How's your day?

Turning an everyday question into a story prompt

I’m not generally much of a fan of writing prompts, but this one caught my eye simply because it breaks one of the great taboos.

“Every day, people ask you one question,” Humm said. “How are you? Now most people answer with, ‘Good, yeah, fine. Oh yeah, nice weather today,’ and the conversation dies. But great storytellers, they use that moment as daily practice.”

Instead of giving a standard status update, Humm suggests sharing a tiny personal story from your day. It doesn’t have to be super dramatic. He gave an example of his own response: “I’m pretty good. Actually, I had a tiny win this morning. Woke up early, didn’t hit snooze, made my bed. For 10 minutes, I felt like a Navy SEAL. Well, until it then fell apart.”

As any civilized person knows, the question “How are you?” is rhetorical. You’re not supposed to answer it, especially not if you’re British. A grunt or OK is more than sufficient, after which you ask the other person how they’re doing. They definitely don’t want to hear the details of your life. I’m sure we’ve all got our share of elderly relatives who will answer that question with a recitation of all their aches and pains. And although we might be dutifully sympathetic, let’s be honest: we’re not really that interested.

But what would happen if you did answer that question? Can you find a little something about your day that would be interesting? After all, as writers, that’s pretty much our job: to find and create interesting stories out of everyday events. Okay, yes, sometimes we’re creating fantastic stories out of very unrealistic events, but the little everyday bits in between are what build character and keep readers interested.

It’s actually quite an interesting challenge to ask yourself, “How was your day?” and then find something about it that you could make a story from, especially if your day was utterly nondescript. What was a moment in that day you could turn into something special? It needn’t even be enough for an anecdote—just an observation.

Side note: this technique is also really good for therapeutic reasons as well. In the days before mindfulness and gratitude journaling became popular, I used to keep what I called my “Pollyanna diary”. I would try and find just one thing about every day that made me happy, whether that was having a coffee, sitting with my cat, reading a book, or taking a walk to the shops in the sunshine. (Or, more likely, sitting in the sunshine reading a book with my cat on my lap. That’s multi-tasking done right.) Those little moments meant nothing to anyone else, but they were important to me.

If you can identify and describe these moments, you can build them into your stories. These are the little things that make your characters feel real. If you’ve experienced them, chances are your readers have them too.

For example: this morning I came downstairs in the dark and stepped on a piece of cat litter at the bottom of the stairs. I was barefoot and it hurt like hell. I know I should have been wearing my slippers but I threw them under the bed last night and I couldn’t be bothered hunting for them. But at least it wasn’t a cat turd. Or a half-eaten mouse.

That’s inconsequential, but I could easily drop that into a story and make a great little character moment of it. Plenty of people, especially those who’ve had cats, would go, “Yep, I know those days.” It could be a slapstick comedy moment, or I could use it to show how much this guy’s life sucks. With a little work, I could even turn it into the spark for a whole story. His foot hurts, now he’s limping a little, some kids make fun of his walk as he heads for the bus stop or maybe he misses the bus, and now he’s in a really bad mood. Then a co-worker makes a bad joke when he arrives at the office and phoom! he totally loses his shit and makes a Really Bad Life Decision. Maybe he storms out of the office to go to the coffee shop and calm down but he stumbles on the stairs, falls, and does himself a serious injury. Or he quits his job, embezzles the company’s money, or decides on some complicated revenge plot worthy of Jeffrey Archer… So many directions to take this, all because of a stupid piece of cat litter on the floor.

One of the stories I’m most proud of is the title story from my collection, Nothing to See Here. It’s all about getting ideas from banal sources. A guy goes through his day surrounded by potential inspiration for stories, and yet he can’t see them.

Presenting this one to my writers’ group was one of the most fun readings I did: almost everyone seized on at least one hook in it and came up with a story idea. Personally, I keep wanting to write a completely insane story that uses every single one of the hooks. It’s on my list of things to write, right behind about sixty-three other ideas.

Challenging yourself to find inspiration in a nondescript day could be one of the most inspirational things you do. You don’t have to wait for a prompt; just ask yourself: “How’s your day?”