Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: 200 Words At A Time, Part One

Last Week’s Challenge: Find Your Favorite Opening Line

Administrative head’s up — still tallying which of the opening lines were used the most in the last challenge (unless, ahem, anyone feels like taking that bullet for me).

This week is going to be the start of a five-part challenge that should take us up to and through Christmas. This is a bit of an experiment, so, who the hell knows if it’s going to work? But it is what it is and hey, I wanna try this out, see what happens.

I want you to write the first 200 words of a story.

This will not be a complete story.

Again: this is just the start of a story.

This is, in fact, 1/5th of a story.

You will finish this by noon EST on the following Friday, which is the 29th of November.

Then — and I’ll remind you of this next Friday — you’ll take someone else’s 200 words and continue that story for 200 more (for a total of 400 words). The goal being to end up with a 1000-word story after five total challenges. Each time around you’ll grab someone else’s story and add 200 words to it. We’ll play this weird narrative whisper-down-the-lane variant until roughly the end of the year. So, for right now…

Post your 200 words at your blog.

Link back here. (That part is critical, obviously.)

You’ve got a week.

Go write!

terribleminds

302 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: 200 Words At A Time, Part One”

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    • This could be the prompt you needed to start one! Both blogger and wordpress.com are free and easy to set up with a really basic blog that still looks nice. Get going with your flash fiction on that, and who knows what it will turn into! Good luck.

      Reply

    • Just make one! I didn’t have one before the last Flash Fiction…it’s easy…and now I think I might actually start blogging…and you know…saying stuff. Blame Chuck Wendig!

      Reply

    • WordPress and Blogger both have free options, and lots of free themes for decoration. Might take a few hours, but you can be up and running pretty quickly.

      Reply

  4. I apologise but I’m going to drop out of this one – just too complicated to do with a pg-rated blog. I wanted to do Christmassy types of flashes during December, so I’ll pick up some of the other themes I liked during the year and pop them on instead. Maybe with Sir Woebegone (from the Glum Empress back in May) or the asteroid miners (from the Orichalcum Library a few weeks ago 🙂 Characters I know and love already! I hope you visit!
    Jemima at jemimapett.com

    Reply

    • You can have more than one blog per peson, Jemima. I manage 9 blogs – err, 8 now my poor little bird died last year. And the blog you guys read my flash fiction from is adults only and you need a consent form to click through to get to it; and you must be over 18 to get onto it (and if you click through to my blog and you’re not over 18 and your folks bust you reading it, hey, it’s not my fault… read the disclaimer).

      So, there you have it. Set up another blog, an adults only one, slot in a consent form (you’ll find that in the settings where you changed everything) and then you’ll be set. And you’ll get more people reading it if you make your blog translatable… I made all of mine like that – and with over 500+ languages all 8 of them can be translated into over the globe, it brings in more traffic for people to read my stuff. 😀

      Mozette

      Reply

      • I have three for my books, one for my guinea pigs, one for another project and two more for other things. I think I’ll stop there!

        Reply

    • Ooh, I like the brain-AI idea. Your explanation did have the unfortunate effect of separating me emotionally from the explosion which had happened just before it, but I think in the right hands this little piece could have an excellent follow-up!

      Reply

  22. Oh this is going to be fun! I did something similar in a playwriting class: write dialogue or five minutes, fold the paper to sow the last line only and pass it right and repeat. So fun and we ended up with some craziness that somehow worked as a whole.

    Reply

      • Hahahahaaa… you’ve made my night/day! 😀

        I thought anti-hero… but gun-toting villian? Hahahaaa… thanks! 😀

        I got the idea of hiding everything behind the wall from a Supernatural episode, and just had to use it! 😀

        Reply

  28. Hello Mozette! Unfortunately some RL stuff happened, so I didn’t get to write anything for that challenge. I have been reading Chuck’s posts on my emails when I’ve had the chance, but this is the first thing I’ve written since September. Sorry for standing you up 🙂

    Reply

    • I can’t tell if my comment on your piece went through on your site (blogspot hates me, for some reason) so here it is again:

      Very nice imagery! I wonder, have you ever watched The Last Unicorn? It’s animated, but worth a look if you like unicorns. Or even if you don’t like unicorns. It’s sort of a Watership Down of the unicorn world.

      Also, I like your title. Unicornocalypse should be in every person’s dictionary.

      Reply

  34. This was so much harder than I thought it would be! I’ve never attempted flash fiction before. Last night, I scribbled something out in my notebook while I lay in bed. I worried it would be too short, but now that I’m typing it up, it turns out I wrote over 600 words. Ouch. Needless to say, this is the stripped-down version of my original piece. I managed to cut it down to 202 words. I think it’s a thriller, but I could be wrong. You tell me: http://writeontheworld.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/whos-up-for-a-200-word-piggy-back-ride/

    Reply

  43. Alright, I am paying forward a 100-word contest entry from the divine Ms. Janet Reid’s blog. This is my blog that comes along with the job of being chief editorial cook and bottle-washer of a small town digital newspaper, so there is also a shoutout to our utterly cool local coffee house. It is a new blog, they were only able to recently get the net over me.

    http://www.thebocoreview.com/2013/11/23/writers-life-terribleminds-flash-fiction-challenge/

    I can’t wait to see what next week brings! Terri

    Reply
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