I have an issue when it comes to writing short stories if I’m not given an explicit theme. Having complete control over what I can do in the story is actually too much freedom, too much power. Because the problem is that I get carried away. I started one of my writing assignments early last semester. I had four weeks and 2,000 words to work with. The piece that I started ended up at around 5,000 words in the first week and just over 7,000 by the second. That piece if now around 44,000. I got too carried away and kept writing. That’s my problem. I blow the story up into a world and keep writing. I have a lot of trouble keeping it under wraps. Which means that a lot of my short stories sometimes come off as excerpts, which is not what they’re meant to be. So to practice writing short stories and kind of stifle my freedom in order to help me start them, I’m going to roll dice and use the writing prompts that I’m using for the short writing exercises. Because there’s so many of them I’ll roll two dice and then three dice and combine the two topics to make the prompt for my short story and for poetry pieces.

If anyone has any advice on how they start their short stories or ideas on good writing prompts for short stories then feel free to let me know. It’s not really the writing prompts I’m having trouble with but more how to keep the story from growing and springing into a rising world like a suitcase bursting open because I’ve tried to shove too much into it. Thanks!