Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Christmas In A Strange Place”

First up, last week’s challenge — “The Unexplainable Photo” — is live and worth checking out. Killer stories there. If you’re looking for the next Blackbloom challenge this week — there shan’t be one at present. The last challenge received only tepid response (I think eight total entries), which isn’t enough to sustain the challenge. My hope (assumption?) is that the holidays maybe cut into the Blackbloom stuff, so I’ll try again with the worldbuilding challenge in the new year. Check back in another two weeks. (Which means, the Create-Your-Own-Myth challenge is still open.)

For now, then, it’s all flash fiction challenges, all the way down —

Today’s challenge is simple enough.

The challenge is the phrase, “Christmas in a strange place.”

What does that mean? I dunno. Prison? A distant moon? An underwater base? A WWII submarine? Your call. That’s why it’s a challenge, after all. Oh, except the challenge is heightened:

You’ve got till tomorrow, Christmas Eve, by noon EST, to write.

Not a week, then.

Merely one day.

You have up to 1000 words, as usual. Any genre. Post at your blog, make sure we have a link. By now I expect you know the drill, but there it is, just the same.

One random participant will receive… well, I don’t know what. A holiday gift of sorts.

Now get to writing, my little elves and reindeer.

terribleminds

36 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: “Christmas In A Strange Place””

  8. Here’s my entry:
    http://www.betterthanbullets.com/flash-fiction-challenge-christmas-in-a-strange-place/

    Thanks for the writing challenge. Couldn’t figure out what the fuck to do today now that I had a day off for the first time in forever. I wanted to write but couldn’t get into it. I am not a great big fan of Christmas and didn’t intend to do this challenge but then an idea slipped into my head and I couldn’t dislodge it. So I wrote it.

    Reply

  9. oooh good news on the myth front I have an idea but alas I’ve been doing 12 hour shifts at work finishing at midnight for the past 5 days for the Christmas rush so haven’t written a thing let alone for this. Have a day off next week though so may get it doing.

    Now I best sleep have to be awake in 5 and a half hours to get back into work with a 8 hour turn around between shifts. (I get a day off this week as well but that is Christmas Day so that won’t be a day off but a day doing stuff with the family).

    Merry Christmas everyone. Love to all your mothers.

    Reply

  13. Here is my entry for Christmas in A Strange Place -> http://wp.me/px2EF-9r

    Its loosely titled ‘Wishbones’, a short flash about a Christmas Miracle in the most unlikely of places.

    Really enjoyed writing to this deadline, keeps the momentum I built up with the fridayflash I wrote yesterday, cheers for the push Chuck!

    Reply

  15. […] Chuck had a flash fiction challenge this week for something Christmas-themed, and he wanted it in less than 48 hours. Time to cheat. I took an old blog entry I had written and gave it some much-needed editing. I feel certain that anything I can say in 1600 words I can say better in a thousand. You have to pick that thousand carefully. Anyway, what he wanted was something about Christmas in an unusual setting. Nothing is more unusual to me than a pizza place. To see more catch a one-horse open sleigh and slide on over here: Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Christmas in a Strange Place […]

    Reply

  17. Okay, with time being short, I admit that I cheated, but only because I was really hoping for an excuse to bring this story to you. Like much of what I write, this is a true story from My Godforsaken Life.

    The Ghost of Pizza Past (Redux)

    And I want to say “Thank you, Chuck.” After doing a number of these challenges, my writing might not be better but my editing certainly is. Anything I can say in 1600 words I can say in 1000 words, and say it better. I should go back and re-write all my ridiculously long entries into 1000-word pieces.

    Reply

  25. Poetic License onto real-life events = fiction. It’s really sappy and all, just in time for Christmas. I don’t normally do sappy. The typical author inside of me normally would have turned this into some weird blood bath or what not. But the New Moon and the holiday has me all melancholy.

    I give you: “Christmas in the Land of Phillip”
    http://www.casondrabrewster.com/?p=332

    Peace.

    Reply

  35. […] of flash. As is usual, this comes from a challenge waged by Chuck Wendig.  The prompt is “Christmas in a strange place“. Any genre. 1000 words. You have one day. Go. My first thought, honestly, was to write […]

    Reply

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