For the past 14 weeks we’ve done a variety of micro-writing assignments, focusing on voice, style, interesting beginnings, and character interactions. Next week, let’s put it all together and bash out a complete story in one week.
Goals of the Challenge
Writing and finishing a story in a week may be easy for some…but it’s definitely not for me. I am a sloooow writer.
However, I think there is a lot of benefit to changing up the pace. You learn a lot by going slow and taking your time—and you learn a lot of very different things by rushing, going fast, pumping the words out. A decent writing practice should have a mix of both.
Aside from that, after these weeks of practice, working fast will give a good idea of how much of that practice has stuck, and how much we slip back into our old habits.
The focus of next week’s exercise to write and finish a complete story is—well, the story. We have been working micro, and now it’s time to go macro.
Parameters
The one-story, one-week challenge is pretty straightforward—which leaves a lot of leeway for narrowing it down to focus on personal goals.
My goal is simply to play with storytelling, working with the big picture, and (of course) to speed things up a bit.
The parameters I’ve set for myself:
One story in one week.
The story can be any length…
…but it MUST be completed in the one week.
It doesn’t have to be polished or publish-ready; the story just has to be complete (resolved).
I recommend you take a moment to think about exactly what would make this exercise successful to you, and what additional parameters you would like to set for yourself to make those goals your focus. Share your objectives in the comments!
The Exercise, Part I
In preparation for next week’s sprint, it’s worth taking a few days to brainstorm and prepare—it’s up to you how much.
It could be a list of ideas from which you’ll select one to write, starting Monday. Or you could completely outline a story, and be all set to just get out a rough draft. Or anything in between.
You could also take this as an opportunity to quickly finish and push through a story you’re already working on.
Is that cheating on the one-story, one-week thing? I don’t take rules that rigidly, so I don’t think so. An athlete doesn’t just show up to a race and go for it, do they? There’s training—we’ve been doing that. Then there’s stretching and warming up before the sprint. That’s this week’s assignment.
Keep the spirit of the exercise in mind: finish a story quickly. However you do that is the right way to go about it.
If you need a more specific starting point, revisit your work from some of the previous exercises we’ve done. (And if you haven’t done them yet, this weekend would be a great time to mess around with them!) Are any of the stories you started interesting enough to you that you want to keep working and finish them? Look through your exercises and any other writing you’ve done for some ideas worth exploring. Collect them together in a folder, or make list.
Here are a few highlights from the past weeks you might want to go back to check out:
Let us know what sort of preparation work you’re doing in the comments!
That’s all for this week, folks. Stay shiny and write on!
—AF