It’s that time again for the challenge I love so much —
You take two pre-existing pop culture properties, randomly mash them up, and then write a piece of fiction inspired by and utilizing that mash-up. You’re not writing fan-fiction in those worlds — you’re capturing the essence of them for a new story. (So it’s like, when you pitch an original novel to an editor and you say, IT’S LIKE DANCES WITH WOLVES MEETS BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. And they’re like, what? And then you both laugh uncomfortably.)
Here, we’re gonna do a horror-flavored edition
One table is PURE HORROR.
The second table is not at all horror.
You will mix these up for maximum awesome.
Roll a d20 or use a random number generator once on each table.
Then, write a story — we’ll say up to 3000 – 5000 words in length — and post it at your blog and give us a link back here so we can all read it and go ooh and ahh.
(I know, technically not a flash fiction challenge. DON’T SASS ME.)
Given that this challenge is a bit longer, we’ll make it two weeks for your timeframe, which will finish this out right on October 30th, the day before HALLOWEEN.
*crash of thunder*
*cackling ravens*
*Jack-o-Lantern smokes a cigarette and leers at you*
Go forth and write.
The Horror Table
- The Exorcist
- The Walking Dead
- Interview With A Vampire
- Frankenstein
- The Babadook
- Poltergeist
- Gremlins
- It
- Rosemary’s Baby
- It Follows
- Hellraiser
- Psycho
- Evil Dead
- The Shining
- Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- The Descent
- The Thing
- Nightmare On Elm Street
- The Ring
- Carrie
The Not Horror Table
- Harry Potter
- House of Cards
- Back to the Future
- The Marvel Universe
- Mad Men
- Scooby Doo
- Scandal
- Planet of the Apes
- Transformers
- Sex and the City
- The Muppets
- Die Hard
- Star Trek
- Pitch Perfect
- 50 Shades of Grey
- Fast and the Furious
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Casablanca
- Doctor Who
- The Martian
150 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: It’s X Meets Y, The Horror Edition!”
Sex and the City meets Psycho.
http://carlosmatthewshernandez.com/dream-book/x-meets-y-horror-edition
Nice!
Indeed. Well done.
Darlene is triumphant! The dress, not so much… Really liked the setup and the fact that Darlene despite it all, prevails. Also got chuckle out of the line, “She seems awfully thin (…)”
🙂 That was really good.
Thanks! I still need to read a couple others that were posted.
Carrie Meets The Transformers in Everardus the Caring. 🙂 Had a lot of fun with it!
http://www.rovingweaver.com/2015/10/everardus-caring.html
I would have been happy with a prom being set on fire but with this story I gets lots of extra helpings of fires and explosions which keeps me more than happy. Hopefully Everardus enjoys his new home… A great romp and an impressive amount of world building compressed into less than 5000 words.
Thank you! 🙂
I would have been happy with a prom being set on fire but with this story I gets lots of extra helpings of fires and explosions which keeps me more than happy. Hopefully Everardus enjoys his new home… A great romp and an impressive amount of world building compressed into less than 5000 words.
[…] challenge for the end of October was, appropriately enough, a horror challenge of the X meets Y variety. I drew “Casablanca” meets “The Ring.” I think I captured that feel at the […]
I took pretty much all the time, but here’s my offering for “Casablanca” meets “The Ring.”
“The Depths of My Affection” is here: http://accidentallyinspired.com/2015/10/29/the-depths-of-my-affection/
That was great! Tough combination to pull off which you did really well. A deftly spun story with well crafted characters that engaged me from beginning to end. Loved the vivid descriptions. I’m going to remember the phrase, ‘limp windsails’ for a while. 🙂
Glad you liked it! Worked a lot longer on this one than I usually do on a “flash” (though at 3000 words, this is hardly a flash, lol)
http://aliceekeyes.blogspot.com/ For Casablanca meets The Walking Dead.
This is an odd tale that I came up with.
