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February 2022 Write Club Short Story Prompt

Skeleton key

Skeleton key
Image source: qimono on Pixabay

Welcome! Are you a short story writer looking for a workshop where you can work alongside others to improve your skills? In this post, you can read a little Write Club, a small and virtual (yet worldwide) workshop community comprised of fiction writers who love the craft of short story writing. Each month our members write a short story from a writing prompt, and then we review each other’s stories and improve our work based on feedback from the other members. Our goal is to submit our polished stories to professional publications such as literary journals. Several of our members are successfully published.

Invitation to Short Story Writers

We welcome you to watch for our monthly writing prompts. If you are serious about short story writing and are already regularly writing stories, you are also welcome to check us out. We are open to adding a few new committed members who would like to join our monthly short story writing workshop. If you’re interested, the next step is to review the prerequisites:

  • You should already a good understanding of the craft of short story writing, and a desire to learn more.
  • You should have the goal of polishing your work in professional publications.
  • You should be ready to commit to monthly deadlines, including drafting and revising stories, and reading the work of other writers.

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 February 2022, Write Club members must write a story based on this prompt: key or keys. (Either one is fine.)

Keys have so many possibilities. Think of treasure boxes, hidden rooms, safe deposit boxes and ancient mansions.

Tell us your story! Bring us characters who experience conflicts that must be resolved. And settings that bring your story to life.

Where will your imagination take you?

Get your engines running

Start thinking about who will populate your story, and how they might seek to overcome what 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.