Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: It’s X Meets Y, The Horror Edition!

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

  1. The Exorcist
  2. The Walking Dead
  3. Interview With A Vampire
  4. Frankenstein
  5. The Babadook
  6. Poltergeist
  7. Gremlins
  8. It
  9. Rosemary’s Baby
  10. It Follows
  11. Hellraiser
  12. Psycho
  13. Evil Dead
  14. The Shining
  15. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
  16. The Descent
  17. The Thing
  18. Nightmare On Elm Street
  19. The Ring
  20. Carrie

The Not Horror Table

  1. Harry Potter
  2. House of Cards
  3. Back to the Future
  4. The Marvel Universe
  5. Mad Men
  6. Scooby Doo
  7. Scandal
  8. Planet of the Apes
  9. Transformers
  10. Sex and the City
  11. The Muppets
  12. Die Hard
  13. Star Trek
  14. Pitch Perfect
  15. 50 Shades of Grey
  16. Fast and the Furious
  17. The Shawshank Redemption
  18. Casablanca
  19. Doctor Who
  20. The Martian

terribleminds

150 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: It’s X Meets Y, The Horror Edition!”

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  4. 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.

    Reply

    • 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. 🙂

      Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

    • 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. 🙂

      Reply

    • 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… 🙂

      Reply

  16. 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

    Reply

  18. […] 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 […]

    Reply
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