Tag: writing prompts

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Flash thoughts

I’ve been pondering on flash fiction. This month I’m writing some every day. Here are a few thoughts about the process:

– It’s a useful exercise to use a prompt just to get the creative brain firing. Simply setting words down.

– A strict word limit can produce unexpected juxapositions. As in this micro I wrote this morning using Meg Sefton‘s prompt crisp for 50 word fiction:

First frost and the white ground is calling to me to imprint it. I run alongside tracks of mice and vole, earlier risers. Breath of dogs fogs the air, the shouts of their people boom and retreat. The colours of this time of day are muted, waiting for sun stroking.

I don’t think I would have come up with ‘sun stroking’ if it hadn’t been for the constraint of the work limit.

– Collaging the fragments which float out from my brain in response to different prompts may show up connections.

-At this stage this is all raw material, which I will return to later, to cut, shape and stitch into finished stories.

 

And here’s a picture, which could also be a writing prompt…..

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Cat on the cover of a writing book

 

 

Coming next: Guest post

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What are you writing this November?

Last year I took part in NaNoWriMo. That was fun and gave me lots of material to work on.

This year I’m back to FlashNano. Nancy Stohlman gives great prompts every day during November. You can use these as you like – for me they are so useful to get my writing brain going, and the little stories I start here may bear fruit later – who knows?!

I’m also using prompts from Meg Sefton to write a 50-word micro each day in November, posted on Twitter with the hashtoag #50FlashNov19. Another little brain workout.

Here are a couple of the micros I’ve written so far:

Day 1 – prompt #ripe

I scan the room. Grey suits, haggard faces, the smell of age. I should never have trusted the photograph. The line is so fine between fullness and the slide into the decay. There, he’s waving. I recognise the eyes. But the flesh is weak. Mine that is. I turn away.

Day 5 – prompt #cat

They said they had to keep us in for three weeks. My sister and I had no say in the matter. They said we were feral. I have no idea what that means in human, but when they finally let us out we climbed over the house. To show them.

Huge thanks to Nancy and Meg for sharing the prompts.

Who’s joining the party?

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Crazy cat Doodle – photo copyright Cath Barton

 

Coming next: More about flash fiction