Sept. 5 — Dark, Gloomy Forest

Today you’re going to drop your character into the depths of a Deep, Dark Forest, and let him or her fend for their self.

You Heartless Author you!

The Prompt

Your character is alone in the woods and finds blighted trees, drooping plants…rot and slime everywhere. It once was beautiful but overnight is turning into a swamp–its not natural. Your character must get to the bottom of this and stop it before something they love very much is threatened also. Extra points if your character actually doesn’t know this forest and ends up getting lost. Maybe the trees have turned evil and… *gulp* developed something of an appetite?

Will your character make it out alive?

Start writing, quick, so we can all find out!

Leslie Marie Dawson is an indie author, blogger and artist who revels in stories of fantasy, romance, and comedy. She can be found hiding in her hermit cave with her laptop, a stack of good books, and a glass of water (sadly she’s given up soda). Please stop by her Hermit’s Cave to see the cool things she makes!

Don’t forget to comment below and share what you wrote!

Sept 4 – Friday Favourites 1

Hi, all! I’m Monique and I’m going to be posting prompts each Friday this month.

The theme is “Friday Favourites” and means that each prompt will be a generic premise for a story that is also the description of a classic (or favourite!) novel.

The Prompt

A person wakes up, not quite remembering what happened the night before, and is surprised and upset by what they see outside the window.
(The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)

Tips

Change the genre. Instead of science fiction, turn it into a mystery. Or a romance. Or a children’s story.

Where (or when) do they wake up? ‘Window’ can be interpreted broadly.

Have fun!

Monique Cuillerier has always loved to write. She also enjoys procrastination. These two interests are frequently in conflict. Her stories have appeared in Round Up Writer’s Zine, Black Heart Magazine, (parenthetical), and elsewhere. She blogs sporadically (although more frequently during Story A Day!) at notwhereilive.ca

Sept 1 — The Disappeared

StoryADay September 2015 Badge 440x220 pxWelcome to StoryADay September 2015!! Congratulations on making a fresh commitment to your writing.

This month we’ll be featuring writing prompts from writers within the StoryADay community, and myself. Let me tell you, from what I’ve seen already, there are some GREAT prompts coming your way.

Each prompt this month will set a scenario or scene for you to play with, or suggest elements of story that you can use. If you post your story on a blog, please do share a link in the comments so we can all see it. It’s fun to see what other people do with the same story elements!

 

The Prompt

Today, write a story that features people disappearing.

Tips

  • The story can be serious and traumatic or it can be fun and lighthearted.
  • Perhaps your main character is in a war zone or a dystopia and the people around them are being taken by hostile forces. What does this do to your main character? Are they under threat too?
  • Perhaps your main character is unhappy with their life and the mysterious, Twilight-Zone-like disappearance of the people around them is a blessing and a joy.
  • The disappearances can be literal or metaphorical. We’ve all had that friend who just drops us without another word, right?
  • Perhaps the main character is a pet who doesn’t understand where ‘his people’ go every day when they disappear. Perhaps he’s a dog, who forgets that they come back every day, and is equally thrilled every evening when they reappear.
  • Your story could feature a magician!
  • Maybe your main character is elderly, the last surviving member of a vast group of siblings.
  • Maybe your story is set in a limbo full of babies waiting to be born! Or in a foster home.
  • Maybe your main character is the one who is disappearing. Literally? Figuratively? On purpose?

Go!

 

Don’t forget to leave a comment, and come back tomorrow for more prompts!

 

If you want to receive prompts by email this month only, go here and make sure you select the box that says “StADa Sept 2015 – News and Daily Writing Prompts” (If you’re already on the list, enter your email address anyway and you should receive a prompt that lets you change your preferences)

 

[Write On Wednesday] Invented Languages

This week’s prompt is inspired by this article on lost American slang. There is such richness and yet a foreign feel to the language in the quotes, that I couldn’t stop thinking about using this as a way to spice up my own writing.

(The examples in the piece remind me of both Harold Hill  — The Music Man’s pop-culture references were meticulously researched — and Mr Burns from The Simpsons! It also made me wonder if Disney intended Bambi’s “Thumper” to have a double-meaning for older viewers.)
Slang/Chat/Zyte/Moon/Dase

The Prompt

Write a story in which your characters have their own slang, dialect, similes and metaphors tied in to their time/place/culture.

Tips

  • Feel free to make up the slang. No need for historical accuracy here. Just be consistent within your world.
  • Think about how your characters see life. Are they agricultural? Sports-obsessed? (When I moved to the US I was bamboozled by political articles in newspapers that relied heavily on sports analogies that meant absolutely nothing to me). Are they engineers? Are they space-based?
  • Play with current expressions and change them to fit your characters. In a space opera “How on earth?” becomes “How in the twelve orbiting satellites of Juno?”; the fable of the grasshopper and the ant is transformed into a fable about worker droids and love-bots; etc. In my speculative-fiction novel-in-progress, my atheist-mechanics use expletives like “Great Gears!” where we might use profanity.
  • You can use slang to distance one generation from another (my husband and I are constantly having to explain our bon mots to our children, who are growing up on a different continent as well as a different millennium!)
  • Have fun with this.

Go!

 

Write on Wednesday – And Get Published

…well, maybe.

