September 2022 Fiction Writing Prompt from Write Club

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Hello from Write Club, and welcome to our monthly fiction writing prompt. In this article, you can learn a little about our writing workshop. Or feel free to just use our writing prompt for your own purposes.

Overview of Write Club

We are a small workshop community of short story writers with a focus on writing for professional publications. We are committed to publishing our work in mainstream magazines, professional online journals and short story anthologies. Some of our members are successfully published, and others are on their way, with the help of the honest yet caring critiques from our workshop members.

If you are a writer of short fiction looking to get your work professionally published, read on!

Each month we launch a new writing prompt. Write Club members write a short story based on the prompt, and then review each other's stories. The next phase is to revise our own stories based on the workshop feedback, and do another round of critiques. This method helps us to prepare our manuscripts for professional editors.

If you love to write short stories and are intrigued by Write Club, here are two options:

Watch for our monthly writing prompts. Feel free to use them to inspire your short stories. You can post them on Hive, Medium, Vocal, your own blog, or wherever you like. Note that we do not offer critiques out of our workshop. This is just for inspiration!
If you are serious about short story writing and have a desire to get your work published in publications such as literary, sci-fi or horror magazines, you are also welcome to check out our Write Club workshop.

Is the Write Club Workshop Right for You?

Write Club purposefully remains small. This enables us to read and provide thoughtful critiques on every story. However, we are looking to add one or two additional writers who are looking for a writing community and want to get their work published professionally.

If you're interested, the next step is to review the prerequisites:

You should already have a strong foundation in short story writing, and a desire to continue building your skills.
You should have the goal of publishing your work in professional publications.
You must be ready to commit to monthly deadlines, including drafting and revising stories.
You must be willing to provide helpful feedback to other writers and support their journey as well as your own.
Most importantly, you must have an open mind to accept critique of your own work so that you can revise and polish your stories.

To connect with us and check out our workshop, just pop in as a visitor to our Discord channel and tell us about your interests. We would love to connect with you to see if it seems like we're a good fit for your writing journey!

This month's writing prompt

That brings us to the prompt. For the month of September 2022, Write Club members must write a story based on this prompt: charm

Where to begin? Start thinking about scenarios, characters, and settings. What scenario can you imagine in which wearing a charm bracelet is surrounded by drama? How about a story that begins with a child finding a charm on a rainy sidewalk. How might that story unfold? Or a woman sees a charm in the case in a shop window and is oddly mesmerized. She must have it. What happens after she buys it? Of course there are other interpretations of the word "charm" you can explore as well.

Get your engines running

Start thinking about who will populate your story, and how they might seek to overcome a challenge they are facing. The more your conscious and sub-conscious brain are working on developing your MC (main character), and defining the scenario that has brought us to the time and place of this story, the sooner your story will take shape.

You could write out some loglines — one-sentence story plots — and then choose the one that resonates the most with you. Or join our discussion on Discord and get input on which idea seems like the most promising one to move forward.

Looking for Writing Resources?

I love to share tips and ideas about creative writing! Here are two treasure troves for you:

You can find many of my tips and resources on my website, in the On Writing section.
I also share writing tips in The Ink Well community on Hive. See the complete catalog for the full list of writing tips.

Have fun and keep writing.