Short Story Ideas
Five Point Story Structure
While some writers enjoy the excitement of flying by the seat of their pants, others prefer to plan out their ideas in detail beforehand. Whatever your preference, it is always a good idea to have a basic structure to in mind in order to keep yourself focused on moving your story forward. The following 5 [...]
Writing Games
Spinergy Story Ideas
Need some fun, creative and original ways to generate short story ideas for yourself or with friends? Then check out Spinergy, a simple but hilarious creative writing game. The basic idea of the game is that you have three wheels which you spin to reveal three random words. You then have to choose a card, [...]
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Short Story Competition: Below The Line
Welcome to our very first short story competition! One of the main objectives of this site is to share short story ideas and resources, so this month we thought it would fun to introduce our very first competition. With over 20,000 people world wide taking part in this year’s Live Below The Line Challenge to [...]
Creative Writing Exercise: Young At Heart
Overview: Just as people’s attitudes many change as they become older, so too do fictional characters. Whether you are writing 100 word flash fiction or a 100 page novel, your character should change or develop throughout the course of the story. Today’s short exercise focuses on planning character development for a longer story. Step 1: [...]
Creative Writing Exercise: Villains
Overview: Sometimes, the most interesting and complex characters in fiction are not the heroes but the villains. Even more interesting, are the anti-heroes who often blur the lines between good and evil, and challenge both the reader’s and writer’s ideas of right and wrong. The object of today’s exercise is to explore the complex character [...]
Creative Writing Exercise: Unfamiliar Territory
Overview: One of the most common pieces of advice that writers are given is to write about what you know. While this is generally a good rule of thumb, sometimes we also need to step out of our comfort zone and venture into unfamiliar territory, particularly during those moments when we are stuck for inspiration. [...]
Creative Writing Exercise: Shopping List
Overview: Trying to get into the minds of our characters can be challenging at times, particularly when creating characters who are not like ourselves. As writers, we often have to try to put ourselves in our characters’ shoes and see the world as they would. One way of doing this is to think about their [...]
Creative Writing Exercise: Recipe For Success
Overview: Short stories often follow a specific structure, perhaps starting with a goal or problem that encounters complications or conflict which lead to a climax and is then resolved. However, any type of writing, from a 140 character tweet to a twenty four volume encyclopaedia can tell a story. Today’s exercise is about telling stories in different [...]