How I Wrote Over 100 Stories from a Single Word

A daily practice in creativity

Writing prompts date back as far as Ancient Greece. They’ve been used as educational tools for many years, and I strongly recommend them when it comes to writing stories. Particularly 100- word stories, otherwise known as drabbles.

My journey into the world of drabbles

It started when I found a small publication called Fiction Shorts on Medium in January 2024.

I joined Medium in October 2023 with dreams of starting a part-time online writing life, making a little side money, and giving my life some direction.

I was coming off of two big tragedies.

In September of 2022, my mom had gone on hospice with end-stage renal disease. Her passing was expected to be quick and relatively painless. “Most people fall asleep and don’t wake up the next morning,” the doctors told us. She was given four weeks at most.

She lived for five months, drifting in and out of lucidity, and eventually passed around eleven o’clock one night.

Tragedy Number II

This time became even more chaotic when my dad fell in December that same year, suffering a major spinal cord injury that left him partially paralyzed and in a skilled nursing home—all while his wife of 54 years was in hospice care at home. We spent three months shuffling him between the skilled nursing facility and home so he could be with her.

Then came her death, his return home, his recovery, and the major depression I experienced because of it all

To say my life had been a bit complicated before I decided to start writing on Medium is understated.

Finding Fiction Shorts was like a breath of fresh air.

It was one word a day.

Turn one word a day into 100.

I could do that.

It became part of my daily routine. Wake up. Read the daily word. Write a short 100-word story.

At first, they were a little clunky. They took time to brainstorm and edit. I used tools like Hemingway and Grammarly.

But over time, brevity became natural. I learned to shorten my own sentences, to reduce filler, how to punctuate my own paragraphs (mostly).

I’ve written well over a hundred drabbles on Medium all of them with one word prompts, sometimes they throw in a twist, but all starting with one word.

Prompts are great.

• They help you get started.

• They can help you get unstuck.

• They can take a little bit of the thinking out of writing (in a good way).

How can you get started with prompts?

• You can join a group like Fiction Shorts.

• You can use AI to generate a list of words to use.

• You can google one word writing prompts and a list of sites come up.

• You can pick a topic, set a timer, and write every word you can think of about that topic down. Then use that list.

There are no lack of ways to find prompts and they lead to a variety of stories.

Do prompts ruin creativity?

I have read many writers over the last year that use the same word I do and our stories are always different in writing style, setting and characters. Prompts don’t have to ruin your voice or make things too formulaic.

They also help you to not have to stare at a blank screen. You have at least one word already written.

So how do you write a 100 word story? You start with one word.

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*Subscribe to join our “Loving Cats Short Story Challenge” from February 9-15th. I’ll send out a word each day and you can write a short story (500 words or less) based on that word then post it in notes). You’ll be able to post a link in chat to share with others and get feedback. I’ll also post tips and encouragement in chat. It’s not as long as what I did in December, but I had positive responses to my 25 days of Christmas Stories and doubled my subscriber count.*

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Thanks for reading and engaging!