Day 1 —Select a book at random in the room. Find a novel or short story, copy down the last sentence and use this line as the first line of your new story.
Day 2 —Tell about a character who lost something important to him/her.
Day 3 —Write about the worst time you’ve ever put your foot in your mouth.
Day 4 —Write a story/excerpt to include the line, “Sorry, we can’t insure you for a journey like that.”
Day 5 —Pick a letter of the alphabet. Now imagine two aisles of your local supermarket. List everything found in those two aisles that begin with that letter of the alphabet.
Day 6 —Write about a person who would buy all of those items in Day 5.
Day 7 —What sets you apart from the crowd?
Day 8 —Tell your life story from someone else’s point of view.
Day 9 —What was your favorite childhood toy?
Day 10 —What do you want to be remembered for?
Day 11 —What was your first childhood pet? Describe it in detail.
Day 12 —What is your favorite day of the week?
Day 13 —Write about a random picture you would find in an envelope of finished prints at Costco.
Day 14 —Elvis still gets 100 Valentines each year. Tell about one of the people who sent one.
Day 15 — Create a character who is falsely accused of a crime.
Day 16 —If we assume ghosts are real, what type of ghost would you like to see?
Day 17 — Write a short scenario set in the kitchen of a fast-food restaurant.
Day 18 —Take a reader behind the wheel with the worst driver you’ve ever known.
Day 19 —Write a list of 25 (or just 5!) things you want to do in your life.
Day 20 —If you could go on only one more vacation in your lifetime, where would you go and why?
Day 21 —Find a job ad in the paper. Write about your life if you had that job.
Day 22 —You wake up with a key gripped tightly in your hand. How did you get this key? What does it lock or unlock?
Day 23 —Pretend you’re a cartoon character. What type of a character would you be? What would a day in your life be like?
Day 24 —Write about the longest amount of time you’ve ever gone without sleeping.
Day 25 —Write a story about ‘What the Neighbors Saw.’
Day 26 —Write about your worst habit.
Day 27 —Make up a near-death experience (unless you have a real one).
Day 28 —You read about yourself in your brother/sister, girlfriend/boyfriend’s diary. What did you read?
Day 29 —You are at a cemetery reading gravestones. Write about one of the people you find.
Day 30 —Write a short entry that ends with the line, “The silver dust of moonlight settled coldly on the night.”
Sometimes the most obvious things in the world are the hardest to figure out. Like a basic understanding of what is needed in a town.
This is going to be strictly talking about the base physical make-up of a town. Things like the necessities, and basic building-blocks, so you can have some kind of foundation or idea to build off of, for your fictional town.
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Step one: Have a basic understanding of three things:
- Time Period of the story.
- Size of the town.
- Location of the town.
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Step two: Have a basic understanding of civilization necessities:
- Food. Grocery store or Market(s). Restaurants.
- Education. School(s) and/or Universities. Libraries or Archives.
- Law Enforcement. Police Station. Jails.
- Emergency Help. ie- Fire Station.
- Laws. City Hall or other government buildings. Lawyer’s offices.
- Medical. Doctor offices or buildings. Hospital(s). Veterinary offices. Clinics.
- Post Office.
- Bank(s).
- Shelter. Houses, apartments, condos, mobile homes, mansions etc.
- Energy Source (Unless your town is on the grid or whatever it’s called, you could look into solar powered generators for completely remote locations or wind based energy, things like that.) Gas stations.
- Cemetery. Or some other kind of burial grounds.
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Step three: Entertainment & Lifestyle:
- Movies/Cinema/Theater/Drive-In
- Parks (theme or national or local)
- Shopping Malls/Shopping Centers
- Night Clubs/Bars
- Swimming Pool/Rec Center
- Places of Worship
- Businesses (factories, farms, auto mechanic, boutiques, real estate, small insurance companies, antiques, pawn shops, bakery, butcher, specialty shops, record store, comic book store… etc.)
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Step four: Misc Natural and Architectural/Man-Made Landmarks.
- Architectural/Man-Made Landmarks -statues, shelter-like structure, memorials, bridges, sport stadium, railways… etc.
- Natural Landmarks -mountains, fields, types of trees, some kind of protected park, waterfall, lake… etc
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Step five: Draw out a map of your town -it really just makes things easier to have something to look at and reference, especially if characters live in certain parts of town or are otherwise separated.
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Things to Remember:
- Towns need a ‘hub’ or a ‘center’ of where everything is going on, where most of the businesses are, where all the action is. Towns are usually built up around this center, and fan-out in some sort of fashion. (Side note: usually, the closer to the center of town you are, the more “money” is… usually.)
- Everything needs a route. Don’t forget streets and back-roads and alleyways and stop signs and stop lights -ways to get around.
- Does your town have a “historical” section where the houses and buildings are older? Look into different architectural styles that fit your towns historical era.
- Is this pre or post-apocalyptic? Generally, post-apocalyptic settings focus more on the basic necessities. So while those “step three buildings” will be present, there would (depending on how post-apocalyptic your story is set) be no use for them (or they will be reused in some other fashion).
- Abandoned buildings/structures like factories, hospitals, and schools are always fun to play with.
- Where is your town located? Does the architectural style fit in with the time period or region?
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Hope this helped! I tired to get everything I could think of!
Xx