I couldn’t be more proud of you!

I encourage you to download the post-challenge worksheet attached to this page and either print it out or simply use the question and answer them in your journal. 

• What worked?
• What was a sure-fire way to sink your writing day?
• What surprised you?

WRITE IT ALL DOWN

While you’re in the throes of the challenge it’s easy to think you’ll never forget all the lessons you’re learning. 

You will.

So save the lessons, put them somewhere safe, then take the rest of the day off. Maybe tomorrow too. You deserve it.

Share your favorite lesson in the comments, below!

Celebrate Your Success

And don’t forget to download your Certificate of Completion. Print it out, fill in your name, and post a picture of yourself on social media with the hashtag #StoryADayMay

Keep Going

Feeling fired up and don’t want to lose momentum? Here are some ways you can keep going, with StoryADay:

The Superstars Group

If you know what you want to write and don’t need Just Another Course (), the Superstars group might be for you. This dedicated group of writers drops in daily, as their schedules allow, for co-working sessions, and gets together a couple of times a month at hangouts, to simply be writers, together. We also have critique sessions three times a year and an extensive library of workshops and masterclasses to help you build your craft. 

Find out more about Superstars

I, WRITER Course

If you aren’t sure what to write next and want to keep building your practice and skills, the I, WRITER Course might be for you. A six-part course, it’ll take you through my I, WRITER Framework to help you build a regular writing practice AND you’ll write 6 or more stories, while taking pre-recorded workshops on your own schedule, to build your craft. Workshops include the ever-popular Copycat Writing Workshop, along with workshops on Flash Fiction, Character Development, Story Structure and more.

Find out more about the I, WRITER Course

StoryAWeek Newsletter

If you’ve enjoyed having me pop into your inbox weekly, and want to keep writing stories in a more sustainable way than during the challenge, my StoryAWeek newsletter might be for you. 52 weeks of lessons and prompts, each designed to nudge you to write a story, and keep showing up for you writing, week after week. 

Find out more about the StoryAWeek Newsletter

You made it! You’re hear at the end of the month, still showing up, still writing. Whether you wrote one story or thirty-one, congratulations. This is a pretty good day.

Today I want you to write a story about someone’s best day ever.
You are, of course, free to use that title ironically (and write about the opposite).

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
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Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She coaches other writers and creatives on how to keep the momentum going. She also hosts a year-round writing community. If you need a place to keep you on track going forward, join us in the StoryADay Superstars:

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? How much did you write this month? What’s your ‘epic win’? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

At this point, it’s almost impossible you haven’t encountered a piece of software that tried to convince you to use it’s new AI features.

Today you’re going to write a story that delves into the relationship between humans and technological pals…and this stuff is going to seem a lot less sci-fi than it used to!

Bonus points if you write this story in a non-narrative format. That means,

• Writing out a chat conversation, or making a list of things that your character needs to complete their project (and telling a story in the process).
• Or perhaps your character is trying to write a ‘rescue me’ note in a code that the AI won’t break.
• Or perhaps you’re writing the after-action report for your corporate overlords about how things went so spectacularly wrong.

If you don’t want to write about the tech we have today, you could have a medieval knight working with a clockwork squire; or steampunk Sherlock Holmes android invented by Dr Watson…run wild!

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She lived in an era when humans still thought they were in charge of everything, and she thanks her Robot Overlords for allowing the relic of that time to continue to exist online.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

if you’re the kind of writer who mostly writers dialogue, or has been accused of writing stories that seem like they’re set on a blank white stage, this prompt is one that’s going to challenge you.

Write a story where the setting features almost as much as a character.

• This might mean the setting has a strong emotional mood (as in a gothic novel or a 1950’s beach movie
• This might mean you actually give the haunted house a personality, or take your characters to a land where the trees talk and the grass gets annoyed when you walk on it
• This might mean you spend the day making your characters interact with their surroundings – being challenged by the leaky space toilet, or struggling to understand why the broccoli won’t grow in this corner of the garden.

Give us sensation. Give us mood. Give us big scenic attitude.

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She has lived in three countries on two continents and, despite decades in the area, cannot master a Pennsylvania accent. She has never successfully grown broccoli.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Today I want you to mine your memory for a conversation that you will never forget…and give it to (at least) two different characters.

Tell as much of that story as you can in dialogue, without much narrative explanation.

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
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Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. Those who know her will attest: she is rarely short of something to say. Read more at julieduffy.com

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

“It hurts,” she points yet again to her foot. Her heel. The very back of her heel to be precise. “Why does it hurt?”

