Tag: Monday Sparks Writing Prompts

Creative Thanksgiving Writing Prompts for Short Stories

How to write a short story

With the holiday upon us, I’ve made a list of six creative Thanksgiving writing prompts for short stories. The one thing I kept in mind while creating the list is that the idea has to be something a writer can explore in 1,000 to 10,000 words.

  • Thanksgiving road trip: This idea works for both drama and comedy, novel or short story. The key for a short story is to limit the scenes. For example, a comic novel about all the trouble a family gets into while driving a long distance for Thanksgiving dinner could cover a few days and a lot of humorous mishaps and catastrophes. For a short story, you should make the drive shorter and choose fewer comic conflicts but those conflicts can still be as outrageous or ridiculous as you want them to be.
  • Passing the torch: This short story can be a humorous or poignant or both as the younger generation takes over Thanksgiving preparations.
  • Family conflict: Again, this can work for both comedy or drama. For a short story, choose only one conflict. You don’t have room for subplots.
  • Kitchen disasters: The dinner that, somehow, goes horribly wrong.
  • The unexpected guest: The guest who was not invited or one that comes out of nowhere poses a lot of potential for a short story. You might even turn it into a Thanksgiving thriller (That sounds weird, but I may have just invented a new subgenre of crime fiction.)
  • Thanksgiving from a kid’s POV: Take a trip down memory lane to find inspiration in how you viewed Thanksgiving as a kid. My family had to eat two Thanksgiving dinners in one day. For lunch, we’d go to my mom’s parents. For supper, we’d go to my dad’s. Passing out from overeating was a real possibility.

Here are more ideas for using November in your stories.

What creative Thanksgiving writing prompts for short stories do you suggest?

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Let This Photo Inspire a Short Story

Ideas for writing short stories

Last week my writing prompt discussed how you can outline a short story from one picture. I don’t outline a lot when I write a novel, but I think outlining is more helpful with a short story because it is short. An outline keeps us writers on track, helping to prevent us from going off on tangents that just won’t fit in a short story. So I have an outline for how I let this photo inspire a short story.

Beginning: Grandpa is grumping along the lake at a local state park because his wife is helping their daughter with her newborn. He has no idea how to entertain kids. The only reason the group is at the marina is because grandson Liam wants to try his new fishing pole.

Middle: One mishap after another happens to Grandpa as he, Liam, and little sister Ava try one fishing spot after another. Ava accidentally drops the open tack box on Grandpa’s foot. Liam snags his line on an underwater branch and Grandpa has to wade in and get it. Ava wanders from the shore of the lake, and it takes Grandpa awhile to find her picking flowers. Then Liam hooks a catfish and Grandpa runs the barbels in his hand as he tried to unhook.

Ending: Grandpa has had it and tells Liam he can only have one more cast. Liam tries to argue, but Grandpa is adamant. Liam hooks a fish but slips and loses his rod. Tearing up, he lays in the mud on the bank. Grandpa flings himself into the water and grabs the pole just in time. When he comes back to the bank, muddy and soaked, Liam’s face is glowing with appreciation. Ava takes his hand and asks if he’s all right. When they get home, Liam and Ava talk over each other as they tell their mom how much fun Grandpa is. Grandpa listens, shocked and pleased, as he removes his drenched shoes.

Here are more prompts for writing short stories.

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Outline a Short Story from One Picture

Writing tips for short stories

Pictures often are worth a thousand words. It’s even better when they inspire a thousand words. Or ten thousand. I wanted to find a photo that would inspire you to write an outline for short story from this one picture. Since short stories are 1,000 to 10,000 words, you can write a complete story in one setting with one character.

One way to outline a story is sketch the beginning, middle, and end. Here’s what leaped into my head when I found this picture.

  • Beginning: 14-year-old Theresa is sitting in her family’s junkyard on a Saturday morning, hurt and mad at the wold. She’s trying to sketch but can’t forget how the girls in her class made fun of her clothes earlier in the week. Then she got a bad grade on an art assignment. She’s embarrassed her mom and grandpa make a living from the junkyard. She’s angry her family can’t afford real art supplies. She might do better in art class if she knew how to use quality products.
  • Middle: A regular customer shows up in a truck, pulling a trailer. She’s an artist. She buys junk and says she turns it into art, but Theresa doesn’t believe that’s possible. The artist tells Theres’a mother and grandfather that she’s on her way to an arts and craft festival and stopped by to show them her art because she’d never done that before. In her trailer, she’s transporting tall sculptures made from the junk she bought at the yard.
  • Ending: Theresa admires the work, remembering where her family acquired some of the pieces. The artist leaves. Theresa sets aside her sketch book and goes poking around the yard.

Now it’s your turn. What outline for a short story can you write from this picture?

Here are more writing prompts for short stories.

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Do You Like to Read Short Stories?

Writing short stories

Short stories have lost favor with readers over the decades. Now they seem to prefer novels or flash fiction, but nothing in between. Do you like to read short stories? I love them, both to read and to write, although lately, my novel writing has taken all of my time, and I’ve had to turn down opportunities to write short stories.

This month I’ll be focusing on short stories here at JPC Allen Writes with posts about writing and reading them. If you do like to read short stories, tell me why. If you don’t, why not?

Here are reviews of short story collections I like.

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Inspiration for Villains in my Rae Riley Mysteries

Writing ideas for villains

Where do I get the inspiration for villains in my Rae Riley Mysteries? Well, my ideas come from a lot of places, but mostly from … me.

Once I establish the basic personality of my villain, I have to see if it’s believable for this character to commit the crime I’ve planned for the mystery. And the way to determine that is to climb into their skin.

G. K. Chesterton puts it so well in the his short story “The Secret of Father Brown”. Father Brown is one of my favorite detectives, an amateur sleuth featured in a series of short stories published between 1910 and 1936. In “The Secret of Father Brown”, the priest has gained a reputation for solving crimes and a visitor wants to know why he’s so successful. Father Brown says:

“I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully … I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.”

I can’t say I like thinking like my villains. Because I know somewhere in the history, there’s been someone so miserably cold, calculating, or selfish, and that is so sad. Selfishness is what evil comes down to in the end. Someone wants what he wants at someone else’s expense. But there are different degrees that people allow themselves to go to in order to achieve their selfish desires. And I have to think and feel like each character to see if he or she is selfish enough to commit the crime.

I hope the exercise creates believable villains. Not mustache-twirling, cackling ones. But ones who, sadly, can exist in real life.

Who are believable villains from fiction?

Here are more ideas for writing mysteries.

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