O'Abby's July Writing Prompt

 Hello!

It's a new month so I have a new writing challenge for you.

I recently read a short story written from a second person point of view (where the narrator describes the reader's actions, thoughts, and background using "you") and it made me feel a little uncomfortable as a reader.  It's pretty unusual to be put into the story in that way!

So this month's challenge is to write a short story or flash fiction piece in the second person. 

Post in the comments or email it to operationawesome6@gmail.com.

I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with.  Happy writing!

X O'Abby

O'Abby's writing prompt

As promised last month, I thought we'd kick May off with another writing prompt.

I'd love to see what you do with it, so feel free to share what you write in the comments, or email your story or poem to O'Abby at operationawesome6@gmail.com.

I've been reading an older book that is told entirely through letters written by a soldier during WWI and his fiancé and family back home. The perils of war meant the letters often took weeks or months to get to the reader and therefore, the responses are sometimes disjointed and non-linear.  Reading this made me think about how much we rely on modern communication methods and how instantaneous replies can be.

Prompt:

Write a poem or story using text messages where one person is in an area with limited coverage and keeps losing signal. 

Happy writing!

O'Abby's ways to push your story forward

 There were no questions for O’Abby this week.  I guess everyone is busy doing #NaNo!  Like I am…

We’re well into week two now, and if you’re working at the pace to finish your 50K by 30 November you should be hitting the 20K mark around now.  But don’t worry if you’re not there yet.  There’s still time to catch up.  Personally, I don’t get a lot of writing time during the week, so I tend to blitz my word count during the weekends.  I have also been taking one day off work per week to write, and that’s definite motivation to crank out those words.

Just do whatever works for you and make the most of whatever time you can scratch together.

Around about this time is where I often feel like my story is stagnating so I thought I’d give you a few ideas for ways to shake things up a little in your story.  Ideas for how to push your characters into doing something new that might move things along in a significant way.

•  Someone from the past shows up unexpectedly
• A character close to your protagonist dies
• A potentially life-altering secret is revealed
• Your protagonist loses something valuable
• Some kind of natural disaster occurs
• Someone has an accident
• Someone moves to a new city/country/house
• A monster – human or otherwise – enters your protagonist’s world
• A random act of kindness
• A crime is committed

These are just some ideas that might help push your characters.  They don’t need to happen to your protagonist directly – sometimes something dramatic happening to one of your secondary characters will motivate your MC more than if it happened to them directly.

The point is to shake things up to propel your MC into some kind of action.  And whatever obstacle you put in their way, whatever challenge, make sure it isn’t easy to overcome.  Your characters need to struggle.  They need to make the wrong decisions more often than the right ones.  Every choice they make needs to make things more difficult for them, throw up more challenges for them to face.

Hopefully this will be helpful if you reach a point where you feel flummoxed and can’t move on.  If there are no questions for O’Abby next week, I’ll share some more tips for getting past potential roadblocks to finishing.

Prompt Me to Write

My favorite writing prompts are from dreams. I have "home brewed" story ideas if I write them down fast enough in the morning and can read my chicken scratch when I sit down to write for the day. These are original prompts, thanks to my subconscious. I collect my dreams in a journal.

I also keep a document of interesting articles, characters, and one liners that might inspire a story later. Then I can take two or three and combine them to create a prompt in the moment.

But sometimes, I sit down to write and want a mini break from my current project. A writing prompt would be an excellent choice rather than staring at the blinking cursor and letting my fountain pen drip ink on the page for two hours.

So writing prompts may stir the writing juices and start flowing words.

For a dose of inspiration, check out our #QueryFriday, our #AtoZChallenge, and Dear O'Abby.

Here are some writing prompt generators here, here, and here.

What are your favorite prompts? Happy Writing!