Capturing the Essence of a Short Story

Coming up with new ideas to write about shouldn't be a problem, but in the real world can cause a writer fits. I'm working on stories for a pet anthology and while I'm an animal lover, condensing details into one short story can be a challenge. All kinds of animals have touched my life, but how do I capture their story? For today's prompt we'll learn to capture the essence of a story.

Pumping Your Muse Prompt:

Answer these questions to form a skeleton for your story.

1. In a few words, name the one event on which you’ll base your short story.
   

2. Determine the ending of the story. Once you know where you're headed the story is easier to write.
   

3. Work back from the end. What helped you determine this end? What was the Ah-ha moment?
   

4. What dark moment made the event stand out? This can be adventure, decision, death, or something of that nature.
   

5. What essential information do you need to convey to the reader about your everyday life before the dark moment occurred?

Number 5 is your story’s beginning, numbers 4 and 3 will comprise the middle, and number 2 is the end.

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If you enjoy prompts, check out Pumping Your Muse. The prompts included in this creative writing book challenge the imagination to take new direction and if followed to the conclusion of the book, provide a detailed outline along with completed scenes and developed characters for one novel, as well as a solid start for a second novel.

Buried Alive with a Twist

We've all read or seen those horror scenes when someone is buried alive. Think of the terror, the helplessness...and then the hero. We certainly can't leave our character in that situation, though we can use all that conflict and suspense to build the story.

Today's Pumping Your Muse Prompt:

First, make a list of emotions and physical symptoms brought about by being buried alive.

For today's prompt I want you to take those same feelings and symptoms evoked by the thought of being buried alive and carry them into an urban scene, to a character who is buried in circumstances that are overwhelming. They're so stressed they can hardly breathe. Here are a few ideas to get your scene up and running:

*buried in work
*buried in bills
*buried in responsibilities of motherhood, wife and caregiver to elderly parents
*buried in depression
*and if you want to actually bury someone for real: buried in rubble from a natural disaster

Once you've found your idea, think of a way out. Create a hero.

Now write the first draft of your short story!

Photo Prompt - Graveyard

I chose this photo as a prompt because it holds possibilities for just about every kind of writer. Notice some of the details.

Pumping Your Muse Writing Prompt:

Who is in that building in the background and how does what happens in the graveyard affect them?

Does the full moon affect what happens in the story?

If you're standing in the graveyard, what do you hear? Smell? Feel? Be sure to include these details in your writing to bring it to life and make it real to the reader.

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If you enjoy prompts, check out Pumping Your Muse. The prompts included in this creative writing book challenge the imagination to take new direction and if followed to the conclusion of the book, provide a detailed outline along with completed scenes and developed characters for one novel, as well as a solid start for a second novel.

It's a High Pop Up

The creative process is fun. Your muse plays with "what ifs" and allows you to live the same moment in time with different results. Eventually, you determine the scenario that works for your story. Today's prompt is going to replay that moment in time so you can discover those different results. As an avid Cub fan, needless to say I'm disappointed that they are out of the running again this year, but I could write a great fantasy about how they won after 100 years!

Today's Pumping Your Muse Writer Prompt:

To tie in with the time of year, let's set today's prompt in the playoffs. It's your's choice which teams are pitted against each other. You can even choose to make it the little league playoffs. It is your story after all. The focal point of the scene is this: The announcer's voice says, "It's a high pop up..." What happens next is up to you times three. Write the same short scene three times with a different result based on that high pop up.

Photo Writing Prompt - Forced Entry

With my mystery writer readers, crime writers and the like, today's prompt is a change up from what I usually post. Write 500-1000 words based on this photo.

Today's Pumping Your Muse Prompt is titled forced entry. If you're not in the mood to write a crime thriller, switch it up. How could you make this a funny story? For example, could this be the result of a woman with a full bladder who is locked out of her house?

The story is up to you. Have fun and let me know what direction your story took.

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If you enjoy prompts, check out Pumping Your Muse. The prompts included in this creative writing book challenge the imagination to take new direction and if followed to the conclusion of the book, provide a detailed outline along with completed scenes and developed characters for one novel, as well as a solid start for a second novel.

Foreshadowing with Change of Seasons

Foreshadowing is a tool writers use to drop subtle hints of things to come. Today's prompt will use the theme of seasons to create an element of foreshadowing. Writing exercises such as this can be used to learn how to raise a question in the readers mind or can even misdirect them in order to deliver a surprise later in the story.

Today's Pumping Your Muse Prompt

Develop a scene in which the change of season delivers information that coincides with the character's life. For example, as fall transforms trees in brilliant colors your character who is about to turn 65 contemplates the harsh winter predicted by forecasters. Or a pregnant teen watches the snow melt as new buds spring to life outside her window. These are just examples. Choose your season and start writing.

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If you enjoy prompts, check out Pumping Your Muse. The prompts included in this creative writing book challenge the imagination to take new direction and if followed to the conclusion of the book, provide a detailed outline along with completed scenes and developed characters for one novel, as well as a solid start for a second novel.

