There's this cool group on Facebook & Twitter called #ThursThreads Flash Fiction, hosted by author Siobhan Muir, and judged by various editors and authors. Every Thursday, participants are given a prompt to use in a new piece of flash fiction, which is based on a line taken from the previous week's winning story. This is not only a cool way to generate new story ideas, but also to interact with other authors. It's a beautiful thing to give everyone the same directions, and come back with unique pieces.
I participated this past Thursday--week 245--for the first time. Writing of the piece took about 5 minutes, and another few to check for errors (but I see I missed some!) and fill out the form on the blog. What's interesting about writing flash fiction of a small word count is getting your reader's attention, holding it, as well as including the basic elements of storytelling (description, dialogue, characters, plot). But because of the word count parameters, there's a little more leeway with beginning, middle, and end. Sorting through what's most important to accomplish the most elements is challenging, but very fun.
I would highly recommend other writers to try flash fiction on their own, or by participating. You can find Siobhan's blog here.
I'm very pleased to say that I won week 245! My prompt was "That makes two of us." I wonder what line they'll take from my story for next week's prompt!
No comments:
Post a Comment