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https://www.writerswrite.co.za/9-quick-fixes-for-short-story-writers-running-out-of-ideas/

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Are you struggling to write a short story? This post includes 9 quick fixes for short story writers who run out of ideas.
Short Story Africa Day is on 21 June each year! It is the shortest day in the southern hemisphere. To celebrate, we're sharing ways to find ideas for your stories.

If you are a short story writer and you've run out of ideas, try one of these.

9 Quick Fixes For Short Story Writers

1. Find Out What Lies Behind The Lyrics

Choose a date. What song was number one on that day? Do some research about the song. Who wrote it? Why did they write it? Who inspired it? Use what you find out as inspiration for your short story.

2. Use A Writing Prompt

Sign up for a daily writing prompt. Buy a prompt book. Follow people who share them on social media. 'A prompt can be anything. A word, a line from a poem or a song, a name or even a picture. Anything that gets you writing. Find ones you enjoy.' ( via) Your daily prompt could inspire your short story.

3. Rewrite A Fairy Tale

Take a fairy tale and write it as a modern day story. Change the sexes of the main characters. Choose a random setting. If the tale is too long for a short story, write the beginning or ending as your short story.

4. Rewrite A Myth

A myth is an ancient story involving supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes. It is used to explain aspects of the natural world or to show the psychology, customs, or ideals of a society. Examples: The Myth of Creation, Arthur and Camelot, The Rain Queen. Write a myth using one of our 20 Myth Prompts as a short story.

5. Obsess Over Details

Find one thing that interests you. Keep a file and save these items in it. It can be in a photograph or something you've heard. Research it and use it as inspiration for a story. Use this random first line generator to start your story.

6. Hashtags On Instagram

Choose a topic that interests you. Visit Instagram and click on a hashtag related to the topic. Look at the posts and choose an image that inspires a story. Use this 'What if?' generator to enhance your scenario.

7. Ask Your Followers

If you have a social media following, ask your fans what they want you to write about. Create a poll of some of the ideas you get and write about the one that gets the most votes. Use easypolls or pollcode or pollmaker. Use the embed code to share it on your blog or link it to your social media platform.

8. Use A Holiday

Which public holiday is next on the calendar. Write a short story about someone who is planning for this holiday, or a story that centres around the holiday in some way.

9. Write About The Day Your Parents Met

Rewrite the story of your parent's first meeting. Write it from the perspective of a stranger watching them. Change names, swap the sexes of the characters, change the setting. Go!

Resources For Short Story Writers:

1. How To Show And Not Tell In Short Stories - Workbook

2. The Short Story Checklist - Workbook

3. Short Cuts - Course

by Amanda Patterson

If you enjoyed this post, read:

1. 5 Truly Unusual Ways To Round Out Your Characters

2. First Novel Jitters: 6 Things To Do When You Finish Your Book

3. The Most Important Quality Modern Authors Need To Cultivate

Top Tip: Buy The Short Story Checklist Workbook and the How To Show And Not Tell In Short Stories Workbook.

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9 Quick Fixes For Short Story Writers Who Run Out Of Ideas

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Are you struggling to write a short story? This post includes 9 quick fixes for short story writers who run out of ideas. Short Story Africa Day is on 21 June each year! It is the shortest day in the southern hemisphere. To celebrate, we're sharing ways to find ideas for your stories.

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https://www.writerswrite.co.za/155-words-to-describe-an-authors-tone/

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https://www.writerswrite.co.za/the-best-quotes-about-bookshops/

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Attention book lovers and bookworms! In this post, we share the best quotes about bookshops.

It doesn't matter is you say bookstores or bookshops. I think we can all agree that we love them. Many of us can't imagine a world without them.

If you love books and if you love to read, you probably like nothing better than collecting books.

To celebrate National Buy A Book Day, I've put together a list of the best quotes about bookshops.

