Julie Duffy's Blog, page 3
May 25, 2025
Day 26 | Reimagine the Impossible by Tiffany Yates Martin
A person pulls up at a red light, looks to the car beside them, and sees themselves behind the wheel–just before the light turns and the other car takes off.
Tiffany Yates MartinTiffany Yates Martin is a career book editor, working with bestselling and award-winning authors, major publishers as well as indie authors. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial ( a Writer’s Digest’s Best Website for Writers) and author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career.
A regular contributor to writers’ outlets and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writers’ organizations around the globe, she is also the author of six novels (as Phoebe Fox).
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May 24, 2025
Day 25 | Selective Memory by John Wiswell
The one thing this house remembers
John WiswellJohn Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He won the 2021 Nebula Award for Short Fiction for his story, “Open House on Haunted Hill,” and the 2022 Locus Award for Best Novelette for “That Story Isn’t The Story.” He has also been a finalist for the Hugo Award, British Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. He is the author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In, a Year’s Best pick by NPR and The Washington Post, and Wearing the Lion, and he can be found making too many puns and discussing craft on his newsletter, johnwiswell.substack.com.
Now out: the paperback edition of SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN and you can pre-order his new release (coming in June 2025) now: WEARING THE LION
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May 23, 2025
Day 24 | Surrealist Fiction by Julia Elliott
In Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1929), Andre Breton called for “the profound, the veritable occultation of Surrealism.” Of the Surrealist painters and writers who dove whole hog into arcane imagery, my favorites include Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, andLeonor Fini.
Choose a single Surrealist painting and do some fun, casual research to
symbolism and “occult” elements. If you need help finding a painting, check out the list below.
After developing a personal interpretation of the work, write a short piece of
the character(s) and situation(s) in the painting.
If there are multiple choose one to narrate the story (in first-person or third-person limited point of omniscient perspective to jump around among the characters. Instead of attempting to make a logical narrative that rationalizes the surreal situation, revel in the painting’s odd elements and tell a strange tale inspired by the imagery.
Recommended Paintings
Leonora Carrington:
Self-Portrait, Inn of the Dawn Horse, 1937-38
Queen of the Mandrills, 1959
The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), 1947
The House Opposite, 1945
Darvault, 1950
Friday the Thirteenth, 1965
Bird Bath, 1974
Sissygy, 1957
Max Ernst:
Attirement of the Bride, 1940
Napoleon in the Wilderness, 1941
Men Shall Know Nothing of This, 1923
The Antipope, 1941-42
Europe After the Rain II, 1940-1942
Leonor Fini:
The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes, 1941
Chthonian Divinity Watching over the Sleep of a Young Man, 1946
The Botany Lesson, 1974
Two Women, 1939
Donna del Lago or Le Bout du monde II, 1953
Remedios Varo:
The Call, 1961
Witch Going to the Sabbath, 1957
Creation of the Birds, 1957
Celestial Pablum, 1958
Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst, 1960
Vegetarian Vampires, 1962
Julia Elliott’s Hellions was published in April 2025. She is also the author of the story collection The Wilds, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch (both from Tin House). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, Granta (online), and the New York Times. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter, and five hens. Her new story collection Hellions came out in April 2025.
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Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
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May 22, 2025
Day 23 | A Pointed Discoveryby Rachel Bolton
When she picked up the knife, she discovered the blade was still sharp.
Rachel BoltonRachel Bolton is a Bram Stoker Award Nominated writer. Her work has appeared in Apex Magazine, Women Write About Comics, Strange Girls, and more. She lives with her cat in Massachusetts. You can follow her on Bluesky @raebolt.bsky.social and find out more at her website:
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
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May 21, 2025
Day 22 | Cherry Red by Angela Sylvaine
A teenager is eating a cherry snow cone, their lips are stained red.
Angela SylvaineAngela Sylvaine is a Bram Stoker Award nominated author and self-proclaimed cheerful goth who writes speculative fiction and poetry. Her dark cheerfulness is on full display in her novel, Frost Bite, a ‘90s sci-fi horror comedy, and her retro ‘80s YA mall slasher novella, Chopping Spree. Her goth side is fully explored in her debut short story collection, The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls.
Angela’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in over sixty anthologies, magazines, and podcasts, including Southwest Review, Apex, and The NoSleep Podcast.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
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May 20, 2025
Day 21 | That Kind Of Morning…by Rich Larson
Over the course of a single morning, your house becomes a Starbucks.