This week’s Write On Wednesday post is a reminder about this prompt I posted during the 2015 May’s Challenge.

The DIYMFA Anthology/Writer-Igniter deadline is fast approaching. Polish up your earlier story now, or write a new one today.

The Prompt

  1. Use the Writer Igniter tool at DIYMFA to spark a story (grab a screenshot of your result)
  2. Write a story of up to 2,000 words on the theme ORIGINS
  3. Submit to DIYMFA by August 31, 2015 (more details here).

 

Go!

(And good luck!)

[Write On Wednesday] Snowpocalypse

This week, like last week, my prompt is inspired by a submission-call from an anthology.
As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of disaster movies, I couldn’t resist this one.

The Prompt

Snowpocalypse

Tips

  • Cast your mind back a few short months (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, especially if you’re someone that gets hard winters) to the unrelenting, bitter winter. Think about those last few weeks of winter when you can barely remember what the world looks like in anything but monochrome. Remember how it made you feel. Think about how long it took to simply get out the front door when you can’t go out without fourteen layers of clothing.
  • Put a character into this setting. Are they happy? Are they longing for spring?
  • Come up with a reason why spring isn’t coming. Maybe it’s something like Narnia’s White Witch. Maybe it’s climate change. Maybe your character is on a planet where perms-winter is normal.
  • Make something change. It can be the character’s desires, the weather patterns or the environment they’re in (if the dome cracks and the air outside is 40-below, that’s a crisis your character’s going to have to deal with)
  • When something has changed, put your characters to work (together is good. Even more fun if they have conflicting personalities) to solve the problem or face their doom
  • One of the best ways to launch yourself into ‘show not tell’ is to put characters together and let them talk about what they see, what they want, what they fear. Put two or more characters into your setting and get them talking as soon as possible.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Going On A Journey

This week’s writing prompt: Take Your Character(s) On A Literal & Figurative Journey

Enjoy the journey, not the destination.
Yesterday, I wrote about Richard Matheson’s classic short story Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

It got me thinking about journeys as a vehicle (sorry!) for a story. In his story, Matheson included tons of detail about the plane travel in the early ’60s. The claustrophobic feeling of the setting wasn’t accidental: it mirrored the character’s internal issues beautifully.

Today I’m inviting you to do something similar.

The Prompt

Take Your Character(s) On A Literal Journey

Tips

  • Choose a mode of transportation that you can write about in detail. (Have a lot of time for research? Sure, write about Mary and Joseph on a donkey in Roman-occupied Palestine. Short on research time? Use the last trip you took as source material).
  • Think about the mode of transportation you have chosen. Does it represent freedom or escape? Is it comfortable or torturous? Is it difficult or easy? (Horse back riding sounds like fun, but if your character is facing his third day on a horse in freezing drizzle and you have a different story!). Is your character driving or at the mercy of others (literally and figuratively?)
  • What does your character want/need? How can you use a literal journey to pad out the significance of that?
  • What changes in the middle of the story? Can you use the vehicle/travel to raise the stakes? If the bus breaks down or the horse bolts, or the passenger tempts the driver to break the speed limit what are the implications for the character? How can you make it worse? Don’t be afraid to go deeper/further/more whacky (you can always scale back in the revisions if it seems too crazy).
  • In the end, does your character end up where he wanted to go? Literally? Figuratively? Did your character end up where they needed to be? Are those the same things?
  • Think about the imagery and language you use (see yesterday’s Reading Room post, about how Richard Matheson chose his words to enhance the tone of the coming story).
  • Write a quick first draft.
  • Go back through the story and see if you can heighten the sense of place with different senses, different word choice. See if you can make things worse (or better) for your character.
  • If you’re brave enough, post your story in the comments (but not if you’re planning on submitting it anywhere else).

Go!

Guest Prompt from Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette KowalMary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Glamourist Histories series of fantasy novels and the a three time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Clarkesworld, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer, lives in Chicago. Visit her online at maryrobinettekowal.com.

We’re rounding out our month with a multiple-award winning, working writer’s advice to take a look at scenes (or stories) from another angle. It seems to be working for her, so let’s give it a try! Thanks for sharing, Mary!

The Prompt

Take the last scene [or story – Ed.] that you wrote. Now rewrite it from the point of view of a secondary character. You have to keep all the physical actions and dialog in the same order, but make it clear what is at stake for the new POV character. Why do they say the things they do? What are they trying to achieve?

Now go back to your original scene [or story – Ed.] and adjust it to incorporate the new things you’ve learned about your secondary character.

Often when a scene seems flat, it’s because we haven’t thought through the motivations of any of the people in the scene except the point of view character.

Go!

Guest Prompt from John Dixon

John DixonJohn Dixon’s first novel Phoenix Island was not only the inspiration for the CBS series Intelligence (starring Josh Holloway), but was this year awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. (Well-deserved, too! It’s an excellent book!). John is a former Golden Gloves boxer, youth services caseworker, prison tutor, and middle school English teacher.

Like the expert in horror and all-things-creepy that he is, John gave us a very creepy prompt.

The Prompt

Write a story about someone trying to escape a subterranean space.

Go!

Day 30 – The Impact of Art

The Prompt

Write a story about the impact of art

Writing means a lot to you. You’ve been doing it every day for weeks now. You’ve made it a priority. How does that feel?

