Flash Fiction Challenge: “The Opening Lines, Revealed”

Ahem, ahem.

Hear ye, hear ye.

Here are the three opening lines I’ve chosen:

Brendan Gannon: “Everyone else remembers it as the day the saucers came, but I remember it as the day a man in a suit shot my father.”

Joe Parrino: “Three truths will I tell you and one lie.”

Delilah Dawson: “Thursday was out to get me.”

This was, as so many contests here are anymore, a tough one to pick. Nearly 200 entries (!) and many of them good. (Though, pro-tip: bad spelling and/or typos will never help you win here.)

Here’s roughly what I ended up looking for:

I wanted lines that told multiple potential stories. Meaning, a writer could read it and find a world of stories coming out of that one line — not just the one obvious one, say. Some lines were very specific to a genre or to an event and so I hesitated using them, despite their inherent awesomeness. The exception here might be the “saucer” one, but it was so cool I had to use it. Don’t judge me.

So, the three who won:

Contact me, I shall hook you up with a copy of Bait Dog.

(Bait Dog is now available, by the way. Just $2.99 until next Wednesday. Plug, plug, hint, hint.)

Everybody else:

You’ve got 1000 words.

Write a story using one of the above opening lines.

Due by Friday, Aug 17th, at noon EST. Post online, link in the comments.

You know the drill.

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