Wow writers, it was not as easy to write a 100-word story as I thought! I was really inspired by some of the short, short stories at 100wordstory.org. Some of them, like “Row,” by Charmaine Wilkerson and “First Run” by William O’Sullivan, really blur the lines between storytelling and prose poetry.
If you are ever feeling completely stumped by a prompt (like I was with this one) you can try this trick: find a nice big print dictionary, open it randomly to a page, and put your finger on a word without looking and try to use the word in your first sentence. My word was “Samara,” and I wound up making that my title too. Once I write a line or two, the words usually start flowing.
Adhering to a word-count limitation like this is one kind of arbitrary constraint we can impose on our writing. See my post from last month about how constraints like this actually boost our creativity. Today’s prompt imposes another type of constraint: a time limit. Happy writing and Happy Friday!
Day 4 Prompt: “Write a story in 40 minutes. Spend 10 minutes brainstorming and starting the story, 20 minutes complicating your character’s life, and the final 10 minutes reviewing what you’ve written, making notes and writing an ending.”