There are probably other art forms that move you just as much (Music? Art? Dance?). What would you do and who would you be if you were forced to live a life without art?

The Prompt

Write a story about the impact of art

Tips

  • You may imagine a world where art is forbidden (all art or just the particular type your character wants to commit).
  • You can imagine an artist who is blocked for another reason.
  • What does the lack of art do to that person?
  • Has he/she known what it was to be an artist and lost it?
  • Has he/she never known and are they living a life they thought was OK. How do they discover the missing piece? What impact does that have on the rest of their life?
  • Perhaps your story will be about an art teacher impacting the life of an impressionable kid.
  • Your story need not be a narrative story. Perhaps it is a chilling set of rules to be imposed by an oppressive authority. Perhaps it is a list of titles of work in an art show or exhibition or that have been found in an archaeological dig.
  • You might write about the conversation between an ancient artist and the modern day observer.
  • What does art mean to you? Put that into your story.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt from Gabriela Pereira – with submission guidelines

 Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 7.36.08 PMGabriela Pereira is the Chief Instigator at DIYMFA.com, the home of the do-it-yourself MFA in creative writing. In her new podcast series she has interviewed everyone from agents, novelists, writing teachers to marketing and networking guru Guy Kawasaki! You should definitely check that out!). She is hard at work on a DIYMFA handbook due out next year from Writer’s Digest Books.

This prompt is a little bit different today — and it comes with the possibility of publication.

Over at DIYMFA they’re launching an anthology and the only stipulations are that you write to the theme and use the custom-built Writer Igniter feature at DIYMFA to somehow spark your story. It’s a fun little slot-machine of a prompt generator that Gabriela had custom built for her site. It’s kind of irresistable…DIYMFA.com logo

The Prompt

The theme for the anthology is ORIGINS. The deadline is August 31, 2015, so you have plenty of time to brush up whatever story you sketch out today.

The rules are as follows: spin the Writer Igniter (no more than three spins!); take a screenshot of your result (ALT + Print Screen on Windows; CMD + SHIFT + 4 on Mac, then draw a box around whatever you want to capture); then write a story.

The finished story should be up to 2,000 words. See more guidelines for submission here.

Go!

Guest Prompt from Phil Giunta

Today’s prompt comes from horror-and-paranormal author Phil Giunta. But just because it starts with gore, doesn’t mean you have to try to write the kind of story Phil might write. The magic of these kinds of prompts is in seeing what different writers do with the same prompt. If you write this one, why not post in our private forum, and let’s compare note!

The Prompt

You’re walking along a busy city street on your way to work. A short distance ahead, a well-dressed man approaches. He stands out from the crowd only because he is staggering and stumbling as if drunk, but it’s only 8:30 in the morning. As he draws closer, you notice that he has a swollen eye and a bloody nose. He collides with a parking meter and nearly falls over. No one comes to his aid, so you decide to take the initiative. You reach out to steady him and ask what happened…

Screen Shot 2015-05-05 at 10.29.48 AMAbout Phil Guinta

Phil Giunta‘s first novel, a paranormal mystery called Testing the Prisoner, debuted in 2010 from Firebringer Press. His second novel in the same genre, By Your Side, was released in 2013. Phil also narrated the audio versions of both books, available for free at Podiobooks.com. His short stories can be found in such anthologies as ReDeus: Divine Tales, ReDeus: Beyond Borders, and Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity (which he also edited).

Phil is currently editing the second book in the series, Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity, which is slated for release in 2016 along with a paranormal mystery novella titled Like Mother, Like Daughters.

Guest Prompt from Meg Wolfe

Meg Wolfe‘s prompt introduces a little mystery into our writing, unsurprisingly since Meg is a mystery writer!

The Prompt

An Unexpected Acquisition

What suddenly shows up on your character’s doorstep, or in the mail, or on his or her birthday? It should be something that wasn’t expected or asked for or even thought about–how would your character react, and what hidden truth does the reaction reveal about his or her background, temperament, education, finances, desires, and/or motivations?

Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 7.33.59 PMAbout Meg Wolfe

Meg is a long-time nonfiction writer, most recently of The Minimalist Woman blog and its related self-help and cookbooks. She now focuses almost exclusively on fiction, and has written and published two mysteries, An Uncollected Death and An Unexamined Wife. A third, An Undisclosed Vocation, is slated for release in Summer of 2015.

May 7 – The Object of the Story

The Prompt

Look at a museum’s website. Find an object. Or an object in the background of a painting. Think about its significance to the culture it belonged to. Write a story about a character in a culture that values such things (real or imagined).

Tips

  • If you know a lot about a particular historical culture, you can write about a real culture. Otherwise you’d probably better setting this in a fantasy/futuristic/galaxy far, far away type setting, so that you don’t waste all your writing time researching Incan customs or some such thing.
  • If you’re stuck, write about the culture you know best: yours. What if someone from outside your group (from another societal group, or from the far future) found an object you hold dear. What might they infer about you from that object? Is there a story there?
  • This could be a funny story: if you’re a Doctor Who fan, there’s a lovely moment in one of the Christmas episodes, where the supposed tour-guide instructs his guests on Earth’s Christmastime customs. He gets it hilariously wrong.
  • This could be a tragedy: think of Pompeii…
  • Look at the object. Is it something our culture still values? Why? Why not? What might drive someone to value a huge urn, or a tiny carving of an elephant, or a blue plate with a spiny fish glazed onto it. Does that seem reasonable to you? Why? Why not? Is there a story there?
  • And, not to distract you, but this might be interesting if you’re stuck: Adam Savage on why he’s fascinated by objects.

