Julie Duffy's Blog, page 163

[Reading Room] Incognito by Susan M. Lemere

I have a thing for stories written in letter form, so i was well-disposed towards Susan M. Lemere’s charming story Incognito before it even got rolling.

It starts with a teacher interceding on behalf of one of her students who has lost a tooth — literally lost it in the playground grass — and is inconsolable until the teacher promises to write a note to the Tooth Fairy. That would be the end of it, except that the tooth fairy responds. By email. And she has some advice for the teacher, herself.

As the story unfolds we learn more about Katherine, the teacher, and her life, and the changes she needs to make. Will she? Won’t she?

It is a subject that could be dreary or pedestrian, but Susan M. Lemere’s use of language, whimsy and humor keep it from being either of those things. I was, in no time at all, rooting for Katherine and enjoying listening to her voice portraying her various moods.

[Write On Wednesday] Stolen Secrets

Thanks to StoryADay-er Jeffrey T for recommending this resource!

PostSecret is a site where people confess their secrets online, via postcard. Some are sweet, some are sad and some are downright disturbing. They are all fantastic moments that suggest short stories.

The Prompt

Write a story based on a secret shared at PostSecret.com

Tips

If you’re worried about ‘stealing’ someone’s story, don’t be. You’re inspired by the emotion behind their postcard, or the moment that it evokes. What you write won’t be their story. It’ll be yours.
Don’t quote the actual words on the postcard (that’s plagiarism). Just think about what inspired the person to confess this secret and go from there.
Don’t choose one of the tragic ones unless you like writing tragic stories. I liked this one, this one, and this one.
Don’t be surprised if your story veers away from your first assumptions.
Focus on the moment suggested by the secret. Write only about that. Use as little backstory as possible, for a taut, emotional story.

Go!

[Write On Wednesday] Home Town Tales

This prompt is inspired by the book 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith and by the Prairie Home Companion Lake Wobegon stories, both of which tell small (and sometimes tall) tales in sometimes-unrelated episodes, but all of which happen in and around the same setting.

The Prompt

Write a flash fiction piece about a set of characters in which something small and everyday happens. Hint that something else might be about to happen, before the story ends.

Tips

Give the story a strong sense of place. It doesn’t have to be a home town, but make the location feel specific by giving people a set of preconceptions, ways they talk about themselves and outsiders, distinct local expressions (this can be particularly fun if you write sci fi or fantasy, or another kind of speculative fiction.)
Try to end the story as if you were writing a daily or weekly serial. What can you do to make readers want to tune in again tomorrow?
Pretend you’re going to start posting this serial on your blog, where the whole world wide web is competing for your readers’ attention. How entertaining can you make it, to keep your imaginary readers’ attention?

Go!

SWAGr – July Writing Goals & Accountability Check In

You’re back! Or you’re here for the first time. Either way, good for you!

Welcome to the Serious Writers Accountability Group, where we post our goals for the coming month and ‘fess up to how much we wrote last month.

Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the second Wednesday of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.

(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)

Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments on previous SWAGr posts.

And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!

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Examples of Goals

“I’m going to write every morning from 6-7 AM.”
“I’ll write 250 words a day, minimum.”
“I’ll write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.”
“I’ll write one full story and revise another.”
“I’ll write four stories and submit one story to a publication.”
“I’ll outline that presentation I’ve been putting off working on, and create half of the slides.”
“I’ll track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing.”
“I’ll keep a journal to track my resistance to getting the work done.”

 So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:

(Next check-in, Wednesday, Aug 13, 2014. Tell your friends. )

Short Story Reading Challenge

You know I love a challenge.

It’s going to be harder to write during the summer months, with boys underfoot and trips to here there and everywhere (bonjour, Bretagne!), so I’m going to spend my summer months feeding the creative monster.

I’ve been finding it hard to write recently, partly because my brain is begin pulled in fifteen different directions. I’m feeding it with information — about education, about fitness, about nutrition, about

[Write On Wednesday] The Big Day

Today’s prompt was inspired by my recent strong reaction against the short story Heat by Joyce Carol Oates.( I hated it.)

The story is set in a past that I presume is similar to the author’s own: a world where ice deliveries still happened and kids spent long summer days largely unsupervised in their dusty country town. Then one day, something happened that no-one in the town will ever forget.

The Prompt

Mine your childhood for an event that you’ll never forget. Create a story based around it.

Tips

The story does not have to be hugely dramatic. It doesn’t have to be a murder or a disappearance; just something that you remember (the day they installed the new swings at the playground; the time you got lost for five minutes at the fair; the annual strawberry festival).
Think of a character this would matter to. It can be someone radically different from the you-of-your-memory.
Paint a picture of the place, the people, the importance of the event to them.
Pay attention to the imagery you choose to use. Make it fit with the time/place.
Make your characters three-dimensional but don’t be afraid to let someone be a bit of a hero.

Go!

[Reading Room] Heat by Joyce Carol Oates

I hated this story.

Not that there was anything really wrong with it.

It painted vivid pictures of the setting that are seared into my brain.

It created realistic portraits of the twin girls around whom the story turns — fun, selfish, nice-nasty, typical preteen girls — and of the protagonist who is both a girl with the twins and an older woman looking back on things.

It wove the story really well through non-linear story-telling. It has suspense, and emotion and is terribly well written.

But.

It’s part of that school of literary stories from the second half of the twentieth century that are unrelentingly grim. Everyone’s a pervert or being hurt by someone or cheating on their spouse or living a life without hope. People are murdered, raped, declared bankrupt, abused, tortured, depressed… It’s fine, I suppose, and good that people can write about these things. I don’t want people to pretend these things don’t happen or isolate victims by not allowing them to share their experiences. But there seems to have been a sense that you couldn’t be a literary (for ‘literary’ read: good) writer unless your world was devoid of hope, humor or heroes.

