Archive for Contest Entries

Flash Fiction: True Wealth

May 22, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing No comments

flash fiction errand wealth story penI have fallen behind with my flash fiction writing lately. Well the latest challenge by Chuck Wendig from Terribleminds.com was enough to stir me from my dilatory slumber. He provided us with a link that sent us off to a Fantasy Character concept generator. With one click of a button, five fantasy concepts were generated. All I had to do was choose one of them and then use it for the basis of a 1000 word piece of flash fiction.

Out of the five concepts I had, I chose…

“an ensorcelled errand boy is trying to rid herself of a curse.”

Hope you enjoy it, but if you think there are ways it can be improved, please let me know in the comments. I’m still learning. Read more

Flash Fiction: Phenomena

April 14, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 4 comments

flash fiction ufo chryssalid alien attackThis week’s flash fiction challenge by Terribleminds.com follows on from the previous weeks challenge. The previous weeks challenge was to write a corker of an opening line. Chuck Wendig would then choose the lines that he thought were the best. Well this week, we have to use one of those opening lines as a starter for a piece of flash fiction. Any genre, any style, but it has to be less than 1000 words as.

The line I chose to start with, well it’s kinda obvious as it is the first line but I will write it here as well out of a sense of completion.

“My brother’s birth was preceded by three distinct and inexplicable phenomena.”

You see what I did with it? Well, I hope you like it and feel free to add a comment or two.

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Flash Fiction: Cube Route

March 23, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 4 comments

flash fiction library booksWell, I’m still trying to get back into a regular writing routine, and the flash fiction challenges hosted at Terribleminds.com are a damn good way of doing it. The challenge this week was to take five from a given list of ten words and write a piece of fiction in which those words are the main elements. This time I can’t just crowbar a word or phrase in, they have to be elements of the story.

I chose the following words:

  • Storm
  • Cube
  • Ethereal
  • Undertaker
  • Library

I’ve gotten a bit out of practice with these flash fiction challenges so if you do read this and have the sudden urge to leave a comment it would be graciously received (providing it is graciously written of course) and very helpful.

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Flash Fiction: Inspiration

March 13, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 3 comments

abandoned factory industrial building ruin Ok, so it has been way too long since I have posted anything, especially flash fiction. This is due to two things. Firstly, I have been having some major concentration issues with the release of Simcity. I’ve been finding it difficult to focus on anything except increasing the efficiency of my mass transport network in my gambling town. Secondly, whenever I have dragged my ass out of the pit I’m in to write, I have been trying to write bits of my novel instead.

So, I sit here in a well-known coffee shop franchise far away from my computer so I have no excuse not to get some writing done, and hoorah I’ve done it. It may be a little rough around the edges but I don’t think it is too bad. I’m trying to work on that whole description thing which I’ve heard is quite important for telling tales and writing fiction.

Any who, this week’s flash fiction from Terribleminds.com is to randomly generate a sentence (from here) and use it in your flash fiction entry of no more than 1000 words. Well, I clicked a few times (I was allowed up to 10 clicks) and I got this…

“The researcher burns the rabid musician?”

I have to be honest I kinda side-stepped the use of the sentence because I didn’t want to write something about rabid musicians being burned.

Well, here it is. Hope you enjoy and you feel the need to comment. Hopefully good, but bad’s welcome too just keep it constructive.

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Flash Fiction: Devil’s Advocaat

February 19, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing No comments

Advocaat bottleThe gist of this week’s flash fiction is to take something from my own life and re-tell it by pushing it through the Magic Fictionising Machine. The first thing that occurred to me was that nothing at all interesting or in any way noteworthy has happened to me in my entire life.  I quickly shook away this rather absurd thought. I’ve been alive for over 32 years something interesting will most certainly have happened.  I just needed to think what it was.

I struggled over this for hours, until my brain got bored with stressing about it. So instead, I did my usual trick…

‘Just think of something; anything that I can write about and go from there. Maybe it will turn out OK once that writing machine has had its literary way with it.’

