October's Let's Write Together

PROMPT POST!

We had our October Writing Prompt Party earlier this evening, so now it’s time to reveal the prompt to the rest of the Fictionistas community!

First, Let’s Talk About Strange Writing Inspirations

This month’s writing prompt does not come from a traditional writing prompt tool, it’s a bit of a twist. This got us curious about strange “out of the box” places you find your own writing inspiration, so here’s our question of the week:

What’s the oddest, or most unique, thing that inspired a story for you?

Share your quirky inspirations in the comments section!

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.

The Great Substack Prompt Celebration

And Finally… The Prompt

This month Nicole took a card game and converted it into a writing prompt. It’s not too far of a stretch, because the game “Murder We Wrote” is called “A True Crime Podcast Party Game!” and what is a true crime podcast without a story? The game includes two types of cards:

1. People Cards: these cards name a person who can either be a victim or a suspect in your story, and

2. Death Cards: these cards give a cause of death for your story.

We selected one card of each and, for those of you that have been doing these parties with us for a while, I promise you the selections were random!

Here are the cards for this month’s writing prompt:

“Murder We Wrote” cards. The “Victim/Suspect” card says “A Lady With Too Many Cats.” The “Cause of Death” card says “Conspiracy Theories”

Your prompt:

Your Victim or Suspect is “A Lady With Too Many Cats”

Your Cause of Death is “Conspiracy Theories”

Note: For anyone curious why I felt the need to emphasize the random selection of these cards, there has been a strange theme of cats and cat ladies present in the Fictionistas Prompt Parties almost from the beginning of this project. I could not believe this was the card selected! The group present at the live Zoom call was given the opportunity to veto this card and select another, but we couldn’t help ourselves and simply laughed our way forward into fiction! Have fun Fictionistas!

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.