Today’s the day! Get your keyboards dusted off and your pens lined up, we’re writing this month.

Throughout the month I’ll be sharing questions, challenges and prompts to keep you writing.

To kickoff we have a weekly challenge and some Story Progressing Questions to help get your first scenes rolling.

Weekly Challenge: Ten Thousand

This first weekly challenge is easy. Below you’ll find fifteen words.

Your goal is to use as many words as you can within ten thousand words (about five days of challenge writing). Not all of these may fit your story: your bonus challenge in that case is to find an equivalent that will match.

1. Beachball
2. Outing
3. Popped
4. Wilted
5. Patio
6. Heated
7. Drive
8. Country
9. Outdoors
10. Reunion
11. Firefly
12. Memory
13. Sand
14. Melting
15. Picnic

You can share sentences and snippets of your work over on BlueSky under #30days60k or by tagging @fictionseed.com.

Story Progressing Questions

You may also be in the portion of writing that requires keeping a thought on structure and characterization. If that’s the case, you’re in luck. Here’s your first set of Story Progressing Questions to keep your writing going:

Note some of these questions will play off each other so it may help to read through the whole list if you’re struggling a scene.

1. What is each character’s immediate need in the current scene?
2. How can each character stop another from getting what they need?
3. What sensory details can be added to the scene?
4. What are the five worst-case scenarios that could occur in the current scene?
5. What are the five best-case scenarios that could occur in the current scene?
6. Where were your characters before the current scene?
7. What were they doing and how does that affect their current mood?
   

Happy Writing!