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Writing Prompt from Joe R Lansdale

Today’s guest writing prompt comes from master storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, who has won the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker awards and The Horror Writer Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award among others!

Our thanks to Mr Lansdale for taking the time to provide this provocative prompt for us.

The Prompt

On the day they saw the blue star swell to gigantic proportions, everyone went blind but Hardy. He was already blind, had been from birth,but he had lifted his head to the heavens because he felt a peculiar warmth.

Moments later the others were still blind, but he could see. All the colors of the spectrum. Even viewed by moonlight, the brightness of it all frightened and puzzled him.

joerlansdaleAbout Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. 

Guest Writing Prompt from Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant

Today’s guest prompter is Seanan McGuire who also writes as Mira Grant. I love these little peeks inside the minds of successful writers, don’t you?

Today’s guest prompter is Seanan McGuire who also writes as Mira Grant. I love these little peeks inside the minds of successful writers, don’t you?

The Prompt

Some little things got left out, and a little means a lot.

Seanan McGuire was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (Newsflesh, Book 1) (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot. In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original filk music. She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, “With Friends Like These…”

Remember: you don’t have to write to either of today’s prompts, but if one or other of them helps spark an idea, you’re welcome!

May 4 – Heroes

Today we’re focusing on the heart of any story: the characters. We often refer to the protagonist as the ‘hero’ whether or not he/she is heroic. Today, however, we’re going to take that word literally:

The Prompt

Write A Story With A Heroic Protagonist

Tips

  • A hero is not necessarily someone with a cape and superpowers. A hero can be someone who is exceptionally talented in one or more areas and who uses those talents.
  • A hero can be great at one thing and ordinary (or clueless) in other areas: Adrian Monk is  almost incapable of living a normal life, but his OCD and his fears make him an exceptional detective; Elizabeth Bennett is not rich or beautiful or titled, or any of the other things that mattered at the time, but Jane Austen’s famous heroine endures because she is witting and quick and funny; Slippery Jim in Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat is a rogue, but a charming rogue.
  • Think about characters you love from fiction. What is it that you like about them? Are they funny? Smart? Brave? Brooding? Tortured?
  • Think about characters you dislike. Why? Are they whiny? Angry? Glib? Uncaring?
  • What raises the feature you love about that character to the next level?
  • Think about people in your life that you love or abhor. What features and characteristics do they have that you envy/loathe?
  • How could you create a character that has a stand-out characteristic (one that you love) that shows the reader the best of humanity? That gives the reader something to aspire to?
  • What mannerisms will your character have? What expressions will they use? How will they talk?
  • What single adventure could this character have in a story that highlights their most heroic feature?

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

May 2 – Other People’s Memories

Day 2 – Other People’s Memories

Every family is full of stories. Some are told (and retold). Some are secret. Some are a surprise that is only revealed years after you ‘should’ have known about them.

Your friends have stories they tell and retell.

Your colleague and strangers on the bus have stories.

Everyone is telling stories all the time.

Today we pilfer their experiences.

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by family folklore (or a story someone has told you that ‘happened’)

Tips

  • My grandparents have a remarkable and romantic courtship story. One day I might write that story. Or I might take their story and transport it to a futuristic setting where the characters may face similar obstacles. What stories exist in your family that could inspire a tale or two?
  • Be wary of  realistic retellings of stories that don’t belong to you, especially if the people are still alive. But feel free to use anyone’s story as inspiration, a jumping-off point. Change details, explore other possibilities. Treat your sources with gratitude and respect.
  • Start with a family story that is often told and ask ‘what if’? What if Grandad had been in a modern war, not Vietnam? What if Dad’s first interview had gone better? What if Uncle Sal had never got on the boat?

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Guest Prompt: Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin says: Write a short piece inspired by one of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. There are 72, but here are a few of my favorites…

Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 7.32.04 PMGretchen Rubin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project, Happier at Home and, most recently, Better Than Before (a book about happiness and habits that has huge implications for writers. You should check it out!)

When I asked her if she’d like to provide a writing prompt this self-confessed quotation collector, of course, went to one of her favorite authors for inspiration. Here’s what she sent.

Continue reading “Guest Prompt: Gretchen Rubin”

May 1 – Limit Yourself To 40 Minutes

Day 1 – Limits: 40 Minutes

Freedom is horrible. If you are free to do anything, write anything, then there is an infinity-minus-one of ways you could do it. That’s a lot of words, ideas and characters you have to reject just to get something on the page.

This is the power of limits (‘write a sonnet; here are the rules’) and challenges (‘write a story a day; of course some of them will be rubbish, do it anyway’).

Today we are exploring time limits. By limiting the amount of time you have to write this story, you will be forced to make quick decisions and not second-guess yourself.

