It’s time to write to our June prompt!
We had our LIVE Writing Prompt Party last night, but that was just step one to our month long Writing Prompt Party adventure. If you are new to this whole thing, this is our monthly pattern:
A live Writing Prompt Party OPEN TO ALL WRITERS (DONE!)
A prompt post sharing the writing prompt with the entire community (THIS post!)
A thread post where you can share what you wrote based on the prompt for the community to read and share your fiction! (Next Thursday!)
Those of you who attended the party do not need this, but for everyone else, here is the prompt we selected this month!
Your Writing Prompt for June 2026
This month’s prompt was taken from one of my newest resources and obsessions, three six five: prompts, acts, divinations by Lucy Ives. My discovery of this book started a couple of weeks ago with a book review in The New Yorker titled WHY THE BEST WRITING ADVICE IS OFTEN THE WEIRDEST by David O’Neill. (In all honesty, I didn’t realize I was reading a book review until I was quite a ways into the read and already liking the sound of this book three six five that is seemed like the author thought I should know about.) By the end of the read I had my Barnes & Noble trip scheduled to go ahead and pick up this book sight unseen.
Since I haven’t shut up about this book in all of our Stop Writing Alone meetings ever since I got it, the group requested that we try it out when our monthly Writing Prompt Party hit. I happily agreed IF it made sense.
Why the “if”? Well, this book isn’t just a prompt book. As the subtitle spells out, there are prompts, acts and divinations. There are 365 things to do and I have been tackling them one at a time, about one day at a time. Not all of them lead us to a story, in fact, not all of them lead to writing. For example, one task (room language no. 9) was to rearrange a room before writing. In addition to this possibility, other tasks may include a prompt for writing, but only after another action is taken. This example comes right in task no.1, called short-term memory, which says:
Walk to a place where you can sit awhile undisturbed. Now write a detailed account of how you got there. The shorter the trip, the longer the account should be.
However, after undertaking other tasks like no. 3, called sky writing, which simply says, “Write a story set entirely in the future tense,” I knew we had a potential party favor in this book after all. When the party fell on the same day I opened my book to no. 14, called reconstruction, I was certain we’d all get something out of it.
Here is what our prompt of the month asked us to do…
Your Prompt/Exercise
Begin a story with a remnant, trace, residue, scrap, fragment, hint, or clue. Rebuild from here.
The Page
The pages are not numbered, but the tasks are both numbered and named. This prompt was shared from Lucy Ives book, three six five: prompts, acts, divinations. It is reconstruction no.14. It looks like this:
Our “Rules”
Our major goal is to get you writing, so, in the big-picture sense of things there are no real “rules” for how you use this prompt, however, for participation in next week’s story sharing thread, there will be guidelines in the hopes that it aids participants in not only writing each month, but also being able to read and share as many stories as possible.
If you wish to share your story next week in the thread:
We are looking for fresh flash fiction! In other words, the story must be written from this prompt. Of course, creativity wins the day and if all aspects of the prompt are not adhered to that is fine, but if you are just sharing stories you’ve written in the past that clearly have no connection to this prompt, you are missing the point of us WRITING TOGETHER!
1,000 words or less, please! I have high hopes to read through all stories in the thread and hope our community members do as well. Keeping our stories on the short side definitely makes this a more reasonable ask.
Share links, not stories! Do not copy and paste your story into the comments section. You may share a link to your fiction Substack page, or a read-only Google Doc of your story.
Don’t stress this. This is not a competition in any sense of the word, this is an opportunity to come together around a prompt and celebrate all of our creative minds and processes together. While I know there is no way for me to liberate you from any of the fears that may naturally come from sharing your fiction publicly, please know that this is not a forum for judgement, but for celebration. This is a PARTY and I am looking for cheerleaders all around. Critique is for another day, and a completely different forum.
***SPECIAL NOTE***
I will share this again on our thread post, but keep in mind that if you happen to fall deeply in love with the story that is birthed from this prompt and have aspirations to submit it for publication, many publications are not interested in previously published material.
THIS SHARING OF YOUR STORY WILL COUNT AS AN ONLINE PUBLICATION IN MANY CASES.
Please do not share your story if you think you may want to seek publication for it in one of these platforms! The absolute last thing I want to do with this party is stymie your publication growth!
If you have any comments or questions about this, please feel free to let me know in the comments section.
Subscribe & Share
If you want to make sure you don’t miss a beat with these monthly prompt parties, make sure you are subscribed to Stop Writing Alone.
And, if you know of another writer who would love to participate, please make sure you share this post with them so they can do the same!
Now… GO WRITE!
With all that said and done, LET’S WRITE TOGETHER! I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Check your inbox next Thursday for the thread post where you can share it with us!
HAPPY WRITING!
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