November Short Story Writing Challenge

November is, as many writers will know, the National Novel Writing Month - a time when thousands of writers attempt to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, at least) and create a fully fledged novel in the space of only thirty short days.

But, in amongst this explosion of literary creativity, please spare a thought if you will for the humble short story. With all the hooplah of Nanowrimo, with novel writing front and centre and getting all of the attention and all of the fuss, who takes the time to give some consideration to the poor old short story? A medium that rarely gets anywhere near the kudos or the acclaim of its lengthier brethren, and yet a medium that has been the staple of great writers such as Bradbury, Asimov, Hemingway, Kipling, and Dick (to name but a few!).

So, I decided to create a writing challenge for November that would be all about the little guy, all about the underdog, all about creating reams of short stories to exercise the creative muscles in all manner of ways. Thirty days, thirty titles, thirty short stories.

Now, I'm not sure how many of those thirty stories I'll be able to complete. I think I'd be happy with a .500 batting average come December 1st and if I manage to create fifteen short stories, then I think I'll slap them all together into an ebook of some kind and let them loose on the old interweb.

The prompts themselves are musically derived. I decided to use the title of a track from thirty different albums that have meant something to me over the years. So, without further ado, here are the thirty prompts.Use as many of them as you like:

1. Death On Two Legs
2. What Is and What Should Never Be
3. The Carpet Crawlers
4. Call on Me
5. Perfect Strangers
6. Social Disease
7. The Animals and Me
8. Your Emotions
9. Mystery Train
10. The Riddle
11. Walking By Myself
12. Judgement Day
13. Red House
14. Fuel to Run
15. Phantom Lord
16. The Phone Call
17. Voodoo Kiss
18. Give It Away
19. Up in the Sky
20. Wake Up
21. Dirty Pool
22. Dr. Glee
23. Guardian Angel
24. Solution
25. Bad Meets Evil
26. Anxiety
27. Girls Who Can Read Your Mind
28. Dirt in my Pocket
29. Uncle Skunk
30. Flatlands


If you fancy joining in, please do. In fact, I'd love to read the stories you come up with in response to the thirty prompts that are listed above; I'm certain that your brain will take them in an altogether different direction than mine might suggest to me. Alternatively, feel free to make your own thirty day list from thirty songs titles from thirty albums that meant something to you!