June's Let's Write Together
PROMPT POST!
If you didn’t make it to our final Writing Prompt Party, no need to fret, your prompt is here!
First, Let’s Talk About How You Use Prompts
As we roll out the final prompt for the community all together, I am wondering if this will be your final fun with prompts for awhile. Do you have your own stash of writing prompts that you dig into from time to time, or do you wait for prompt challenges like this one so that you have a “reason” to engage with the prompt. In short, my question is
How do you use writing prompts on your own?
Now, On To Our Month-Long Fictionistas Prompt Celebration!
If you missed the post with all the information and instructions you can read via the link below. Don’t worry you can still participate. Grab your laptop or pen and paper and join the fun!
The doc below describes the original model of this celebration, remember this month WE won’t be deciding which substacks will be getting a spotlight shone on them, YOU will! Next week we will come back with a more detailed explanation, but, in short, when the thread post comes out next week, we will be asking participants to read, react, and RESTACK each other’s stories with a special focus on sentences, or passages, they quote in their Notes.
And Finally… The Prompt
I decided to go to a classic for our final writing prompt. I chose the XYZ game from The Storymatic Classic game.
The XYZ Game asks us to think of the sentence “X is in conflict with Y about Z.” We pick two gold cards to represent X and Y, then we select a copper card to be our Z. Here are the cards I selected:
Here is the prompt we get from the cards:
A prisoner of war is in conflict with a trespasser about woods.
If you want to stick to the rules of The Storymatic game, they are as follows:
Your main character must change from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. It doesn’t have to be a big change.
Keep your character alive.
What now?
Now that the party is over, it’s time to polish your piece to get it ready for next week’s discussion thread. Get your polished story (no longer than 1000 words) on your Substack page, or on a a view-only Google doc, and put the link in the comments of the thread post we will share next Thursday.
Once you share your stories, the community will start reading, reacting, and restacking your fiction!
Let’s write together this month, Fictionistas!
Share the Fiction Love!
Do you know a writer who is looking for this kind of inspiration and community support? Don’t forget to share this post so we can read their stories too!
I’m Jackie, a fiction author, freelance writer, and historian. I enjoy rooting for the underdog and stirring up trouble. Unsurprisingly, my alignment is Chaotic Good. My Substacks are Unseen St. Louis and Story Cauldron.
I’m Nicole creator of all things Stop Writing Alone including a podcast, a YouTube channel, and a Substack community hosting multiple monthly Live Zoom Events for writers seeking community. If you are ready to truly stop writing alone, join here.
I'm sorry I missed the final party. I logged on to the zoom and discovered I was 12 hours too late (based in Sydney, it's hard to line up the timelines correctly!) so unfortunately, I missed out on the fun of the prompt parties and will never get the chance to join! and I love the monthly prompts so much, I'm so bummed! Thank you to Jackie and Nicole for facilitating this community. I will miss it forever.
That's an interesting prompt! And 1k words. What a challenge!