Hello writers! We are nine days into StoryADay May! This is really challenging! But also empowering. I have a confession to make. In January I signed up for the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. I was super excited. I had 7 days to write a short story and was assigned a genre, character, and an object I needed to incorporate into the story. I had what I thought was a pretty good idea. I parked myself in a coffee shop that weekend and … nothing. I typed a sentence. I erased it. I typed another. I erased it. I scribbled some notes in my notebook. I put it off. I wound up not submitting anything, because I realized a couple of days before the deadline that I wouldn’t have time to write anything that was very good. I wish I could go back and do it again! Not that I think what I have been writing this month is competition-winning material, but you know what, I can turn an idea into words on a page. I’m doing it. And the more times I do it, the less paralyzed I feel at the start. That’s what this challenge is all about.
So let’s keep writing! Here’s today’s prompt from StoryADay:
Day 9 Prompt: “Establish, within the first couple of sentences, your character’s desire. Put them in a situation that conflicts with that desire. Tell us how it works out.”
I just have to say, this is not so much a short story prompt as a definition of a short story. Your character wants/needs something and works to try to get it. I feel like we can do better. Here are three additional suggestions you might try, based, as my math test story “Sibling Rivalry” from yesterday was, on prompts from John Dufresne’s book, FLASH! Writing the Very Short Story.
– Maybe all your character wants is to survive. Write a very short horror story based on an urban legend. Check out this terror-inspiring list.
– Maybe all your character wants is to be heard. Write a story where two characters are in bed (or some other intimate setting) and having a conversation. Except they are really having two conversations. Neither one is responding to the other. They’re just talking right past each other.
– Your character is on the road, trying to get somewhere. Tell a story that takes place in a train, plane, or automobile.
Happy writing!