The Prompt

Write a story in 40 minutes

Tips

  • Remember this story is a first draft. It does not have to be perfect. It must, however, have a beginning, a middle and an end that you can revise later.
  • Use the first ten minutes to write an opening and think about your characters. Use the next 20 minutes to write the meat of the story. You’ll start to get an idea of where it’s going about half way through. You’ll also start to have ideas for complications, digressions, a full-length novel. Great. Jot them in the margins or put them in square brackets, and drag your story back to the point. Use the last ten minutes to construct an ending and read over the whole thing for mistakes.
  • By all means make notes as you read over your completed draft, but do not revise it today.
  • If you like the story, put a date on your calendar for next month, to revise it.
  • If you don’t like the story, take a few minutes to figure out why? Is your main character flat? What flaw can you give a hero tomorrow, to spice up that story? Did you take too long to get to the point? Maybe tomorrow’s story should start in the middle of an action scene.
  • Don’t waste a lot of time coming up with a story for this exercise. If you must, retell a story you’ve written before, or tell a bedtime story, a fairytale, a fable, a Greek myth, a Norse myth, a reimagining of “Atlas Shrugged” if the characters were bunnies and the railroad were a new super-warren…

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

Story Sparks and Writing Prompts

I talk a lot about writing prompts and Story Sparks around here. They are your secret weapons for getting through a month of extreme short story writing!

What is a Story Spark?

It’s a term I coined for something that is less than a story idea and certainly not an outline, but something that you notice while walking the world: things that make you go ‘hmmm’, if you will.

Story sparks are details about the world that you can use either to spark or add richness to a story. They can be:

  • Fragments of conversation: become a dedicated eavesdropper, if you aren’t all ready.
  • Details from the world around you: the exact color and shape of a dogwood flower in April; a snippet of conversation overhead, out of context; the rhythm of a 14 year old girl’s speech,
  • Big Ideas that occur to you randomly: the ‘where are all these people going?’ that pops into your head while you’re sitting in traffic; what if my baby had been born with wings? why do so many of us believe in a deity?.
  • Memories: spend some time going through old memories and pulling out interesting characters, conflicts, fears, hopes, joys. Gather some of them as Story Sparks.

Some of these, with a little interrogation and development could be come a story or a series of stories, but for now they are simply ideas that flit across your brain.You needn’t have any clue what kind of story they’ll fit into or how you might use them.

Capture them.

Save them for later.

How To Harness The Power Of Story Sparks

To feel the power of Story Sparks you must gather them continuously.

Set yourself a goal of gathering three story sparks every day and you will find yourself seeing the world in a different way (a writer’s way).Aim to have 15 at the end of each week, but don’t collect them all on one day.

By getting into the habit of observing the world around you and capturing story sparks daily, you are training your brain to see the world through an artist’s filter. This will help immeasurably when you sit down to write.

Writing Prompts Are Not Story Sparks

(At least not the way I do them here at StoryADay)

I provide an optional writing prompt for every day in May (If you want to support the challenge and give me a pat on the back, you can grab a copy of last year’s prompts here or stay tuned for the release of this year’s prompt ebook)

My writing prompts are intentionally vague.

I don’t know if you prefer comedy or tragedy, sci fi or contemporary romance. I don’t know if you’re a woman or a man or a child or a nonagenarian. So I keep the prompts vague. Here’s an example:

prompt screenshotI’m not giving you a topic or a character or telling you where to set your story. I’m giving you a way into a story.

This is the perfect time to start digging around in your Story Sparks notebook/file and see what might fit with this prompt. Choose a Spark that leaps out at you today, in today’s mood, with today’s time restrictions and today’s challenges.

I also give you tips everyday. They are intended to help you drill down further into the prompt, and figure out how you can make it work for you.

Tips for prompt 1

Here’s another example:

Prompt 2

Notice, I don’t tell you what kind of character to choose or where to place him/her. That’s up to you. Dig into your Story Sparks and see if you can find inspiration for a character who might have these qualities.

Here are the tips I provided for this prompt:

tips for prompt 2

Again, you’ll need to bring your own ideas to this exercise. It’s not a scenario that dictates any details about the story, but rather a prompt; a way into finding a character and a story that matter to you.

And that is the only way to write a story that matters to readers.

So go now and start collecting Story Sparks: 3 a day. You’ll thank me, around May 14, when the creative well is not only dry but cracking and threatening to implode.

The Writing Prompt eBook – Details!

You can get all the prompts from StoryADay 2016 in this ebook.

Behind The Curtain

Why Make It Available Exclusively Through Amazon?

A few reasons: One is that it keeps things simple for me. There’s a lot going on around here in April/May and setting up an ebook with three or four different vendors is a LOT of work. I like Amazon. You can get it for Kindle or use their browser-based Kindle app at no charge.

Another is that Amazon is a big kahuna. If lots of people buy the ebook from Amazon (especially if you all buy it on opening day) the ebook shoots up the charts and gets more exposure, and more people hear about StoryADay, which makes the community more buzzy and you more likely to find a writing friend you lurve. (See? It’s all about you).

Thirdly (and this one is less about you), Amazon pays well. If I use their Kindle Direct Publishing and make the book exclusive to them, I get 70% of the list price in royalties in every international market they cover. This money all goes into the running of StoryADay (so actually, it is about you!).