The 2009 Great Depression

Plucking details from history lend our writing details readers can relate to. In the light of today's economic difficulties today we'll look at the Great Depression. However we'll look to it for details of daily life and pull it into a contemporary fictional scenario. Society today is different and yet similar tho the late 1920's. It's those similarities and differences you'll incorporate into your story.

Today's Pumping Your Muse Prompt:

Write a short story that takes place in 2009. It's up to you to determine where your world is economically and how your characters react, survive and interact. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

*Rationing (this includes everything from shoes to appliances and food).
*Multi-generational families living under one roof
*Innovative food supplies--more people turned to family gardens--what do your characters do?
*Once successful entrepreneurs looking for work

The possibilities are endless, and life in the city will be different from than in more rural areas. Either way, life will be changed. A society promoting instant gratification will now plummet into living with restrictions that require harder work for less.

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If you enjoy prompts, check out Pumping Your Muse. The prompts included in this creative writing book challenge the imagination to take new direction and if followed to the conclusion of the book, provide a detailed outline along with completed scenes and developed characters for one novel, as well as a solid start for a second novel.

Discover Your Fictional World Through Drifting

One way I discover new elements to add to the world-building process when writing fiction is what I call drifting. Drifting lets you hopscotch above and through an area picking up details and fresh ideas as you go. This is accomplished by following a benign item not necessarily related to your story. For example, a leaf falling from a tree whirls in the wind higher into the bright fall sky only to drift slowly toward the frost covered grass in the park where a sole individual sits on a park bench...

The leaf is used to introduce the world.

  

Today's Pumping Your Muse Writing Prompt:

Introduce your world as you discover it by drifting. Follow one of these or an item of your own:

*Feather
*Leaf
*Butterfly
*Snowflake
*Ash
*Bug

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About Dragonborn by Donna Sundblad

Dragonborn conjures up a winning fantasy with dragons, humans, time travel, and magic. Follow the journey of the young prisonguard, Ervig Greenfields, as he seeks out dragons to remove a curse. The dragons offer him access to the Labyrinth of Times, which will purge the dark magic. But there’s a catch. Erving must take the Dragon Oath that requires allegiance--to fight alongside dragons for centuries, never to return to his own time. He and a handful of others take the selfless oath and become Dragonborn. The Dragonborn and their dragons become seeds of change, in this epic tale, of sacrifice for the greater good. Ride along with them as they slip through a tear in time to the past to change the future. 

Dragonborn is available on Kindle, paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo (Christian fiction), Smashwords Apple and Google Books. When you read it, be sure to leave a review! Thanks for your support.

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Some links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to amazon.com and affiliate sites. Thanks so much for being part of our success.

 

Pumping Your Muse Photo Prompt

It's been awhile since we had a photo writing prompt and this one can be fun. Note the details and you'll find your story.

Pumping Your Muse Photo Prompt: My Fee Hurt (Of course that's where my mind went...where will your muse take you?)

Musical Prompt

As a child did you play musical chairs? If you haven't heard of it, it's a game that requires one less chair than those playing. While music plays, participants walk around the chairs all going the same direction. When the music stops (at random intervals) everyone scurries to capture a chair. Last one standing is out and a chair is removed and the game is played again until one chair remains and one participant has claimed it when the music stops.

For today's Pumping Your Muse prompt we'll turn to the radio for a musical prompt much like this game. Turn on the radio and select a station that plays music. Listen to the words of the first song you hear and jot down concepts. Turn it off. Return to the radio three times throughout the day. Turn on the radio from dead silence to see what's on.

Take the concepts from one of the three songs and incorporate them into a scene or short story.

Note: Today's photo provided by Paulo Correa http://www.flickr.com/photos/stereofunk/

Exhausted - A Story Starter

The following prompt is designed to get your imagination planted in fertile ground.

Prompt: Exhausted

[Enter Character Name] sat on the edge of the bed in the dark wearing nothing but underpants and one sock--half on or is it half off? "I'm so tired, I don't know if I'm getting up or going to bed." Then it hit...

Routine and Backstory

 Backstory plays an important role in a story. It helps to understand the character: why they do what they do, how they think and how their past colors their present. It often lets us know a secret that can make a difference in the story.

Pumping Your Muse writing prompt

Write a scene SHOWING your character involved in everyday routine. Within the scene reveal at least one habit, quirk, and a thought of the past that shows inner conflict. Tie their present actions with what they're doing.   

Example: Your character starts the morning coffee brewing (habit), and puts a mug of water in the microwave to heat because they only drink coffee poured into a warmed mug (quirk). They go into the bathroom to brush their teeth and look into the mirror stirring memories. She thinks she looks much like her mother who spit coffee into her face as a child when it wasn't warm enough. Now she is preparing to take her elderly mother in and become her caregiver (conflict). This is just a sketch and leaves room for a much larger story, but it gives you an idea of how to use this prompt.

Hope you enjoy this prompt. Have fun with the creative process and keep on writing! Let me know if you have questions. Write whether you feel like it or not and you'll be pleasantly surprised. A little every day makes a big difference.