And I hate that. It’s why I fly to cozy mysteries and space opera and anything where I can find a hero and a bit of relief. [updated: And I totally respect that you might find this kind of writing challenging, rewarding, comforting, or sublimely moving, and may hate my kind of humor-laced frippery-faves. I think I mostly get annoyed by the seeming ubiquity of grimness in "literary" fiction.]

So, I’m glad I read this story because I will come back to it to see just how Ms Oates created that indelible sense of place; and how she made her characters so realistic; and how she wove that story so well. But I’ll never like it. And I never want to write this kind of thing.

What about you? Do you rage against a particular style of writing? Harlequin Romances? Happy endings? What gets you so angry that you feel moved to write something just to prove that stories can be better than that? Let me know in the comments:

SWAGr – Monthly Writing Goals & Check In

Welcome to the first meeting of our monthly Serious Writers Accountability Group (Acronym: SWAGr, because every insecure writer needs a little swagger, don’t you think?)

Writing is a lonely business and, as StoryADay May proves year after year, there’s nothing quite like peer pressure for helping you meet your goals.

Every month I encourage you to come here, leave a comment and tell us what your goals are for this month. Then, next month, check in, tell us how you did and what you’re going to do in the following four weeks. (It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)

Examples of Goals

“I’m going to write every morning from 6-7 AM.”
“I’ll write 250 words a day, minimum.”
“I’ll write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.”
“I’ll write one full story and revise another.”
“I’ll write four stories and submit one story to a publication.”
“I’ll outline that presentation I’ve been putting off working on, and create half of the slides.”
“I’ll track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing.”
“I’ll keep a journal to track my resistance to getting the work done.”

 So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:

(Next check-in, Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Tell your friends. )

[Write On Wednesday] Examine An Object

Today’s prompt is inspired by three things. The first was the release this week of a US prisoner of war. It made me think of the many hostage and prison stories I’ve read, where people have lived in tiny cells for years on end and how it changes them. The second is the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in which a woman, trapped in her domestic life, fixates on the wallpaper of her room and always finds something new to see. The third is the essay “Fish” by Robin Sloan, which shares an observation exercise, in which students are asked to observe a dead fish long past the point when it would seem to be interesting.

If you can, read both those stories and then try this prompt.

Seeing My World Through A Keyholeby Kate Ter Haar

The Prompt

Write about a person who is forced, by circumstance or outside agency, to observe a limited view for an unlimited time.

Tips

Describe what they see, remembering that their use of language will reflect how they feel about the situation they find themselves in.
How what they see and how they feel about it change over time?
What do they think about when all they to do is look at the same thing over and over again?
How does this change over time?
What does this tell us about the character?
What universal truths might there be in what your character is thinking?
If you get stuck, just start a new paragraph as if some time has passed. Have your character describe the view again, and think about how they might have changed in the intervening time.
Don’t worry if you don’t think this is making a great story. Keep going. You’ll find a way to end it if you let the character speak.

Go!

 

Nominate Stories for StoryFest 2014

What Is StoryFest?

StoryFest is a celebration of StoryADay May and all our hard work.

Nominate your own story (or someone else’s) and it’ll be featured on the front page of StoryADay.org during my birthday weekend: June 14-15, 2014. (Here’s how it looked in 2010)

StoryFest is a chance for us to promote each other’s stories to the wider world by linking to them from Twitter, Facebook, blogs and anywhere else we can post. It takes place over one weekend only, in order to create some urgency, for people to come by and visit now, and not put it off.

How Can I Nominate My Own Story?

Use this form.

Stories aren’t judged by anyone, just featured, so edit up your best story and submit it for some free link-love.

What If I Want To Nominate Someone Else’s StoryADay May 2014 Story?

That’s great! If you read and loved a story by a fellow participant during this year’s challenge, find the link and use the second part of the nominations form to highlight it.

(If it was a story that was published behind a password wall — i.e. not public — you can still give the writer a shout-out, without providing a link to their story.)

How Can I Help Promote StoryFest?

Starting on Friday evening, June 13, start spreading the word about StoryFest to your story-loving friends.
You can use these graphics to promote it, or simply use links. (StoryFest will take over the front page of StoryADay May during this weekend and will later move to [permalink: http://storyaday.org/storyfest-2014]. )
Use the hashtag #storyfest to help us find your social media mentions.
Keep spreading the word all weekend.
Take the opportunity to blog about what you learned during StoryADay and encourage other writers to get creative, like you! Use #storyfest and, if I see your link, I’ll retweet/link to it.

Social Media Starters

Whether you’re posting in a blog, on Twitter, on Facebook or any of those other sharing sites out there, feel free to take any of these starter suggestions or make up your own. Customize them to link to your stories, other people’s stories or just the front of the storyaday.org site. Go wild!

#StoryFest: a celebration of the short story. This weekend, [DATES]. No admission fee: http://storyaday.org

[customize this next one for the genre and link to a specific story]

Need a little romance/mystery/time-travel/humor/suspense/sci-fi in your life? Try a short story today: [URL] #StoryFest

Short Stories: bit-sized brain food. Fine one that’s to your taste during #StoryFest: http://storyaday.org

Broaden your horizons with a day trip into someone-else’s world. Read a short story during #StoryFest: http://storyaday.org

Travel the world for free: Read a short story set in [insert location]: [link to specific story] #StoryFest

Ever wanted to time travel? Read a short story [link to a story set not in present day] #StoryFest

Don’t forget to nominate your story by Thursday, June 11, 2014