Month: May 2018

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StoryADay May – Day23 – One Small Thing

Hi writers! Today’s prompt is all about that one telling detail. Make it do double duty, moving the story along while telling us something important about your main character.

Day 23 Prompt: “Choose a detail that only your character would notice in this story. “

I just started reading The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Welty is a master of the telling (and odd) detail. In “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” an orphan girl who believes she is going to be married lovingly packs her “hope chest,” an old trunk she found somewhere, as the three women from her town who have taken charge of her try to ship her off by train to a home for the feeble-minded. Welty could just say it was an old trunk and leave it at that. She does this instead:

“The trunk was old and lined with yellow and brown paper, with an asterisk pattern showing in darker circles and rings. Mutely the ladies indicated to each other that they did not know where in the world it had come from. It was empty except for two bars of soap and a green washcloth, which Lily was not trying to arrange in the bottom.”

In this little glimpse we get a sense of the sad hopeless surrounding Lily, her wistfulness for normalcy, family traditions she knows others have, for something that belongs just to her. And we get a clearer picture of her mental state, as she arranges and rearranges the old soap and rag in the bottom of the trunk. The asterisk pattern seems utilitarian, almost masculine. This isn’t a young lady’s hope chest at all, but an object transformed by Lily’s imagination.

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StoryADay May – Day 22 – Rude Awakening

Yay, good old fashioned story-starting prompts this week!

Day 22 Prompt: “Your character wakes up in a space they don’t recognize. They could wake up in a white van, a locked room, or anywhere that is completely different form their everyday. This gives you the opportunity to explore your character in interesting ways. There may be other people inside the space, outside the space, interacting with them, or not.”

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StoryADay May – Day 21 – News Flash

Hi writers! Ready to make some fake news? Today’s StoryADay prompt invites you to write a story with all the energy of up-to-the-minute reporting. Don’t forget the who, what, where, when, and why.

Day 21 Prompt: “Write a story as a news report. This could be a TV report with a panel of pundits yelling at each other, a reporter on the street, the voice of a producer in your anchor’s ear… Or, this could be a traditional newspaper report.”

 

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StoryADay May – Day 20 – Epistolary

Hello storytellers! We’re going to change course from yesterday, where our narrators told a story directly to the reader. Today our readers will need to put on their detective hats and piece the story together from a series of documents.

Day 20 Prompt: Write an epistolary–a story told through a collection of documents.

A series of letters is the classic example, but also think about diary entries, e-mails, texts, the case file of a detective, prosecutor, or lab technician, a call center log, you name it. This is great for telling a story from the points of view of more than one character.

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StoryADay May – Day 19 – First Person P.O.V.

Hello raconteurs! Today we switch from dialogue to monologue, writing a story from the first person point of view. Remember, the “I” in your story doesn’t have to be you. Maybe your narrator is an extremely unreliable person. Maybe he or she is going to take us back in time a bit (“it all started the week after finals, my freshman year of college …”). Maybe the “I” in your story is a fly on the wall, giving us a first-hand account of a famous event. Or of a completely fictional event.

Day 19 Prompt: “Tell A Story ‘Direct To Camera.’ This is probably going to be in first person. Write as if you’re writing to your best friend, or talking directly to a police officer, or relaying this to a room of strangers.”

For inspiration and ideas for opening your story, check out some of the true (though I suspect in some cases embellished) stories at The Moth.

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StoryADay Day 18 – One-Sided

Hi storytellers! After focusing in on dialogue on Day 16, now we’re going to zoom in even tighter, on just one side of a conversation. Here’s your daily prompt.

Day 18 Prompt: “Write a story today in which the reader only hears one side of the conversation. This could be a telephone conversation, a text conversation, a series of social media updates, a series of letters, whatever.”

Julie at StoryADay gives a couple of good examples: the old Bob Newhart “telephone” comedy routines, and Neil Gaiman’s story “Orange,” which unfolds as answers to a series of police interrogation questions that are not a part of the story. For further inspiration, simply look around. Instead of giving that rude guy speaking loudly into a cell phone on your morning commute the evil eye, you just might grab a notebook and thank him.

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StoryADay May – Day 17 – Sonnet Story

Hello writers! Today’s story prompt takes a cue from a classic poetic form.

Day 17 Prompt: Write a “sonnet story”–a story in 14 sentences.

