In our creative writing sessions at Bath Central Library,  we frequently ask writers to create a title for their short pieces. It’s good practice. The short story writer and novelist, Tessa Hadley said  “a good title crisps the story up, seals it, like a top on a bottle”

Often short stories entered in competitions are let down by the title. A magazine editor recently posted an article that said one of the top ten most used story titles on submitted stories, was ‘Dust’.

Sometimes, it’s freeing to choose a title first then write your story draft. There is no copyright on titles so, for example, you can flip through a book of poems and pick out a title that appeals.

This week,  use both the prompt and the title of this post to spark off a story.  Your story will be called ‘Llamas in the Rain’ Your questions are:

Who owns the llamas? Why are they a central feature in this story? What happened on this rainy day?  Is there a memory involved?