At my launch party, I shared a modified lesson plan that I do in my ELD class each school year. We read a fractured fairy tale and watch an episode of “What if…?”. Then my students write their own short story. I provided the outline for the short story that my students use. To help them, their short story is them rewriting a story that already exists. I have found this helps with stress and the time constraints of the school day, because they don’t have to come up with an original idea.

But in reality, no story today is purely original. We all take inspiration from elsewhere. In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster wrote, “there’s only one story… everyone who writes anything knows that pure originality is impossible… Writers notice all the time that their characters resemble somebody… works are actually more comforting because we recognize elements in them from our prior reading.”

So with this idea of taking inspiration from elsewhere, my short story prompt is: Choose an existing story and rewrite it to make it your own. (For copyright protections, use a story that is in the public domain like a fairy tale or a Shakespeare play.)

You can use this outline template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mVoLrANT82eaAe8epxNdNWVpI3wnUqZEJnSxvdFZWIY/edit?usp=sharing

Those who share their short stories* with me will get their name entered into a drawing for a $25 gift card to Amazon. Email me your final draft at chelseymortegauthor@gmail.com by October 23rd.

*Note: I will NOT be publishing or sharing your stories with anyone. These are your stories, and I am honored to read and enjoy them for myself. This is NOT a contest for the best story. It’s a random drawing of names. I hope you enjoy creating a story and it sparks something in you.