My brain whirred and clicked into action, it was too soon after brushing my teeth to consider having another coffee so I was on my own with this one. Then it came to me, there’s a rite of passage that everyone goes through; something that not only defines you as an adult but also dictates most of your teenage life. Today I’m going to re-tell the story of the first time I drank a little more than any normal person should.

So here we go. Hope you enjoy it, if not… well it’s keeping me busy. Oh and in lieu of the comments for the previous flash fiction I will be taking my sweet time and checking it through thoroughly. Read more

Flash Fiction: Terminus

February 10, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 10 comments

This weeks flash fiction is based around these rather spectacular Russian photos, and some of them are pretty goddamn weird. I advise everyone to have a look at them, and just try to imagine the crazy-ass circumstances that would have led to that photo being taken. Anyway, the Terribleminds.com flash fiction challenge requires me to choose one of those photo’s and use it as inspiration for a piece of flash fiction of no more than 1000 words.

I chose this fantastic image…

russian photo number 17

…and used it to come up with this. I hope you like it, and want to click the little like button at the bottom or even better leave me a comment packed full of free and useful advice. :)

Thanks for reading.

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Flash Fiction: Tea with Dr Chaos

January 27, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 2 comments

free writing calligraphy story fiction taleMore flash fiction goodness, and this week it is all about motifs. Terribleminds.com gave us a list of motifs, settings and sub-genres to randomly choose from. Whatever we chose or generated randomly should be used as part of this weeks flash fiction challenge entry. I rolled my metaphoric dice and I got…

  • Motif – skulls
  • Subgenre – Cozy Mystery
  • Setting – A villain volcano lair

Now, I know the dictionary definition of a motif…

“A recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work.”

… but I have never every thought about using one in fiction so forgive me if my usage is a little clumsy. I would love to know about any advice you may have for using motifs. Is it really as simple as just mentioning the motif a few times? I’m guessing not

Here is…

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Flash Fiction: Sparks of Guilt

January 20, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing One comment

flash fiction challenge writing story penThis weeks Flash Fiction challenge hosted at Terribleminds.com is a picture based challenge. He gave us a link to this website that showed us 24 truly astonishing pictures from places you would struggle to believe actually existed and weren’t Photoshop creations. All we had to do was to choose one of them and use it as inspiration for your piece of flash fiction.

I choose this photo of the Crystal Caves in Skaftafell in Iceland. Luckily the flash fiction challenge stipulated that I only had to be inspired by the photo and not actually include it, because I deviated a little from my original idea. Hopefully, you can at least see where I got my inspiration.

As usual, I am always looking for comments, help and advice etc. So if you have any of that, please leave it in the comments below.

Here it is…

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Flash Fiction: The Untold Legend of Skull Ridge

January 13, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 2 comments

cowboy western horse rancher In a similar vein to last weeks Flash Fiction hosted at Terribleminds.com, we have a whole new set of lists to generate our Flash fiction details from. With a deft flick of the wrist, I rolled my D10’s and generated the following items.

  • Sub-Genre: Weird West
  • Conflict: Someone’s been poisoned
  • Must feature: A mysterious stranger

Oh, and when I say I rolled a D10, I didn’t. That was a bit of creative license on my part, I used an online number generator but I thought the dice version was punchier.

Anyway, please let me know what you think in the comments bit. What did you like? What didn’t you like? How would you change it? etc. It’s all very helpful to me.

So here it is…

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Flash Fiction: The Cat & Mouse Murders

January 4, 2013 Contest Entries, Writing 3 comments

flash fiction mouse cat murderHere we go the first piece of Flash Fiction for 2013, and it ended up being a bizarre one. Thanks once more to Chuck Wendig and Terribleminds.com for the challenge.

Chuck gave us three lists, Sub-genre, Setting and a further list giving you something that your piece of Flash Fiction must include. All we had to do was randomly chose one item from each three lists and put them all together into a flash fiction. Well I rolled, and I got the following…

  • Sub Genre – Splatterpunk
  • Setting – An Abandoned Wall-Mart
  • Must Feature – Talking Animals

So there you go, hope you enjoy it and if you want to leave a comment, well that’s what the section at the bottom is for.

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