Narrative practice prompts

Who is coming? Who is already there? Start with the knock.

Start with the letter unopened. End with the letter back where it started.

Change the narrator’s feelings about home between paragraph one and paragraph five.

Do not say what it is the last day of until the final line.

Use weather as the clock - as the storm arrives, the decision must be made.

A literal or metaphorical wrong turn. Let consequences arrive slowly.

Who made it, to whom, and what is forcing the narrator to remember it today?

Start in the middle of it. End after both people have stopped speaking.

Describe the photo in paragraph one. Reveal what is not in it by paragraph five.

A door you are not supposed to open. Be specific about why.

In medias res opening. The reader knows it is too late before they know for what.

Do not describe the accident. Describe what happens in the thirty seconds before and after.

Dialogue-heavy. Let the stranger reveal something about the narrator.

The narrator knows what the mistake is. The reader finds out last.

Show the narrator deciding without having them explicitly choose.

Make the reader forget whose birthday it is. Then remind them at the end.

Describe the neighbour through one habit the narrator has noticed for years.

Found, lost, given, returned. Pick one and let the key be a physical object, not a metaphor.

Withhold information. The sound itself can never be fully described.

Two characters who have not met for a long time. Let their first spoken exchange be small talk.

Return to a house that used to be full. Avoid sentimentality - use specific objects.

Someone warns the narrator. The narrator ignores it. Make the reader understand why.

Who is confessing and to whom? Can the confession be unsaid?

The narrator finds themselves in a photo they do not remember being taken.

A ticking clock. The narrator has one conversation to finish before it arrives.

What appointment, and what did missing it mean? Reveal gradually.

An unexpected small object, not money. What does it oblige the narrator to do?

Who is returning to whom? Let the reader hold the wrong assumption for two paragraphs.

Is it accepted? Can it be? End ambiguously - leave the answer to the reader.

The entire story is a wait. Nothing happens. The tension is whether anything will.