Hello everyone!
A good friend of mine, who is also a writer, showed me this article by Joe Bunting, the founder of the Write Practice. Although I do not personally follow all seven of the steps he outlined in the article (or when I do, I perform them in a different order), I found his advice to be logical and helpful.
I hope you find “How to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish” as useful as I did!
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Your writing challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write about a situation in which the downtrodden, or those defending or representing them, must work together to get an oppressor or oppressors to change his, her, or their behavior. If you want further help in creating the story, keep reading. If you already know what you want to do, start freewriting!
Choose one of the following locations to be your setting:
1. a school
2. a restaurant
3. a corporate office
4. a factory
5. a farm
6. a store
Next, choose your protagonist’s role within the environment:
1. an authority figure (an owner, a supervisor, a manager, a teacher, an upperclassman, etc.)
2. someone with limited or no authority (an intern, a new employee, a lowerclassman, a new student, etc.)
3. an observer (a reporter, a spouse, a parent, a visitor, a lawyer, a customer, etc.)
Now, choose a person to be the antagonist:
1. an authority figure (an owner, a supervisor, a manager, a teacher, an upperclassman, etc.)
2. a peer (someone with the same or a similar job function within the chosen setting)
3. a supplier (a customer, an inspector, a parent, the school board, the government, etc.)
Happy writing!
Katie
Hey everyone!
I found this article, “How to Be More Productive: 21 Ways to Start the New Year Right,” on The Write Life (http://thewritelife.com/21-ways-to-start-the-new-year-right/). It gave me some good advice for 2016. I hope you all find it helpful too!
If you’re interested in knowing which steps stood out to me as something I should do, keep reading. Otherwise, be sure to check back on Sunday, January 24th for my next writing prompt.
2: This is something I plan to start in 2016. I have too many projects started to finish them all this year.
5: I will continue with the Paleo diet I started in 2015. By the way, if anyone wants to drop a few pounds, try cutting out all sugar from your diet and avoiding gluten, dairy, and starchy foods. I and everyone else in my family who did this lost weight.
9: I think I drink enough water, but I need to work on going to bed earlier.
11: Instead of creating a board, I set three achievable goals for 2016. I’ll be honest, one of them had nothing to do with writing.
17: Already did that.
21: I will continue to regularly attend my writers’ group.
I find writing prompts to be a helpful exercise and a way to get the creative juices flowing. If you’ve never done a writing prompt before, the most important thing is to free write. For those of you who are new to writing, free writing is when you write down whatever comes into your head. There is absolutely no editing until after you have put all of your ideas onto the page.
Every two weeks, I will post a new prompt. My writing prompts are often inspired by quotes. When this happens, I will post the quote and the prompt.
Here’s the first quote and prompt for 2016:
“Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.” – Walter Anderson
He tried to swallow. His palms got sweaty and his pulse pounded in his ear as…
Happy writing!
Katie
katiemerkelwriter 