Photo credit:  pixabay

The Was War

I've got a reputation for being anti "was". Now to be fair, was is a word and it must be used sometimes, but most times in creative writing it drags your prose into the dreaded land of the passive. This happens because in most instances using the word was lends to telling the story rather than showing the story. For example, if the character "was running" you're telling the reader about the character's action, but if you say "he ran" or "he sprinted" it creates an image in the readers mind. They are actively engaged.

Today's prompt: The Was War

Write 500 words without using the word was. This is best accomplished by writing your scene and then editing it. However, this prompt will also cause your brain to flag the use of this passive word even while you're writing and help train you to find a better word choice.

Learning From a Different POV

Point of view (POV) offers readers a glimpse into the world you've creative on paper. Based on this POV, they take in visual and other sensory information limited to that POV. For example, if you have three characters in a scene, and it is written from an outside POV--readers will not know the characters' thoughts or feelings. Instead they must make determinations based on what is said and in interpreting body language.

Today's Prompt:

Today we're going to have fun with POV. Take out an existing story (preferably one of your own) and write it from another POV.

Note: If you're ever stuck at a point in a story you're working on, this is a great way to get unstuck. You may never use the additional scene, but information gleaned from it can help you get on with writing.

Foreshadowing and the Red Herring

Little details threaded into your story can add an element of foreshadowing and raises questions in the readers mind. Foreshadowing offers the reader hints of things to come. For example, if you're writing a story about Sophia's wedding day, and the TV is on in the background as she gets ready for the rehearsal dinner and the weatherman announces chance for "scattered thundershowers tomorrow" this foreshadows a less than ideal wedding day.

Hints provided by foreshadowing raise interest as the reader wants to see how things turn out as the plot develops. Foreshadowing can be broad and easily understood, like the example above, or more complex with a number of things that must be connected to make the plot work. In longer works like novels, it's fun to mix things up with some deliberately false hints which are known as red herrings. This keeps things less predictable as your readers' minds follow your hints in the wrong direction. Mysteries are famous for this, but it doesn't always have to be a mystery.

Today's Prompt:

Write a story that includes red herring foreshadowing. Here are a few ideas:

*Following a treasure map--does X really mark the spot?
*Mr. Right--or is he Mr. Wrong?
*Who dun it?

Story Starter - First Sentence

It's been awhile since we had a first sentence story starter. Today's sentence is not quite complete because I've left off what the character is wearing. Many times that's part of the story. If I said, "the waistband of her orange jumpsuit" that would set things up for her to be in police custody. How you dress her will offer a springboard into the rest of the story. Have fun:

Story Starter - First Sentence

Sweat trickled down her spine and soaked into the waistband of her...

Speculative Historical Fiction

Speculative historical fiction is a great venue in which writers can ask: "What if?"

Choose a time in history or a historical figure and write a scene asking what if things were different. It can be a lesser known person or a well-known and popular person. The fun is creating a new set of circumstances set in motion by changing one or many things.

A great example of this is found in the popular movie The Mummy. The High Priest Imhotep was a real person. Look at the fun the writers had with that one.

No Excuses Writing

One of the biggest complaints I hear from want-to-be writers is that they don't have time to write. Today's prompt is designed to help you bury that excuse and lay it to rest. There's only one way to find time to write if you live a busy life, and that is to make room in your schedule.

The truth is that most people want big blocks of time to be able to write undisturbed...well for most of us, that's just not realistic. Instead, set a goal to write 20 minutes a day 4 days this coming week. And let me know how it goes!

Expanding Your World Vision in Fiction

Today is the day I meet with my young writer's Pumping Your Muse class and I've decided to give them a different kind of exercise today. I figured if they can do it, you can do it.

Read your existing scene. Now close your eyes. You can sit, lie down, whatever, but I want you to do this for 5 minutes. From where your character stands, look north, east, south and west. What do they see? What do they smell? And what do they hear?

When you are done, jot down new information and then take time to sketch a world map. This doesn't have to be anything fancy. The only one who needs to be able to interpret it is you! As your character moves about, you'll know where they are headed, and if they reach the border of your map, extend your vision.

Creating a map will help you see where your character is going and keep details consistent.

Sailing the Sea of Imagination

I'm currently working on a manuscript for Pumping Your Muse for kids. I love to encourage kids to be writers. Don't know what the title will be, but I'm working through the exercises with two children and having a blast. They started out thinking it's too much work, and walked away yesterday excited and with their first scene written.

My purpose for this blog is to help pump your muse, too, so that you too walk away with a new scene, character, skill or idea. If that happens, drop me a line at dsundblad (at) theinkslinger.net. You can also contact me with questions.

Today's Prompt:

For today, we'll use this photo prompt. Look at the photo and if you don't know where to begin answer these questions:

Where are they going?
Why?
What led up to them setting sail.
What do they smell?
What do they hear?
What do the feel?
What do they see?

Have fun as you sail on the sea of imagination!