It’s that time again: the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest is happening today. Right now, as I type, in fact. Each time I seem to get just a little bit better at turning out a half-decent short story within a day; last time I wrote a story that I still actually like, a few months later.

I’m stuck! My story has no ending!

This time round the contest theme connected to a wedding in a small chapel. After a few paragraphs of brainstorming and free-writing, I found some interesting characters and got them on their way to the chapel. I’m really happy with the first 650 words of my story, considering it all came slithering out on a Sunday morning. Right now, somebody in the story needs to object to the marriage. The word limit for the contest this time is 950, so I’ve got plenty of room to get a great ending in. Because, as everybody knows, there’s no good story without a good ending.

But I’ve got stuck. I’ve tried walking away from the story for a couple of hours. Daydreaming about it while in the shower, which usually provides me with tonnes of ideas. Asking my husband. Googling the topic. (Who would’ve thought that “objecting at a wedding” would have been such a talked about topic on the web?) And so on.

So my only solution now, apart from giving up (I promise I won’t) is to open the file again and just keep typing and typing until something decent comes out. I’ve got my subconscious on the job, even my husband keeps popping into my room with new ideas, and somewhere, somehow, the right ending is waiting for me. I’ll let you know if I find it.

Update: The story has an ending!

Phew! This strategy worked. Random brainstorming and just writing more and more finally led me to an answer and an ending. I tried to follow last contest’s strategy of having some twists followed by more twists, and I hope I succeeded. I think the story ended up okay, although it’s not a topic I would usually write about. I’ve sent it off and that means it’s time to get back to working on my novel after this brief short fiction interlude. The bonus is that this means I’ve now submitted two short stories to markets or contests this year so according to my goals I just have 18 more to go.