Speaking of money: I intend to keep the StoryADay May challenge free forever. But running it is not. In addition to the hundreds of hours I spend working on this every year, I have hosting and domain-registration costs, support for the times when the web coding gets too much for me, the Mailchimp email list hosting (we’re such a big tribe now that we’ve outgrown Mailchimp’s free service); hosting fees for the service I use to sell workshops and ebooks, and on and on the costs go. I’m fairly frugal but the costs run over $1000 a year.

If everyone on the mailing list bought a copy of the ebook on release day I would cover my costs and have a bit left over to make the site prettier and more functional next year.

That won’t happen, but every little bit helps. If you do feel like kicking in a few more dollars of support, don’t forget about the StoryADay Shop, which is full of books, writing workshops and the world-famous StoryADay I, WRITER Course –  six weeks, ten stories, one new writing life).

So there’s my Amanda-Palmer-inspired begging bowl. Want to support StoryADay? Buy an ebook, course or workshop. Or, if money is tight, spread the word to your writer friends. Get them involved in StoryADay. That’s as valuable to me as a monetary contribution! And more fun.

OK, this was a long post today. Sorry about that, and thanks to anyone who’s still here at the end of it!

Phew! On with the challenge!

[Write On Wednesday] Metaphor To Reality

Yesterday’s Reading Room story started out with magnificent metaphors and then flipped to a story about a suburban guy. It brought back the metaphor at the end.

It was an extreme example and tough to pull off (I’m still not sure it entirely worked), but today we’re going to try something similar.

The Prompt

Start a story with a vivid image and weave the metaphor throughout the story

Tips

  • You still have to make this story about a character. Think of something that matters to your character and create the metaphor/story imagery from that. (e.g. if your character gardens, all the metaphors could be horticultural)
  • You can weave the tie-in metaphors throughout the story or, like the Reading Room story, start with a vivid image and come back to it only at the end.
  • Try to dig deeply, and go beyond the obvious, clichéd metaphors. I worked with a reporter on a weekly newspaper who would open a file and think of all the puns and metaphors he could, on a particular topic, before he started writing an article. The top of every file he wrote was a groan-fest! Try creating your own list of imagery before you start to write, to help yourself push past the cliché.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Can’t And Won’t

Does a story have to have conflict? Does it have to have a beginning and a middle and an end? Perhaps not.

Lydia Davis’ story “Can’t And Won’t” is pages of complaints about life:

My sheets get all twisted in the dryer.

The carrot cake was a little stale.

When I toast the raisin bread, the raisins get very hot.

The bridge of my nose is a little dry.

I’m sleepy, but I can’t lie down.

The sound system in the examining room playing folk music.

I don’t look forward very much to that sandwich.

There is a new weatherman on the radio.

Now that the leaves are off the trees we can see the neighbors’ new deck…

There is no ‘happening’, no crisis, no rising action, but do you get a sense of character? I do.

What is a story if not a portrait of a character or characters?

The Prompt

Write A Non-Narrative Short Story That Allows The Reader To Experience Another Character’s Life

Tips

  • You can copy Lydia Davies’s idea and write a story of complaints. Make sure all the complaints belong to one, very specific character. (They can be like you, or unlike you. It can be a secret portrait of your annoying coworker, your ex-mother-in-law, your little brother…) [remember, this is an exercise. If you decide to publish this, you might want to credit Davis as the inspiration!]
  • Write a List (like they do in McSweeneys)
  • The “character” doesn’t have to be one person. It could be an institution: write the Standard Operating Procedures of a big firm.
  • Write about a collection of objects (e.g. The Things They Carried) and allow the reader to infer what they will about the owners.
  • Come up with your own way of writing a non-narrative short story.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Time Yourself

Today’s exercise is designed to help you see that you CAN write, even when you think you don’t have time. Take 30 minutes today to write a complete story. Here’s how…

Sometimes life gets in the way of writing. We must find ways to work in a time-crunch.

Today’s exercise is designed to help you see that you CAN write, even when you think you don’t have time.
time flies
The Prompt

Write A Story In 30 Minutes

Tips

  • Turn your phone off, mute your email, hang a sign on the door, put on huge silly headphones. Do whatever you need to do, carve out 30 minutes today to Just Write.
  • Use only 30 minutes, start to finish, brainstorming to ‘the end’.
  • Set a stopwatch. Take seven minutes to brainstorm. Think of a character. Give him/her a problem/desire. Pick a reason why solving this problem/achieving this desire causes them extreme heartache/peril (examples: Wesley loves Buttercup but is too poor to woo her. Becoming good for her means risking being murdered by pirates, a prince and a rodent of unusual size. A bookworm’s heart’s desire is simply to read, but his wife thinks its a waste of time so he can’t read at home; and his boss threatens to fire him if he catches him reading at work.)
  • Pick a good opening line that sums up the character and the problem. (“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” – J.D Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye)
  • You should be at about 10 minutes into your time now. Spend the next 15 minutes getting to the meat of the problem, throwing complications at your character, and having him start to try to resolve them. Fail at least once. (If it’s an interior kind of story, you can let that failure be ‘temptation to give up’)
  • Five minutes to go! At some point in the past 15 minutes your character should have started to tell you how the story should end. Tie up the last challenge you gave them and move immediately to the ending. Two sentences. Don’t worry about connecting the middle to the ending just yet. That’s what rewrites are for. Just write “[connecting stuff]” and move on to the end.
  • There. Didn’t that feel good?