I’m a doctor who has run every test I know, prescribed every exercise I know. Yet the pain persists.

I ask her again, hoping for a different answer, “Why Does it hurt? Are you sure you didn’t just bang it somewhere, against something?”

She shakes her head

I lean on my desk looking her in the eyes, “All the blood-work is fine. The results are actually neat, the way the values line up. It’s almost too good to be true. So why Does it hurt?”

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Neha Mediratta

Neha Mediratta Chaudhuri is an independent writer, editor and consultant based in Mumbai. Recently, her award-winning sci-fi story Body Count was encoded in a Nickel and Gold Nano-fiche and sent to the moon (See Lunar Codex Project).

You can find her latest short story collection Death Chips and Love Fries at Amazon.

Meet her here: www.nehamediratta.com.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Today you’re going to write a story inspired by a song.

Pick a song you have some emotional connection to. Pull up the lyrics or look at the album art, and think about what kind of story you could tell around it.

• You could tell the story of the song;
• you could take a character like the ‘narrator’ of the song;
• you could take a single phrase from the song and build a story around it;
• you could write an ‘answer’ song, in which you use some of the aspects of the original song, its images, language, or characters, and tell us what happened next, or take the opportunity to argue with the premise of the song.

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Julie Duffy

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay and nothing makes her happier than the opportunity to sing and participate in any kind of music.

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Today I want you to write a story in 40 minutes. To help with that, we’re going to take away some of the invention you would otherwise have to do, by writing fan-fiction.

Choose a story, character or world invented by someone else, take a couple of their characters and mix things up. You might want to take an incident or ending that you hated and change it.

Remember that when you’re writing fan fiction it’s not the kind of thing that can be published without the original rightsholder’s permission (at least, not commercially), but there’s a long and proud tradition of artists copying other artists’ work to figure out what makes them…er, work. If visual artists can do it in their sketchbooks, then we can definitely do it in our practice.

Fan fic is common in sci-fi and fantasy worlds, and in the ‘fandoms’ of TV shows and movies, but there’s nothing to stop you writing a fan fic based on something by the obscure literary fiction writer that only you seem to love…Whatever you can summon up some unreasonable enthusiasm for is fair game.

To help you with the timing, I recommend

• brainstorming for five minutes,
• taking 5 more minutes to write your opening,
• then spending the meat of your time complicating things for your characters,
• leaving five minutes at the end to pull it all together in some kind of ending (even if the rest of the story is not exactly ‘finished’ Trust me, it’ll help, when you come back to it, or stumble across this little oddity on your hard-drive in two years and wonder what you were trying to achieve with it…)

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
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Fan Fic In Forty

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. Her first recurring characters, at age 11, in no way ripped off the friendship in “My Best Fiend” by Sheila Levelle (thanks, Sheila!)

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Write a story that revolves around an heirloom toy.

This might be a single character’s reminiscence of a beloved toy; a character’s discovery of an heirloom toy that changes everything; or perhaps you want to follow your heirloom toy through several ‘lifetimes’ in a series of short flash or micro-fiction pieces.

This can be a delightful story…or delightfully horrific, or anything in between.

A Toy’s Tale

Julie Duffy is a writer and the host of StoryADay. She recently made an accidental pilgrimage to the Merrythought Teddy bear factory in the town of Ironbridge, that made her beloved child bears…and brought home a new friend. Because if we can’t play, what’s the point?

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version

Where film and television can give us rich soundscapes and nuanced visuals, only the written word allows us to access the whole range of human senses. The challenge: write a story that uses touch, smell, and/or taste, and avoids visual and audio descriptions.

Delve into some of the other senses if you wish: proprioception / body position, nociception / pain, or internal senses like hunger, thirst, suffocation, or nausea. Give your character a more exotic sense like echolocation or the ability to feel magnetic fields, extrasensory perception or knowing, but limit or eliminate sound and vision.

Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

Elizabeth Twist

Elizabeth Twist (she/her), untames a garden and teaches meditation in Hamilton, Ontario. Lately she’s been writing about sacred pacts, systems of power, and fungi. Her stories have appeared in Dracula After Stoker, Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight, and Unfettered Hexes. Her latest piece appears in Agita Magazine:

Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

Remember: Please don’t post your story in the comments here (and I talk more about why not, here). Best practice: Leave us a comment about how it went, or share your favorite line from your story.

Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday

Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version