Tag Archive for Short Story

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: 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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Planning Stories by Interrogation

January 28, 2013 Writing No comments

fiction planning writingA few days ago I came up with something, an idea, a method of planning stories and tales that really worked for me. It’s not a complex method and to be fair it probably isn’t even all that new to a lot of writers out there either but it is new to me, and I find it very effective.This method it more effective for flash fiction and short stories, as novels require a greater degree of planning then what I am about to describe,

“But what is this method” I hear you all cry out with a near tangible curiosity. “What is your ever so brilliant method. A method so unorthodox and revolutionary that it will completely change the way that we all think about planning stories?”

Well in short (and did I detect a note of sarcasm just then) you imagine yourself as a hard-nosed detective interrogating the crap out of your storyline. Start with a simple premise and then keep asking questions. A fairly standard technique I know, nothing new and impressive here. The secret for me is that you have to hammer out your questions as quickly as possible. Scarcely giving yourself time to think of the answers.

But before you can start the interrogation, you need a basic premise. A simple idea that you can hang the rest of your questions from. If you have been given a prompt for the flash fiction, start with this as the premise, then just keep asking questions. Read more

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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Flash Fiction: Where Elfs Dare

December 16, 2012 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 3 comments

christmas tree xmas pine bauble tinsel

I have finally managed to drag my motivation out of its ditch and write some Flash Fiction. Specifically, I’ve written a piece of Fiction for the Terribleminds.com Friday Flash Fiction Challenge. In Chuck’s own words…

“I love the concept of the “War on Christmas.” I don’t mean that I like the actual faux-bullshit “war,” I mean, I like that term.

I want you to use that term literally.

I want you to write a war about – or even against — Christmas.”

So here it is, my tale of a Christmas war.

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Flash Fiction: Desert Music

October 19, 2012 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 6 comments

flash fiction sand hot sun desert dunes saharaFor this weeks flash fiction challenge at Terribleminds.com we were given a list of ten ‘ingredients’ that could be used in a piece of flash fiction. We had to choose five out of those ten ingredients and use them in a piece of 1000 word flash fiction. I could have chosen the ones I wanted but I felt that the ingredients were all of a similar vein so it might be more interesting if I randomly picked the five I had to use.

I used random.org to generate a random number which lead me to the following five ingredients.

  • A Missing Corpse
  • A Broken Music Box
  • An Ancient Curse
  • A Half Burned Notebook
  • A Venomous Creature

As usual comments are both welcome and encouraged. Let me know what you think.

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Flash Fiction: Dead Desire

October 5, 2012 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 6 comments

flash fiction zombies undead story tale love romanceFor this weeks flash fiction challenge over at Terribleminds.com, we were asked to write our flash fiction based on one of these five titles…

  • The Monkey’s Pageant
  • Dead-Clock’s Revenge
  • The Black Lighthouse
  • Bright Stars Gone To Black
  • Plastic Dreams & Doll Desires

…or any combination of those words without adding any more of our own. Well, seeing as the word dead is in there and I did promise Jo of TheHappyLogophile.com that the next flash fiction I wrote would include zombies I came up with this little tale of undead love.

Oh, technically the zombie should have been in my last flash fiction but I couldn’t think of any way of putting it into this, so I saved it and thought I’d add it to this one instead.

Hope you like it, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

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