What you have in front of you is likely not a complete short story. It’s a sketchy first draft. But it’s a sketchy first draft that moves. It has an interesting character. It has action. It has a sense that it’s going somewhere, and it has and ending.

Now you have a draft you can rework. Add a few lines to help clarify setting and description for the reader, if it’s that kind of story. Change some of your ‘info dump’ paragraphs to dialogue and move them to earlier/later in the story. Expand or delete details. Figure out your theme and how you can (subtly) strengthen it.

Do this, and I think you’ll have a pretty good story. All from taking 30 minutes to squeeze a little short story writing into your day.

[Write on Wednesday] Inventor’s Day

Did you know Feb 11 is Inventor’s Day in the USA?

Oxford Words Blog Screenshot

Well, it is. The terrific OxfordWords blog has an entry about 10 products that were named after people (did you know them all? I knew some, but others were a surprise!).

The Prompt

Write about an inventor or his/her invention

Tips

  • You can use a real invention or make one up.
  • You could write a faux scholarly article/history of the person/invention.
  • Your story could be set at a middle school inventors’ faire, where kids have to dress up as famous inventors.
  • Perhaps your story follows an incident in the life of your inventor years before, during or years after the work on the invention. What brought them here? Where did their life go after the invention? What’s it like to invent something that took on your name? (If you want a tragic example, look at Richard Jordan Gatling, who was convinced he was inventing a weapon that would lead to smaller armies and less suffering).
  • You could go whimsical, with an invention of the type that ends up in an As Seen on TV box.
  • You could throw a little magical realism into this story as the invention produces unexpected results.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] (re)Committed

After scaring you all with my writing prompt headline last week, I’m going much more positive this week.

The Prompt

(Re)Committed

Write a story about a character who is determined to achieve something difficult.

Tips

  • Tell us why that something matters to your character
  • Think about what obstacles you can put in her way. Go beyond the obvious.
  • Show us one way in which she is better, more determined, more heroic than we ourselves would be.
  • Let her triumph — or flop gloriously.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Giving Up

No! I don’t mean you! And I don’t mean me.

But there comes a point in any venture when a person thinks of giving up.

I recently wrote about how glad I was for the tenacity and commitment of the star of a show I went to see. And it got me thinking about all the other stories that could have resulted from each decision he had made during his life. And that I have made. And that you have made. And that our characters make…

The Prompt

Giving Up

Write a story in which your character is tempted to give up on something that matters to them. Or maybe they already have.

Tips

  • Think about the emotional ramifications of making that decision. Is it something they have wanted for a long time, or just a whim? Your answer dictates how big a deal the decision is.
  • Think about the fall out from the decision. Who does it affect the most? Do the consequences match the expectations of your character? Is it easier than they thought it would be? Harder?
  • Think about how you can convey these things without directly telling the reader “She was finding it harder than she had expected”. What does it do to a person’s energy level, gait, relationships, ability to focus, when things are tough? What does it do to all these things if the character is surprised by how happy they are, after giving up?
  • You can write about the process of coming to the decision, or about the consequences, but remember to include some immediacy, some sense of movement in the events of the story. Don’t just tell it as if everything was resolved before you put pen to paper.

Go!

Post your story in the comments, or tell us how it went.

[Write On Wednesday] Christmas Redux

It’s the perfect time to write a Christmas/New Year/Winter story!

Don’t believe me? Take a lesson from the wily Dutch.

Everybody knows that the time to plant spring bulbs is in the autumn and yet every spring I receive multiple catalogues from dutch tulip and daffodil distributors. Six months after (or before) I should (have) plant(ed) their products. What lunacy is this?

The bulb marketers know that in spring I’m experiencing floral beauty and regretting not having planted more bulbs last year. It’s all fresh. I can see where I could put this Red Matador and that Orange Empress to fill a scraggy gap in my flower beds. I am full of good intentions about next year.

And, in January, is that not how you feel? As you pack away the holiday decorations, are you not full of regret over the things not done? The gifts unsought? The cards unsent? Is the memory of your brother-in-law’s annual jokes about your dessert not fresh in your memory?

Indeed. So now is the perfect time to write a story set in the season we have just endured enjoyed.

The Prompt

Write A December/Jan Holiday Story[1. No, I’m not conducting a War on Christmas. I, myself, celebrate Christmas. I just feel it’s polite to acknowledge the other 68% of humanity. It has less punch than “write a Christmas story”, I grant you. But if that’s the price for doing unto others, then I’m willing to pay it here in my blog…]

Tips

  • Think back over this past season and watch for strong emotions that pop up. What are they related to? Regrets? Vows of ‘never again’? Longing for next year’s repeat? Write those things down.
  • Think of moments that stood out for you. Why? What was the emotional resonance?
  • Think of a character you can put in a seasonal story who wants something. It can be something that is in tune with the message of the season or at odds with it, but they must feel strongly about it.
  • Now go about messing with their day. Put obstacles in their path. Put obnoxious visitors underfoot. Burn the turkey. Send in the ghosts of Christmas to settle their hash. Whatever works for your story…

Go!