Rich LarsonRich Larson was born in Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and is currently based in Canada. He is the author of the novels Annex and Ymir, as well as over 250 short stories – some of the best of which can be found in his collections Tomorrow Factory and The Sky Didn’t Load Today and Other Glitches. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, among them Polish, French, Romanian and Japanese, and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. His latest book, Changelog, is now available for preorder.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
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May 19, 2025
Day 20 | Permission to be Funny by Julie Duffy
Write a humorous story by giving your character permission to go after their desire, no matter what the cost
Comedy gives your character in the narrative the permission to win. Comedy gives them the permission to do what they need to do in a moment of crisis, even if it makes them look like a bad guy or an idiot.
–Steven Kaplan, The Hidden Tools of Comedy: The Serious Business of Being Funny (Michael Wiese Productions)
Give your character a desire, something they are willing to go all-out for.
What makes Marty McFly so funny in Back To The Future? It’s the fact that he’s willing to do anything to get home, no matter how difficult or ridiculous, from fighting the town bully to seducing his own mother — well, almost.
He’s willing to give it a try– to prat-falling over fences and doorways in his haste to get out of awkward situations. None of this is ‘funny stuff’ in a vacuum, it all grows out of the character’s single-minded desire to achieve his aim, no matter what the cost to his ego.
Put your character in a situation where they are going to have to do things they wouldn’t normally do, if they really want to achieve that desire .
(e. g. in The Life Of Brian, our hero is a nobody who wants to be somebody and get the girl, who happens to be a revolutionary. When her leader tells him to graffiti the town square and is caught by the school-master-like centurian, the consequence is funny because it goes so far, so big. Literally.)
Make sure your character doesn’t have any of the skills they would need if they were going to be a traditional hero character.
Marty, in BTTF, knows nothing about life in 1955.
Monty Python’s Brian is so timid, so far from being a revolutionary, that every situation he finds himself in is inherently funny.
If either of these characters possessed the skills they needed to win, their movies would have been dramas or action movies, instead of comedies!
Make your funny character believe in themselves.
They are not a character. They are a person, who is trying to achieve something.
Everything they say or do, they should believe in. It might turn out to be inappropriate for the situation, but for some reason, they believe it and they believe it is a useful thing to say or do right now.
Comedy can also result when a character does the thing that we, because we are so polite and a credit to our mothers, would never say or do. How would the people around your character react in that moment?
For more on writing humor, read my interview with Lisa Doan at NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers’ Program blog.
Julie DuffyJulie Duffy is a writer who likes to think she is funny. She is the host of StoryADay May . She sometimes juggles and knits, though rarely at the same time.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
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May 18, 2025
Day 19 | Slipping by Grant Faulkner
“Just one more drink couldn’t hurt anything …”
Grant FaulknerGrant Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, the co-host of the Write-minded podcast, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author.
He is the author of The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story.
Listen to his podcast Write-minded and subscribe to his newsletter Intimations: A Writer’s Discourse.
Home
https://grantfaulkner.substack.com
https://www.facebook.com/grantfaulkner
https://www.instagram.com/grantfaulkner
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
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May 17, 2025
Day 18 | Start With The End by Tim Waggoner
When I first started teaching fiction writing classes many years ago, I noticed that most student stories I received were ten to fifteen pages of exposition, filled with purposeless activity and empty conversations between characters, eventually leading up to a cool idea or image…and then they were over.
I struggled to explain to students that their fiction should be interesting from the start and become increasingly more interesting as the story progresses, but nothing I said to them sunk in – until I came up with a prompt I call Begin with “The End.”
I assigned students to write a first draft of a story, and after they were finished and the feedback sessions were over, I told them to write a second story, only this time take the ending scene of the first story and make it the beginning of a new story.
The prompt worked far better than I’d hoped.
The new stories were fresh and exciting, full of life and energy. And my students were shocked to discover just how little background from their first stories was needed in their new ones.
The prompt wasn’t only an exercise in beginning strong; it taught them a vital lesson about using minimal exposition in short fiction.
An ExampleOne new student story was especially good. In the first version, a father and teenage son visit Grandpa (the father’s dad) at his home in the country. Father is in a financial bind and wants to ask Grandpa for money, despite their strained relationship.
