September Theme: The Stories We Carry
Big Question: Why do certain stories stay with us?
Week 4: The Stories We Tell Others
Welcome to our fourth week exploring The Stories We Carry on Daily Drafts & Dialogues
Welcome and thanks for joining us this September. I’m so glad you’re here!
After exploring The Books That Changed Us, Memory and Storytelling, and The Stories We Tell Ourselves the past few weeks, we now arrive at the stories we construct for ourselves and our audiences and what these stories reveal, conceal, protect, or cost us.
Every day we carry and tell stories about who we are and what we truly believe, though some of them are certainly easier than others for our intended audiences to read. Which can often be the point behind sharing them in the first place.
Sometimes the stories we tell are carefully curated, shaped by what we want others to notice, admire, understand, or believe, in other words. Other times, however, the versions of the stories we present can become multi-layered and complex and can even begin to obscure the truth we know and value, even if we didn’t originally intend them to.
And that’s the gray area of storytelling, and the stories we carry, that we’re going to explore this week— that gap between the presentations we give when we tell a story and the reality behind those stories.
The following writing prompts explore that gap between presentation and reality in the stories we carry and tell. The first five invite you to approach that gap through fiction and creative writing, while the last five encourage you to reflect on that gap by writing about some of your own personal experiences.
Regardless of the prompt or prompts you choose, they will allow you to further unpack how our outward-facing stories can be just as revealing as our private ones, if not more so. They’ll also encourage you to investigate the ways we all might exaggerate our accomplishments or minimize our struggles, adopt certain roles within our families and peer groups, and ultimately carefully edit and select what other people are allowed to see in the stories we tell, when, how, and maybe even why.
I hope to see what you come up with for one of these prompts in the Drafters Workshop Chat soon too, so we can further discuss the stories we carry.
QUICK REMINDER: You’ll see my response to one of the creative prompts in tomorrow’s Drafts post, and my response to one of the reflective journaling prompts on Wednesday. You’ll also see some questions and topics to reflect on related to this week’s focus via our Dialogues posts on Monday and Thursday. And you’ll see posts about the Books we’re reading and discussing related to this week’s focus on Tuesday and Friday, including notes on what our book club is reading this week.
General Tips for Every Prompt
Start with the public facade. Begin with the narrative you want, or a character wants, the world to believe, then expose the inconvenient or messy truth hidden just outside the frame of that narrative.
Establish a clear motive. Give concealment a purpose. A lie or secret becomes more compelling once you and the audience understand what someone fears losing.
Capture the exact moments when a character’s performance begins to crack, as these psychological fractures and revelations can create some of your most revealing scenes.
Use sharp, concrete details and descriptions to reveal a character’s deceit or insecurities instead of flatly stating that they are pretending.
Explore the nuances of deception. Remember that someone can fabricate a story without trying to maliciously lie. Characters and narrators will often omit, simplify, exaggerate, or genuinely believe their own fabrications.
Invitation for the Week: Consider what changes when you write about the stories people tell one another when compared to the stories they keep to themselves. And/Or choose one story you present to others and get curious about the fears, hopes, secrets hiding inside it and what makes the plain truth harder to tell.
Quick Note: While I will always encourage writers to write to the extent of their heart’s content, I would suggest starting with one prompt from each section first. Select the creative prompt and reflective prompt that seem to really speak to you first, then see where those writing experiences lead you before attempting to complete the rest of the prompts. If you end up completing all or most of the prompts after that, that’s amazing! But if you don’t, that’s perfectly fine too. You won’t run out of opportunities to see prompts like this because there will be another post of prompts available next Saturday when this one is auto-archived.
Creative Prompts About The Stories We Tell Others
1. Highlight Reel
Write a story about an influencer whose smart home starts locking them out based on how much their real life deviates from their social media feeds.
Focus On:
building a sharp contrast between the influencer’s online identity and their private circumstances, allowing each discrepancy to create a new problem.
giving the smart home a clear sense of escalating judgment, whether its rules are literal, absurd, unsettling, or unexpectedly logical.
exploring the pressure of constant performance, especially as the protagonist realizes that maintaining an audience’s perception has become a condition of accessing their own home.
using the physical house as a reflection of the character, making rooms, devices, notifications, or locked doors reveal aspects of their life that their social media feeds conceal or omit.
Skills to Practice:
Exaggerating a recognizable social behavior until it becomes a literal problem
Escalating stakes by turning small inconsistencies into increasingly serious consequences
Blending and contrasting technology with character development to reveal emotional truths
Tip: Let the first lockout seem funny or inconvenient before making the consequences increasingly personal.
Feeling Stuck?
Ask yourself: What is the biggest lie this influencer has ever posted, and what would happen if the house, or their audiences, knew the truth? Then imagine the one room they are most desperate to enter.
2. Cover Story
Craft a scene where two old friends run into each other and both aggressively lie about how successful they are, while the reader sees the bleak reality of both.
