Monday, May 28, 2012

Short Story Month, Day 28. Thinking outside the box

Today, I'm going to invite you to extend your range a little. It's all well and good to write stories based on our own experience, but sometimes I think that can be too constricting. Not that we can ever truly escape our own viewpoint, but sometimes that idea of jumping into another's shoes can be enlightening.

In the same way, writing in a different genre than you're accustomed to can have surprising results as well. So today, you can choose between two prompts.

Think about an incident in which you found yourself in conflict with someone. Now write about the encounter from their point of view.

Or, pick a genre that you wouldn't normally read. Write a story in it. You can use one of those random generators I've been going on about all month if you like. For me, romance is probably the genre I'd be least likely to read, so I found a romance generator and came up with this: 

This story starts in a port city in France. In it, a heroine trapped by the past falls madly in love with an aged pharmacist.

Unlikely? Sure. But if the aged pharmacist was played by Gerard Depardieu in the movie version, it could work...

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