Prompts

Looks like I might be doing more writing prompts, but concentrating on flash fiction for them.

Flash fiction’s definition is a moving target. In a broad sense, it’s a piece of fiction which is less than 1,000 words. I’m going to keep mine under 500 words, but actually aim for a length closer to 250 words.

The Deadline Dames writing prompts will be one of the key sources of my Flash Fiction. They’re a lot of fun and a great way to see how a variety of writers approach the same prompt. In the case of the Dames, it’s a picture-prompt. They host a prompt every month and actually offer reading/writing-related prize to the Dame-voted winner(s)! How’s that for motivation?

In addition, the Dames themselves are the selfsame writers I love and the advice they hand out on their blog is both entertaining and useful. Highly recommended resource for book-lovers.

Flash Fiction

Why Flash Fiction? I have too many large writing projects on my plate at the moment. Even so, it’s good practice to stretch your creative muscles and shift gears. Flash fiction allows me to do that without a large time and effort investment into each piece. It’s play. Practice. Like a sketchbook or doodles in the margins of my page notes at school.

Flash Fiction is, in reality, a very viable and serious writing path – just because I’m treating it like a vacation, that doesn’t mean it’s any less “real writing” than novels.

But (as many/all of you know by now) writing SHORTER is something I’m not very good at. Forcing myself to set a scene, world, and characters in 250 words is good practice to teach me to tighten up my longer writing as well.

As a result of this newfound attempt at brevity, I’ve created a new category of writing in the Story Potpourri section of my site. The Flash Fiction header will hold these tentative toe-dips into writing.

The newest piece is Exorcist.