Day 23 – Monique Cuillerier Mixes & Matches

The Prompt

Write outside your comfort zone with a random genre, weather type, and errand. (see below)

When you are stuck for new ideas, working from specific suggestions can open up new possibilities. They can also take you out of your normal way of working and help you explore different approaches. You never know what sort of story will result.

Roll a die for each category. (Don’t have a physical die? Google can do that for you.)

Then, write a story in your genre, with the particular type of weather and errand.

(Bonus: choose a favourite childhood character as your main character.)

Genre

  1. mystery
  2. romance
  3. fantasy
  4. political satire
  5. science fiction
  6. thriller

Weather

  1. snowstorm
  2. light rain
  3. heat wave
  4. extreme cold
  5. strong wind
  6. sunny and warm

Errand

  1. buy groceries
  2. return library books
  3. make a bank deposit
  4. pick up a child from an extracurricular activity
  5. deliver a birthday present
  6. renew a piece of government identification

The Author

Monique Cuillerier

Monique Cuillerier lives in Ottawa, where she writes fiction, long and short, when she is not procrastinating on Twitter at @MoniqueAC or sporadically posting at notwhereilive.ca. You can read one of Monique’s stories in the anthology Bikes, Not Rockets

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Leave a comment and let us know how you got on and how you’re celebrating!

[Write On Wednesday] Roll Up, Roll Up, Roll Up!

Lucky Dip!

Today’s prompt is a kind of carnival game, a tombola, a random lucky dip.

When I was a kid, I loved going to church bazaars and village fetes and Christmas Fairs.

Aside from scanning the cheap paperbacks and making a beeline for the bakery stall to see if Carol-Anne’s dad had made his famous tablet, I loved nothing more than the Lucky Dip.

Hand over a coin and plunge your hand into a huge barrel of cold, scratchy sawdust, trying not to get any stuck under your nails. Try not to think about the unfortunate association of the smell of sawdust with all the times somebody threw up at school and the janitor came by with his trusty bucket of the stuff. Rummage around until your fingers find the smooth crinkle of something wrapped in cheap, thin paper. Pull it out and lo! you have a gift. No idea what it would be. It might be something ‘meh’, or it might be something cool like a spinning top or a plastic penny whistle, or one of those little puzzles with the balls you have to roll around until they are all in the right divots; something I could play with all afternoon then shove it in a drawer and re-discover periodically over the next few years.

Whatever I got, it was something I hadn’t expected. And it was mine, all mine!

Below, you’ll find a lucky-dip of sorts, a prompt from the archives of over 500 prompts at StoryADay. It has been generated especially for you!

The Prompt

This is your randomly generated prompt: Continue reading “[Write On Wednesday] Roll Up, Roll Up, Roll Up!”