When Grandpa refuses Father’s request, Father and Son leave, and Father, angry, drives over Grandpa’s roadside mailbox, knocking it down as they go.
The first version was mostly a silent car ride to Grandpa’s house, during which
primarily delivered exposition about Father and Grandpa’s relationship. The teenager was a silent, passive observer throughout the story, and only the last page had any life to it.
The second version began with Father and Son running over Grandpa’s mailbox as they sped away. Furious and vindictive, Grandpa calls the police, and Father and Son argue about what happened as the cops pursue them.
The second story had more action, tension, and suspense, and the son became a much more active character, giving the story the strong emotional core the first version lacked.
All of this happened naturally, simply because the student started his second story with the end of the first.
Take a story you’ve already written, and write a new version beginning with the ending scene/situation of the first and see where it takes you.
Don’t have a story to work with? Choose an ending situation from a book or movie you know and use that as the beginning of your tale.
For extra fun, swap stories with a friend and write new versions of each other’s tale, using the original endings as jumping-off points.
Tim WaggonerTim Waggoner is a Four-Time Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/tim.waggoner.9
Twitter: @timwaggoner
YouTube Channel
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May 16, 2025
Day 17 | Villanelle by Walter Lawn
This one is just for fun. Write a story of exactly nineteen paragraphs. Sounds like too many? Not to worry; the first and third paragraphs will each be used four times, so you really only have to write thirteen paragraphs.
We’re taking a very strict poetic form – the villanelle – and turning it into a storytelling playground. Here are the rules:
Paragraph 1: anything you want.
Paragraph 2: anything you want.
Paragraph 3: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 1 in some way. Maybe they share a character, a setting, an object, or a tone of voice.
Paragraph 4: same rule as Paragraph 3.
Paragraph 5: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 2 in some way.
Paragraph 6: copy Paragraph 1, but change it in a specific manner, such as presenting the action from a different point of view. Each sentence in Paragraph 6 must match a sentence in Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 7: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 8: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 2.
Paragraph 9: copy Paragraph 3.
Paragraph 10: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 11: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 2.
Paragraph 12: copy Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 13: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 14: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 2.
Paragraph 15: copy Paragraph 3.
Paragraph 16: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 17: anything you want, but similar to Paragraph 2.
Paragraph 18: copy Paragraph 1.
Paragraph 19: copy Paragraph 3.
When Kathy walked into the workroom, Ted looked up from the copy machine and glared.
“Well! Look what the cat dragged in!”
The workroom was empty except for the two of them. The copier hummed softly. There was a faint smell of Sharpie in the air.
Kathy resented Ted’s presence in the workroom. There was a copier at his end of the floor; why wasn’t he using that?
“Yeah, well guess who’s going to be dog meat,” she rejoined.
When Kathy had walked into the workroom, Ted, knowing how she reacted to him, gave her his best glare.
From the moment they first met, Kathy had interpreted Ted’s fear of her as disdain. She still did. She put a possessive hand on the copy machine. “Have you got much more? I have a ton of stuff to get out.”
The two of them were like cats and dogs, or maybe worse.
Ted wished someone would join them in the otherwise empty workroom. The copier kept chugging its way through his job. He saw he had marked his white shirt cuff with Sharpie.
Kathy, too, wished someone would join them in the workroom, someone with authority, someone who could send Ted back to his end of the floor.
But no one came, so they just kept hissing and growling at each other.
Kathy had been in a good mood (she told herself) when she walked into the workroom, until that doofus Ted had given her the evil eye.
Ted, on the other hand, before Kathy walked into the workroom, had been glad to finally find a working copy machine, and hated her for interrupting.
“Bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
The workroom was empty except for the two of them. The copier was still doing its thing. Maybe he would write all over her face with a Sharpie.
“What did you say?” Kathy demanded. She returned Ted’s glare with interest. “Just what the hell did you say?”
“I said you’re a damn cat!”
As Kathy stalked out of the workroom, Ted’s glare followed her.
The workroom was left empty when Ted strode out. The copier hummed softly. There was a faint smell of Sharpie in the air.
Walter Lawn writes poetry and short fiction. His work has been published at The Bangalore Review, On the Run Press, Heartwood Literary Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and Lily Poetry Review. Walter is a disaster recovery planner, and lives outside of Philadelphia.
Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!
Remember: I don’t recommend posting your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.
Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
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