WP Prompt: How do you write what people actually want to read?

I pick a name for a character from either my notebook or a site like my current favorite: The Name Generator-The Perfect name for Every Occasion. When I have a name it feels like I know their story, so I just start writing.

I like to use prompts too, but I keep in my I like to write my Twilight Zone  stories so I have a tendency to not switch cars on the train and I twist the prompts up a bit.

I do like to use pictures in my stories because illustrations are fun and they keep me focused on what I’m writing.

When I write a story I will try to do this thing that my Grandpa taught me when I was learning to tell stories. He told me to look around the room and pick something the jacket someone was wearing, what was in the candy dish? What color were the curtains? Stuff like that. Then he said to work it into my story and when I was telling it the people in the room would get pulled in because I gave the  something familiar that grabbed their attention and they didn’t even know it was happening.

So when I write I will always put a germ of something in there that people know, that they’ve touched or smelled. Its nothing grand. It’s like a road marker. Don’t ask me how that works. All I know is that sometimes I write a story and someone will ask me if it’s true or if it’s someone I know, like  friend or a family member they’ll say something like they liked what I wrote, but they don’t remember when ‘that’ happened.

When I  go back over my work sometimes I find a stories from years ago and I’ll say, ” dang, that was a good one. ” and there are other times when I go, ” well, you know I finished it. ” But I leave the good, the bad and the WTF stories on my blog so I can see how I’ve come along.

When I was about 6 years old I worked like the Devil trying to bag the last soul in the Universe to learn to read. I did that because I wanted to write stories.

I think that because I was so wrong when I started to write stories that I never really had the notion that other people might read what I wrote.

Look, you could have knocked me over with feather when I started to win essay contests and my themes got A’s and my teachers told my parents that maybe they should steer me towards developing that skill.

This was in the 1970’s, we didn’t have blogs or social media platforms or the internet, so when I wrote it really was for myself or my family or teachers or classmates. Mostly thought I wrote for myself because I had too.

I don’t write stories that I think people will actually read. I write stories that take root in my head because saw a name or a picture and I write them and sure, I hope against hope someone will read it  and  enjoy it.