There. Now you have a story ready to post on your blog/submit to a seasonal publication in early autumn/send out with your Christmas cards next Black Friday (you are going to send Christmas cards next year, aren’t you? Unlike this year? I know, I know, it’ll be our little secret…)

Now, excuse me while I check my mailbox for the Breck’s Bulb Catalogue…

 

 

(Do you send out a holiday story in seasonal cards to your friends? Make a note now on your calendar to do this next year!)

[Write on Wednesday] Day 1 Of Your New Routine: Madlibs

I know, it’s January 14 and you haven’t quite got that whole ‘Write Every Day’ thing down yet. I’m not sure many of us have.

So here’s a ‘story formula’ prompt to get you going again. Today is Day One of your new routine. Yes, you! You know I’m talking to you!

(Take heart! Any day can be Day One!).

Go through this exercise quickly and then write a fast & messy story from it. Have fun. No pressure! No standards! Post it, if you dare, in the comments!

Go!

 

Follow along with this exercise to get your creative juices flowing:

why do [these people] never [verb][nouns]?

(e.g. Why do corporate raiders never fall in love with the woman who owns the indy bookstore they are about to destroy? OR, my husband’s suggestion: “Why do chemists never eat broccoli?”)

What would happen if they suddenly did?

(e.g. What would happen if Tom Hanks fell in love with the adorkable indy bookseller? OR What would happen if a chemist suddenly tempted fate by eating the forbidden brassica?)

What if they stopped? What if they didn't?

(e.g. What if Tom Hanks resists Meg Ryan’s charms? OR What if Tom’s bosses tell him to break it off, but he doesn’t? Two different stories, no?)

What if their friends staged an intervention

(Imagine Tom’s bosses, or our chemist’s colleagues, sitting around in a room, ready to lay out the stakes for Tom, the chemist, and the story, not to mention the adorkable lady bookseller and/or the diminishing stores of broccolonium, the one potential source of Everything This Planet Needs, that non-chemists are wantonly chowing down on, right left and center!)

What if we walked into the room just before they decide how to respond?

(Take a moment to picture this in your mind. Who’s there? Who does it matter to?)

We can see [nouns]

(Who is there? Where are they? Standing? Sitting? What does their posture tell us? Where is our hero? What’s in the room with them? What does that lend to the atmosphere? What do the objects in the room tell us about the overall setting of the story? What do the objects tell us about the tone of the scene? Corporate furniture=an ambush. Cosy bookstore=Our hero on home turf)

We can hear [what?]. We can smell [what?]

(What details can you draw on to color in the scene for the reader?)

It feels...

(Is the atmosphere convivial? Is it adversarial? Are people witty? Are there undercurrents? What are those undercurrents?)

Start Your Story Now

 (Write anything! Except the broccoli story. That one’s mine!)

Bonus Points: Post your story in the comments. Read and comment on other people’s stories.

How did they turn out? Did you get something original and *you*? Did you write something different from everyone else?

[Write On Wednesday] Laughter

Following up on the recent theme of emotional writing prompts, here’s one that’s good for a laugh.

smile!
smile! by Lin Pernille Photography LLC, on Flickr

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features Laughter

Tips

  • Laughter can be cleansing, hysterical (in a bad way), nervous, comradely, cruel. Pick one, or cram as many as possible into one story.
  • Think about the physicality of laughter at the moment it happens.
  • Think about the emotions the memory of the laughter (happy or cruel) elicits later.
  • Use the moment of laughter as a plot device. It is the start or the end of something. It is some place/time/state your character wants to get back to or escape from.
  • If you’re showing laughter-following-a-joke, take a tip from Joss Whedon’s Firefly. He has a couple of scenes where he skips the joke and cuts straight to the characters laughing uproariously at whatever was said just off camera. That saves the audience from having to analyze the joke (“was it really that funny?”) and allows them to watch how the laughing characters react and interact. It allows for the sense of catharsis from the laughter without having to share the writer’s sense of humor. (Watch for the dinner scene in the episode Out Of Gas, around the 5:00 min mark).

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Anger

Continuing a trend from last week and the week before, here’s another prompt that leads you into plot via your main character’s emotion.

Rage Wallpaper
Rage Wallpaper by Thoth God of Knowledge, on Flickr

The Prompt

Write A Story That Features Anger

Tips

  • You can start your story with an angry outburst then spend the rest of it unpacking what prompted the rage, or exploring the consequences of one person’s rage for all the characters around them.
  • You can build up to a big, angry finish — showing your character giving in to something they’ve been fighting all the way through the story.
  • Think about how you have experienced anger in your own life — both in yourself and observing it in others.
  • Try to get inside the head of someone who has a very different ‘anger vector’ than yourself. (If you’re a ‘push me for weeks until I explode’ person, think about writing a character who is a ‘rage and forget it’ sort).
  • Remember there is such a thing as righteous anger.
  • To avoid the story becoming too intense, use the concept of the opposite emotion to show that your character(s) is/are capable of other emotions too. (What is the opposite of anger? Depends on the type of anger, doesn’t it? It might be charm, or humor, or kindness, or gentleness.
  • How can you tell a story that includes one character containing two opposing attributes. Think about what a character like that wants and go from there).
  • What kind of language will you use? Animal metaphors? Short, choppy sentences? Dialogue? How will you avoid clichés?

Go