Focus On:
creating a conversation where every boast is also a defense mechanism, revealing insecurity beneath apparent confidence.
letting the reader see what the characters cannot, using setting and physical details to expose the contrast between their claims and circumstances.
giving both friends something they genuinely admire or envy about the other, preventing the scene from becoming a simple contest between two liars.
using their shared history as subtext, allowing old wounds and forgotten ambitions to shape what they choose to say.
Skills to Practice:
Writing dialogue in which characters avoid the subjects that matter most
Dramatic irony by giving readers information that changes the meaning of what characters say
Characterization through status displays, evasions, interruptions, and carefully chosen boasts
Tip: Give each friend one truthful statement hidden or obscured by their exaggerations.
Feeling Stuck?
Picture where they meet. A public space like a grocery store, airport, hospital waiting room, school reunion, or coffee shop can immediately create circumstances that make their performances harder to sustain.
3. Bitter Eulogy
Write a eulogy given by a bitter sibling who decides to completely dismantle the idealized ‘golden child’ myth often told about the newly deceased at a family funeral.
Focus On:
allowing the speaker’s bitterness to coexist with grief, because anger and love can occupy the same emotional space.
revealing the family mythology gradually, showing how the ‘golden child’ became a symbol rather than a fully known person.
giving the speaker moments of self-awareness, particularly when they realize their version of the deceased may also be incomplete.
making the audience part of the conflict, since every sentence uttered can challenge what relatives expect to hear at a funeral.
Skills to Practice:
Creating a distinctive narrative voice that carries both resentment and vulnerability
Revealing backstory through selective anecdotes instead of exposition
Complicating a character’s apparent certainty by introducing details that challenge their own interpretation
Tip: Don’t make the entire eulogy cruel. One unexpectedly tender memory can make the bitterness more complicated and human.
Feeling Stuck?
Write three things the family always said about the ‘golden child’, followed by three things the speaker knows were never said aloud.
4. An Honest Interview
Describe an interview where both a celebrity and a journalist use a magic potion that forces them to speak with complete honesty while trying to maintain a professional yet friendly persona.
Focus On:
using the potion to expose the difference between honesty and tact, since absolute truth does not automatically produce kindness.
making both participants vulnerable, giving each person something they desperately want to conceal.
letting professional conventions collide with involuntary honesty, particularly through polite questions and answers that become increasingly uncomfortable.
exploring whether total honesty actually creates understanding, or whether some truths make connection more difficult.
Skills to Practice:
Writing dialogue that changes rapidly as characters lose control of what they reveal
Balancing comedy and discomfort without allowing either emotion to overwhelm the scene
Using a partially unrealistic premise to investigate an ordinary human dilemma
Tip: Give the journalist and celebrity different definitions of what counts as a dangerous truth.
Feeling Stuck?
Start with the most harmless interview question imaginable, such as “How are you doing today?” Then write the answer that neither person expected to hear.
5. The Shaky Defense
Write a suspenseful scene where a group of coworkers must perfectly align on a fake story about why a major project failed, but one person is about to crack.
Focus On:
making the group’s invented story specific enough to require coordination, so every detail becomes a potential liability.
giving the person who is about to crack a personal reason for wanting to tell the truth rather than simply making them nervous.
using small inconsistencies to build suspense, allowing an innocent question or forgotten detail to threaten their entire story.
exploring the shifting power within the group, especially as coworkers decide whether protecting themselves is worth sacrificing someone else.
Skills to Practice:
Building suspense through information that characters possess but can’t safely share
Writing ensemble scenes where each character has a different objective
Pacing and gradually shortening the distance between a secret and its exposure
Tip: Before writing the scene, decide exactly what happened and exactly what the coworkers are claiming happened.
Feeling Stuck?
Give each coworker one piece of information that the others don’t know. Then place them in a meeting where their boss starts asking questions.
Reflective Prompts About The Stories We Tell Others
6. Curated Self
Look at your most recent social media post or update or text message exchange and list three truths about your day that you intentionally omitted.
Focus On:
what you instinctively leave out, particularly those details that might complicate the impression you wanted to create.
whether each omission was protective, practical, habitual, or intentional.
the difference between privacy and performance, since withholding something doesn’t automatically mean you’re being deceptive.
the emotional story beneath each missing detail, especially what the omission might suggest about how you want to be perceived.
Skills to Practice:
Observing your own communication without immediately judging it
Identifying the difference between facts, interpretations, and impressions
Writing candidly about ordinary moments that rarely make it into public updates
Tip: Choose three omitted truths that are small but revealing rather than the most dramatic secrets you could possibly disclose.
Feeling Stuck?
Complete these sentences: “What people saw was…” and “What they did not see was…”
7. Reputation Trap
What is a compliment people frequently give you that secretly makes you feel trapped or forced to perform?
Focus On:
the identity hidden inside or insinuated by the compliment, especially if people repeatedly expect you to behave in accordance to it.
how praise can become pressure, even when the person offering it has good intentions.
what you fear might happen if you stopped embodying that admired quality.
separating the quality itself from the expectations attached to it, since being capable, dependable, calm, funny, generous, or strong can still come with unwanted obligations.
