This week’s creative writing prompt/exercise is a story starter.
See what you can do with the following: The smell of bananas always made him feel queasy.
Start your story where the action is, so if your tale is about someone getting hit by a bunch of bananas, that is where you start. The reader does not necessarily need to know what time your character got up, or what they ate for breakfast that day (although a banana milkshake might be relevant).
Ask the who, where, what, when, how, why? questions to move the story along. You’ll probably use the usual three act structure of setup, confrontation and resolution. Decide your point of view and if you are writing in past tense, or present.
If your character is angry, show it. Describe how his face glowed red and a vein on his temple pulsed, which is letting readers work out things for themselves. Always assume they are clever enough to fill in the gaps.
There is no need to overly describe a scene, just pick out the most important things and focus on them in a few brief sentences. For example, mention the smell of cigarette smoke, rotting bananas skins and unwashed dishes in the sink, and how the curtains are half-drawn at mid-day. This gives your reader a pretty good idea of the setting and the person who might live there.
This time, your story can be as long or as short as you think it should be. You might limit it to 300 words for flash fiction, or write 3000 words for a competition entry (read the guidelines first!).
If you have a well-polished piece of short fiction looking for a home, Irish literary magazine The Stinging Fly has a (free) submission window open until next week (November 28th 2023). They say: ‘We are always excited to read new writers and to hear new voices in literature. Many of the writers we publish have never been published before.’ More details here
Meanwhile, don’t forget to subscribe (it’s free) to receive a notification when I publish a new creative writing post here – usually on Wednesday at 5pm Dublin time.
Louise G Cole, Writer 