The 27 Best Quotes About Bookshops

1. A good bookshop is not just about selling books from shelves, but reaching out into the world and making a difference. ~David Almond

2. What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not fooling a soul. ~Neil Gaiman, American Gods

3. I love walking into a bookstore. It's like all my friends are sitting on shelves, waving their pages at me. ~Tahereh Mafi

4. But here, none too soon, are the second-hand bookshops. Here we find anchorage in these thwarting currents of being; here we balance ourselves after the splendours and miseries of the streets. ~Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting

5. The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore. ~Robert Frost

6. I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling. ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón

7. Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilise their neighbourhoods. ~John Updike

8. Bookshops are places of magical discoveries and the rediscovery of past pleasures. My bookshop, in fact any bookshop, makes me very happy. ~Liane Moriarty

9. Bookshops are my natural habitat. ~Kathy Lette

10. Library books were, I suddenly realised, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others. ~Elizabeth McCracken

11. Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace. ~Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

12. You see, bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places. ~Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

13. I can never leave a bookstore without buying a book. I read four or five at a time. ~Mireille Guiliano

14. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. ~Roy Blount Jr.

15. My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with second-hand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don't; it's a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unaffected. ~Kathleen Tessaro, Elegance

16. I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden? ~Hilary Mantel

17. Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it. ~Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

18. A place isn't a place until it has a bookstore. ~Gabrielle Zevin

19. A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens. ~John Cowper Powys

20. Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? ~Henry Ward Beecher

21. Wealth is walking into any bookshop and buying any book you want without looking at the price tag. ~John Waters

22. I believe in the magic of books. I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books-whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we want to read and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face. Unblinking. Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for. Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives. ~Cecelia Ahern

23. A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. ~Jerry Seinfeld

24. Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation. ~Richard Russo

25. I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me. ~Pat Conroy

26. Those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewellers. ~Anna Quindlen

27. Even an ice cream parlour - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore. ~Natalie Goldberg

The Last Word

I hope you enjoyed these quotes about bookshops. Don't forgot to support your local independent store.

by Amanda Patterson

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to read:

1. 15 Literary Quotes On Sleep

2. 50 Motivational Quotes On Writing

3. The 30 Best Quotes On Books And Reading

4. 18 Fascinating Quotes About Families

5. My 15 Favourite Quotes On Grammar

6. The Top 21 Literary Quotes about Fools

7. Nine Literary Scrabble Quotes

8. The Top 12 Quotes On Writing Memoirs

9. 12 Literary Quotes About The Moon

10. What 20 Famous Authors Had to Say About Rewriting

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Attention book lovers and bookworms! In this post, we share the best quotes about bookshops. It doesn't matter is you say bookstores or bookshops. I think we can all agree that we love them. Many of us can't imagine a world without them.

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https://www.writerswrite.co.za/how-writing-routines-enhance-your-writing/

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Pablo Picasso, The Tragedy, 1903.
https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/pablo-picasso-the-tragedy.html#slide_1

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LmS5N-mORTpWPT4u9elV2QGQbdkexOkHndQIGhrm7UI/edit?usp=sharing

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"Something You Should Know" by Clint Smith

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"Something You Should Know" by Clint Smith

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The first step in reading a mentor text is noticing. Read this poem. What do you NOTICE about the writing?

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"Something You Should Know" by Clint Smith

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Check out some great mentor texts from the New York Times included author commentaries!

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Demystifying the writing process via examples students can learn from and emulate.

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Compare the source of light in these two paintings. The first was painted in 1640, and the second in 2010.

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"I Come from the Fire City" by Eve L. Ewing

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"I Come from the Fire City" by Eve L. Ewing

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I Come from the Fire City | Poem by Eve L  Ewing | Film by Daniel Daly

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"The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter" by Mark Strand

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"The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter" by Mark Strand

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"The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter," a poem by Mark Strand for Motionpoems

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"Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo

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"Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo

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Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo | Poetry Foundation

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The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

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Does this image inspire any ideas for writing for you?

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Check out this video set to a poem called, "Looking," by Hannah Johnson.

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Charlotte's Web & "Once More to the Lake"

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Charlotte's Web & "Once More to the Lake"

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Also see "Hands" posted under the Poetry column for a link to Google Slides with more hands art.

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What does birth order say about you?

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Many of us have heard the adages and sayings about birth order, and how it impacts the characters of the children in the family. But research is starting to show that the long-held beliefs may be sta...

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Many of us have heard the adages and sayings about birth order, and how it impacts the characters of the children in the family. But research is starting to show that the long-held beliefs may be sta...