It’s Cinquo De Mayo and everyone loves a party! Except when they don’t.
Parties are a great setting for stories because they bring together people who have no business being in the same room; they put stress on relationships; they often involve booze and a consequent loosening of inhibitions…in other words, all the elements you need for a climactic moment in someone’s life.
Go!
A lot of short short stories focus on character and twists and surprise, because it’s a great form for exactly those things.
But I don’t want your descriptive muscles to get all flabby.
Why not write a story with a strong sense of place? At some point in the story, imagine you are a tour guide, pointing out the landmarks and notable features of your setting to me, your eager audience.
Be a tour guide to your story’s setting, for the reader
Go!
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 using space or sci-fi elements
On this day in 1973, the US launched the orbital space station Skylab.
Write A Story With Space/Science Fiction Elements
Even if you’re not a big fan of science fiction, this doesn’t have to be a difficult assignment. Sci-Fi isn’t all about techno-babble or rockets.
Two of my favourite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are:
1, Captain Picard is left on a planet, by a malevolent force, with the captain of a ship from a culture that communicates so strangely not even Star Trek’s wonderful translators can handle it. They are in peril and must work together. Gradually Picard figures out that the alien captain’s language is based on metaphors, but he doesn’t share the same culture so how can he find metaphors with which to communicate? It’s basically a stranded-on-an-island, must-work-together-to-escape-peril story, all about linguistics. In space.
2, Someone from Starfleet wants to take the sentient andriod Data back to HQ and take him apart to figure out how he works, for the greater good of the service (a fleet of Datas? We’d be unstoppable, Great!). Picard demands a tribunal at which he attempts to prove that Data is an individual not merely a piece of equipment. A wrinkle? Picard’s second in command and Data’s buddy, Riker, must act as prosector, and try to prove that his friend is merely a machine. This one is called “Measure of a Man” and is a long, fascinating philosophical argument about what it means to be human. Set on a spaceship.
Another example: the movie Moon, which came out last year. It is a psychological thriller set on the moon. It uses a sci-fi setting to create an isolation you couldn’t realistically create in a story set on our planet these days. And it uses some sci-fi tricks to mess with the hero’s mind and throw obstacles in his path, and none of it is extraneous.
What kind of story could you write, that uses as space or futuristic setting? A mystery? A romance? A morality play?
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.
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