Three-Minute Fiction, Round 11

You have until Sunday to come up with 600 words for NPR's latest round of Three-Minute Fiction:

Write a story in which a character finds an object that he or she has no intention of returning.

until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Sunday, May 12.

Russell says this prompt could inspire everything from horror stories to comedies to love stories. She says there's a lot of dramatic potential, particularly in the moment the object is found.

"Instead of using the found thing as an opportunity to prove that you're virtuous, you're a good person, you're gonna turn it in to the Amtrak lady," Russell says, "maybe you find something and the initial surprise is just, 'Wow, I've discovered ... a desire, a greediness.' "

Read the rest here, and good luck!

Reflections on Week Eleven

 

[Photo copyright gregcookland.com]

This one had the potential to overwhelm me with feelings of Oh God, all the research!, as in Week Two, but in just trying to get it down ("it" being "anything at all"), my own musings about what we owe to those who suffered so that we can be here today turned into a description of a pair of statues that stands in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston. 

I saw an opportunity to turn this into something compatible with a contest that intrigued me, so I created the "voicemail" framing device and blammo now it's a very short story.

I've been doing a lot of geneological research and considered going in that direction instead, but I'm not quite there yet. Someday, precious...

Anyway, read the completed story here! I'm planning to submit it by Sunday, so if you have thoughts now would be the time. 

All short-short stories considered

A cool short fiction contest from NPR that I'm only just finding out about:

Here's the premise: Write a piece of original fiction that can be read in about three minutes (no more than 600 words).

[...]

Here's her twist for Round 10:

Write a story in the form of a voice-mail message.

"It doesn't have to be crazy, but it could be crazy. By nature, first person — basically, a soliloquy or a monologue," she tells Guy Raz, contest curator and host of NPR's TED Radio Hour.

"It could start out, 'Hey, it's me, I'm glad you didn't pick up,' or it could start out, 'You don't know me, but ..." It could be any number of dramatic scenarios which will unwind in the three minutes," she says.

Read the rules in their entirety here!

Week Nine: Microfiction week!

So here's the deal: these "weeks" are taking longer and longer to complete (Week Eight, for instance, was almost four months long), so for Week Nine we're going to try something different...

MICROFICTION!!!

(This is my caffeinated time. You be quiet.)

Microfiction (also called flash fiction, short-short stories, etc.) can be 200, 100, even 50 words long. After putting you all through a story 6000+ words long, I figured some brevity was in order.

This will also give me an excuse to fly through some of the more... I don't want to say "clichéd" but... beginner ideas I had during my freshman year. 

So! One a day, Monday through Friday. Get 'em all here (links will be added as they are posted):

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday