasons touched a nerve with a lot of people:
#6: You’re Too Nice
Commenter Michelle Kobayashi captured the mood when she said:
“My first 17 chapters were very nice. There was little conflict and the characters worked out their issues reasonably.
“It sucked.
“Then I learned about inciting incidents and the need for conflict. That’s when the fun began. One character in particular is so rude I cringe when I reread her scenes. And I wouldn’t change a thing. Embrace your inner sadist indeed!”
(Thanks to Donald Maass for the catchy slogan at the end there!)
Seems like this is something ia lot of us need practise with. So,
Write a scene featuring a truly loathsome (but believable) character. They don’t have to be a Disney Villain. It could be that really annoying person at work who has no redeeming qualities that you can find, no matter how hard you try.
Dig deep. Remember how annoying, frustrating, irritating your least favorite person in the world is. Pair them up with your favorite hero-type and give them a scene.
Then let your hero say all the things you’ve rehearsed in your head but would never say, because you’re just, well, too nice.
Let it all out. Make us (and yourself) cringe.
The Rules:
- You should use the prompt in some way in your story (however tenuous the connection)
- You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
- Post your scene 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!
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Embracing My Inner Sadist: http://bit.ly/ehx03t #WriteOnWed #storyaday
I never knew I could be so mean! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://bit.ly/ehx03t
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is “Embrace Your Inner Sadist″: http://bit.ly/ehx03t
Come and write with us today: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday
See my story – and write your own: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday
With thanks to my friends at Creative Copy Challenge for inspiration and support. Go to Creative Copy Challenge every day for a new writing prompt and supportive community of writers.
Introducing Write On Wednesdays: a weekly warm-up for all endurance writers. Wednesday is the day we limber up for the challenge of writing a story a month; or keep the muscles warm after the challenge is over. No point getting all those creative muscles in shape only to let them atrophy!
What might you – or a character very like you – have been doing on this afternoon ten years ago? Write a short story that springs from a circumstance or character from your life in February 2001.
OK, so we weren’t traveling to moon bases and stopping off on rotating space stations, but there was a lot of other stuff going on. Remember, this was post-Millennium Bug, pre-9/11 (but only by 7 months), after the first dotcom bubble had burst but before the banking/mortgage collapse. Friends and Seinfeld were still on the air but American Idol was not. “Reality” TV was just about to take over from quiz shows as the new money spinner for networks and no-one was watching video online yet.
What was life like all those years ago? Take us back.
The Rules:
- You should use the prompt in some way 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!
Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook
Some tweets/updates you might use:
Travel back in time to Feb 2001: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday #wow
What were you doing 10 years ago? Is there a story there? #WriteOnWed http://t.co/OpHsJ04
This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is “2001”: hhttp://t.co/OpHsJ04
Come and write with us: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday #wow
See my story – and write your own: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday #wow
With thanks to my friends at Creative Copy Challenge for inspiration and support. Go to Creative Copy Challenge every day for a new writing prompt and supportive community of writers.
I’m spending the day at an amusement park with the kiddies.
I love watching all the different people and types, from the loud, dramatic teens, to the young parents, the kid-free couples, the grandparents, the happy ones, the cranky ones…it’s great fodder .
It’s a setting ripe for drama, mystery, horror, poetry, action, joy and sorrow.
Go!
Write a story set in your first home …
Who says you can’t go home again?
Write a story set in your first home (house? town?). Describe it in exquisite detail. Make us believe we’re there.
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
![[Write On Wednesday] – Stories From The Everyday](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screen-shot-2012-01-18-at-10.39.37-AM.png)
![[Write On Wednesday] Six Sentences](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-08-at-12.30.21-PM.png)