Reading your intro it seems like you weren’t very confident about the story. Writers get enough rejection in their lives without beating themselves up as well so try not to be so hard on yourself. 🙂 I think you developed a fully realized world and I was intrigued by Bean and how he’s learned to cope (or not cope) in a world full of zombies. I like the idea of music being a way to scare off zombies. I’m a rabid (ha ha) Walking Dead fan so I definitely would have liked to see more gore but writing vivid descriptions of viscera is definitely not for everyone. I think you have some ideas in the story that you can expand into a YA novella or even a novel.
Thanks for reading, commenting, and encouragement. I keep wanting to write gore but then the passive part of me takes over. I have killed of characters.
I ended up with A Nightmare on Elm Street and 50 Shades of Grey. I’ve never written anything like this before so I hope it’s not too bad.
https://crazyphils.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/flash-fiction-challenge-its-x-meets-y-the-horror-edition-a-nightmare-on-elm-street-meets-50-shades-of-grey/
I don’t envy anyone that has to write a flash fiction with a pairing of those two particular franchises, ha ha. I’m hoping your slight dig at vampires in the story is also a shout-out about Fifty Shades original incarnation as a Twilight fic. Poor Sarah. At least she died – ahem – happy.
I sort of muffed the horror part of this. I’m not much of a horror person. So though this story might be Frankenstein meets the Muppet Show, I think I came down a bit more on the Muppet side. Or maybe it was my headache meds. In any case:
http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2015/10/friday-flash-at-long-dogie-saloon.html
That was so cute! I didn’t mind the lack of horror and I loved the idea that they’re initially concerned with the fact that their visitor isn’t human, hee hee…
I’m not a horror watcher, or even a Halloween fan, but having got The Muppets out of List two, I teamed it with the Rocky Horror Show to give you… Out of the Frying Pan.
http://jemimapett.com/blog/2015/10/30/friday-flash-fiction-and-trick-or-treat-giveaway-preview/
I hate spiders so that was my little bit of horror, right there! 🙂
[…] challenge this time was to come up with a Halloween mash-up. Mine was supposed to be a Shawshank […]
Running right against the deadline here: Frankenstein meets Shawshank Redemption.
https://mxgomez.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/dark-work-a-chuck-wendig-challenge/
Well, the Warden in this story is definitely several rungs below merely cooking the books. He definitely got what he deserved in the true spirit of the Frankenstein story. The ending of the story was bittersweet for Victor (or at least that’s how I interpreted it) and I do like a less than tidy ending. 🙂
I do not know why that was so hard!
Masks
Sex in the City meets Babadook
I was hoping Chloe would take off her Manolo Blahniks (or her Jimmy Choos) and smash the mirror and her laptop (while screaming in terror) because I think that would have been characteristic of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. Having said that, I did like how she (without giving anything away in the comments), terminated her friendship with the rest of the gang. And there’s something truly scary about Scrivener being hijacked… 🙂
[…] Close Behind and Bloody Expanse, though it’s a bit different. This one was inspired by Chuck Wendig’s X Meets Y Horror prompt. Read on past the […]
I’m a bit late, I know, but better late than never? Psycho and The Muppets ended up in strange places.
http://fistfulofwits.com/2015/10/30/flash-fiction-hot-mess/
Liked the Wild West feel of the story. Lenora is a cool female action hero. 🙂
I really enjoyed this writing challenge. Here is my setup. I went with The Exorcist and The Marvel Universe (X-Men). My first draft of the story ran just shy of 8000 words due to me spending the first half writing about the setting. I cut the story down about 2000 words, unfortunately, 1000 words over the assignment criteria. I didn’t get a chance to doing any edits as I wanted to post the story by the deadline (I’m posting at 11:40 pm on October 30, 2015). Here is a rough draft of my story:
https://graphx023.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/flash-fiction-its-x-meets-y-horror-edition/
I’ll update the blog post and see if I can get the story down to 5000 word and finish up editing.
Please anyone comment good, bad, or ugly. This is my second challenge and it has been a blast.
Oh, and if anyone wants to read the longer version you can find it here:
https://graphx023.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/flash-fiction-its-x-meet-y-the-horror-edition-ver-2/
Tony
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[…] posts many wonderful things including writing challenges. So back then I went and looked up his FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE: IT’S X MEETS Y, THE HORROR EDITION! I booked marked the site so that I could find it later and take part in the challenge. Well much […]
Muppet down… bucket list to go