Where Writing and Success Come Together
Theme: Animals
Prompt 1
Imagine a moment in time where everything changes and share that.
Prompt 2
Use this sentence in your story:
It is a sound unlike any I’ve ever heard.
AND NEW THIS YEAR!
Prompt 3 – VIDEO Prompt
Take inspiration from the video below and craft a story inspired by it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yADst939VCA
For many of you, you’ve got a fun new adventure!
We are going to be tracking our progress this year – together – this is going to be best suited for those who are participating for the polish and editing portion of our challenge.
Everyday you’ll finish your story or wordcount and add it to the reporting sheet. At the end of the week, we’ll leave an announcement about our progress in the discord.
This will also be a challenge for the event coordinator, Catrina Taylor aka TheLadyWrites. She has committed to stream for 12 hours if we can report in 90 completed short stories.
We have four themes for the next 31 days of short story writing! Each week you’ll look at the daily prompts and fit them into the given theme.
Today I’m sharing our Themes for the month!
Weave any animal into your stories for each of the prompts during the week. There will be 7 story prompts and we’ll be excited to see your stories!
No we don’t mean aliens, well… it could be aliens, but really it’s not just aliens.
Yes, we do actually mean war. Write about its affect on people, or a moment in a given war, or whatever comes to mind that inspires you but keeps a thread woven around war. Maybe you can spend the whole week dedicated to a series of stories in a given situation.
But is it really? Guess our stories will share it. Find a good tale to tell with the prompts that fits into a Utopia.
Do you have to use the Theme? Nope. It’s up to you. It will make the process of selecting stories for a collection easier when we’re getting through the polish and publishing process. You don’t need to use it though.
Do you have to use the prompts? Nope. This isn’t needed either. The goal is to end up with more stories than you started the month with. This is a way to inspire those.
Any other questions? Let us know!
Timezones are hard!
To keep things even, we’ve always shared Stories on Fire at Midnight UTC for posts, updates, and information. This gives everyone equal opportunity to read the posts and get started on their short story right away. Bearing that in mind, TheLadyWrites will be live on the first of January at midnight UTC to launch Stories on Fire!
We encourage everyone who wants to take part to be there.
We’re going to begin writing the first story together. We’re also going to be discussing the year ahead and getting things organized together! It’ll be great to see you!
In September 2023 we began using Themes as part of our weekly updates. This gives us a specific tread to pull through each of our stories for a given week. The themes change each week so we’ll have to pay attention to that.
With the first of January coming on a Monday this year, we’ll be changing our themes on that first day of the work week every week.
Daily we’ll have new prompts that will be fit into the theme.
For example:
The first Theme is animals.
IF the first prompt was ‘Imagine swimming in the pond.’ Your short story should include animals in that experience/story in some manner.
With that in mind, when it’s time to pick stories that we are going to be editing for our collections or our full individual releases, having a theme will make that easier.
I can’t wait to see all of you on Launch Day!
Stories on Fire will be tracking progress this year!
To get started, sign up through this form. From there, you’ll get a link to the tracking form. That form will enable you to update your word count and your story count daily.
We’ll use this to track those who are continuing through the editing process with us this year. By signing up here, we will be able to pair everyone up and ensure everyone gets the support they need so we can all reach the goal of writing, polishing, and publishing!
Change is coming in 2024 to the short story a day challenge known as Stories on Fire. We are going to be creating and setting our stories free on the world!
We’re going to set a schedule for writing, revising, polishing, and releasing the short stories we create. This has been a request from a few members of the Creative Writing Community driving Stories on Fire.
Currently we are looking at Jan. 2024 for the writing portion of stories on fire. We’re aiming for completed stories that will be dedicated to the goal of publishing.
We’re still going to have prompts and information every day on the Stories on Fire event platform. It’s been an incredible experience writing completed stories daily.
Action Plan:
Once we’ve got our momentum, we’re going to keep that going by spending February dedicated to reading and selecting our top 5 short stories.
Action Plan:
Moving in to March we’re going to be working on cleaning up those stories. First things first, you’ll pick which story you think is the best of the selected stories. Read the story, make revisions as you need to or expand if you’d like.
Keep in mind you’ll want 3000 words to sell the story on its own as an ebook. 10,000 words helps you develop your book into print as well.
Action Plan:
April is going is Camp Nano, so we are going to give our short stories a bit of a break for those who are doing Camp. This will help avoid burnout.
IF you are not doing Camp in April, get in touch with the discord and we can get started on pairing up for the Beta Reading cycle that everyone will be doing in May.
May we’ll be doing the peer edits/reviews. That means we’ll be pairing our work with another author who will provide peer updates based on a 10 question questionnaire. You’ll be given the questionnaire based on the given stories once the reader is done. Getting back to revisions will be great for everyone.
Action Plan:
June is going to be a great month to really do a final pass on the stories we’ve got and finish up any additional revisions. If by the time we reach the finish line for May you’re ready to go, this is a good time to find a solid editor to handle your work on your behalf. We’ll offer a list of established editors we know can really help a person polish their work when that time comes.
The other thing we need to do in June is make sure our One Sheets are completed with our Publishing Date scheduled. Give yourself at least 1 month before your first release. Decide if you’re releasing a collection of stories or each story by itself. June is your planning, July is our marketing and teamwork planning.
July is marketing and August should be the first release (or collection release). This month is when we are focused on telling the world the book, story, project is coming. We’re going to develop launch plans, work together and use the OneSheets for each story so we can create a network of supporters.
We are also going to be providing specific projects to work on together, and meeting together in Discord to keep on the right track.
Action Plan:
Starting in February we are going to be meeting twice a month to review goals, stories, and create an accountability process together. It’s going to be a fantastic journey to publishing together!
This challenge is more than just a writing exercise in 2024. It’s a comprehensive program designed to go from concept to publication. You’ll gain invaluable insights into the publishing industry, develop a disciplined writing habit, and most importantly, see your work come to life in print.
Watch the site for more updates!