As you may recall from Day 24 of NaPoWriMo, there’s quite a bit more to an actual sonnet, which is measured in lines, not sentences. But we’re writing prose here, so no need to worry about meter or rhyme. Like writing a 100-word story, this is an extreme limitation that will force us to consider what the essential parts of a story are and how directly they can be set on the page.

For an added challenge, you might also want to borrow from the thematic structure of a sonnet.

Petrarchan (Italian) sonnets, for example typically start with 8 lines setting out a proposition/problem/question, followed by a turn, or “volta,” in the ninth line, signaling a transition to the corresponding answer or resolution.

In Shakespearean sonnets, the volta usually comes in the last two lines, which summarize the theme of the poem or give a new insight on that theme.

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StoryADay May – Day 16 – Dialogue

We are charging past the StoryADay halfway point and full steam ahead writers! I hope you had fun writing a list story yesterday. “My Day in Band Names,” is a loose accounting of my day, told through band names I thought of as I went about my day. Not exactly fiction, but a technique I could use equally to describe a fictional character’s day.

Today’s prompt asks us to exercise two important skills: (1) revealing a story through conversation and (2) giving each speaker a unique and recognizable voice. Try experimenting with characters whose voices are unlike your own.

Day 16 Prompt: “Write a Story completely in dialogue.” The reader should be able to keep the speakers straight without dialogue attributions (e.g., “he said,” “she said,” “they exclaimed”).

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StoryADay May – Day 15 – List Story [updated: My Day in Band Names]

Hi writers! Ready to launch a third week of story writing? Today’s prompt is a fun one that I have been wanting to try: a list story. The story is implied, from just the items on the list. And you can use the list later as the framework for a more expanded story, a collection of stories, or even chapters in a novel.

Day 15 Prompt: “Write a story in the form of a list.”

Julie at StoryADay offers the following suggestions:

  • Shopping list
  • 10 Things I Hate/Love About You
  • “To Do” list
  • List of books or movies your character has or wants to read/see
  • A list of deceased childhood pets
  • A list of your character’s fears

And here are a few more from John Dufresne’s “FLASH! Writing the Very Short Story“:

  • Friends your character has lost contact with
  • Moments in life your character would relive if she could
  • Things your character has done that he’s ashamed of

And some additional ideas this gave me:

  • Grade school teachers
  • College electives
  • First dates
  • Family vacations
  • Amazon order history
  • Skills or job history (basically, a resume)
  • Bucket list
  • Packing list for a trip
  • Launch checklist

Happy listing!

[updated]

For my story, I wrote a list of band names that (very loosely) follows the narrative arc of my character’s day–which happens to be a lot like the narrative arc of my own day ; )

My Day in Band Names

100% Arabica

Premium Roast

In Media Res

First Person Plural

Long Story, Short

Downward Dog

Warrior Too

Bring Back the Bees

Now With Whole Grains

Grade-A Pasteurized

Yoda Speak

Lost Light Sabers

Expect Delays

Stand Right, Walk Left

In Case of Emergency

Affogato

Flat White

Self-Promo Day

Friend Request

CTRL + ALT + DEL

GINA Screen

Word of the Day

Heavy-Duty Staples

Fully-Lined Gussets

Close Paren

Dissenting In Part

Cash-Free Facility

Fries With That

Add-On Items

I Am Not a Robot

Two-Day Shipping

The Right Honorable

Flinging Faulkner

Hemingway Hijab

Twink Tank

Halvsies

On All Fours

Boolean Filters

Torpid Response

Cringeworthy

And So It Begins

Taco Tuesday

Swing and a Miss

Mint Waxed Floss

Visibly Diminished

Night Shift Mode

The Optimist’s Daughters

Eudora Welty Said So

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StoryADay May 14 – M.I.C.E.

It’s Day 14, writers! We are almost halfway there! Today’s StoryADay prompt sets out a framework (M.I.C.E.) for four different types of stories and asks you to choose one.

The letters stand for:

M – Milieu: a story about place; your character arrives in and must negotiate a new place

I – Intrigue/Idea: a question is posed at the beginning of the story that must be answered

C – Character: a character has an internal conflict; resolution of the conflict will change the character

E – Event: external forces change the character’s world; the status quo and a new normal must be established

Day 14 Prompt: “Pick a dominant thread for your story today, based on the MICE categories. Work towards the ending that fits the story type you chose.”