Skills to Practice:
Recognizing the emotional complexity within positive experiences
Distinguishing an authentic trait from a role you have learned to perform
Writing about expectations without turning the reflection into a simple judgment of other people
Tip: Think of a compliment that makes you smile in public but sigh with frustration when you’re alone.
Feeling Stuck?
Try beginning with: “People always tell me I am the one who…” Then finish the sentence honestly.
8. Family Role
What specific character role, such as ‘the responsible one’, ‘the rebel’, or ‘the victim’, do you automatically play whenever you go back home for holidays?
Focus On:
the role your family seems to expect from you, including the behaviors that reinforce it.
how quickly you return to that role, even if you have changed significantly outside the family setting.
what the role gives you as well as what it costs you, because familiar identities can provide belonging alongside frustration.
who you become when you step outside the assigned character, even briefly.
Skills to Practice:
Observing relational patterns across time rather than focusing on a single incident
Separating your current identity from an identity formed earlier in life
Exploring family dynamics with specificity, honesty, and compassion
Tip: Think about what happens within the first hour of arriving home for a holiday. Roles often reappear quickly through small interactions.
Feeling Stuck?
Write the sentence: “As soon as I walk through the door, everyone expects me to…” Then continue writing without editing yourself.
9. Warning Label
If you had to give new acquaintances an honest warning about your defensive habits instead of a polished first impression, what would it say?
Focus On:
the behavior you exhibit when you feel exposed, misunderstood, criticized, or uncertain.
what your defensive habits are trying to protect without treating them strictly as flaws.
how your defensive behavior might appear to someone who doesn’t understand its origins.
what you would want another person to know before they accidentally trigger your defensive responses.
Skills to Practice:
Writing about yourself with honesty without turning self-reflection into self-punishment
Connecting present behavior with underlying needs or fears
Using concise, concrete language to describe complicated emotional patterns
Tip: Imagine the warning label as something kind but brutally accurate rather than humorous or self-deprecating.
Feeling Stuck?
Finish this sentence: “If you see me doing this, I probably feel…” Then ask yourself what you actually might need at that moment.
10. Audience to Impress
Who is the one person in your life you feel the most pressure to impress, and what lie are you telling them to keep up appearances?
Focus On:
why this particular person’s opinion carries unusual weight, including what their approval represents to you.
the version of yourself you perform around them, whether it involves success, confidence, happiness, stability, independence, or something else.
the lies you might tell without assuming it’s entirely deliberate, since people sometimes maintain appearances through omission or selective storytelling.
what might change if you no longer needed to impress this person.
Skills to Practice:
Writing about vulnerability with specificity rather than general statements
Identifying the emotional stakes behind an apparently ordinary lie
Imagining an alternative version of a relationship without the pressure of performance
Tip: The most revealing lie may not be something you have explicitly said. It could be something you consistently allow another person to believe.
Feeling Stuck?
Ask yourself: “What do I most want this person to think my life looks like?” Then write what your life actually looks like when nobody is watching, especially them.
Join the Drafters Workshop Chat and Share Your Writing
Writing about then discussing the stories we tell others can open up questions that are difficult to explore or understand alone.
You’re invited to join the Drafters Workshop Chat at any time this September to share your responses to any of these prompts and compare your perspectives with others to see how differently another writer can approach the same prompt.
You don’t need to have a polished draft before joining the chat. A paragraph, a few sentences, an unfinished scene, or even an observation from your journal can jumpstart a meaningful exchange. Also, feel free to share some of your work unrelated to these prompts in the chat!
Get a conversation going in the chat by answering this question: What is one story you regularly tell other people about yourself, and what does that story leave out?
The goal of the chat isn’t to expose or criticize anyone’s private truth or story. It’s to become more attentive to the stories we construct, the details we leave out of them, and the complicated reasons we sometimes need those stories to be crafted the way they are. And, of course, to support each other!
🙏 Again, thanks so much for being here.
💬I can’t wait to see your next comment or chat reply.
Until then, happy writing and reading! ✨✍️✨
♥️🔄Please don’t forget to like and share this post if you enjoyed it so others get the opportunity to write with us too. Thank you! 🫶
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Go Deeper with Daily Drafters Exclusives
This month: The Stories We Carry Writing Collection
This collection offers a month of guided writing exercises, mini workshops, and creative writing experiments designed to take you beyond a single prompt and into a deeper creative practice. It gives you the creative spark and space you need to explore memory, identity, inheritance, perspective, voice, and the stories we tell ourselves and others. It will also encourage you to consider how those stories shape the work we create and the creative lives we lead.
Inside this collection, you’ll find 30 original writing prompts (designed as mini writing workshops) across five sections with focused themes, craft-focused exercises, curated reading suggestions, reflective questions, and three optional month-long writing challenges designed to help you develop your ideas, explore your personal material and stories, and build a consistent writing practice.
You can follow the prompts in order, choose the exercises that speak to you, or return to a section whenever you need a new way to explore your writing craft. As a paid subscriber, you will also be able to come back to the collection throughout the month or any other time you feel like exploring The Stories We Carry in the future.