Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: One-Word Titles

I’m going to give you ten one-word titles.

You will pick one, either by choice or by random generator, to be the title of a piece of flash fiction for this week’s flash fiction challenge.

You’ve got ~1000 words, due by Friday, April 7th, noon EST.

Post the story online.

Link back here.

Here are the ten one-word titles.

Do not combine them.

Do not speak them aloud because they may be a magic spell or launch codes.

CHOOSE.

  1. Holiday
  2. Undulate
  3. Juniper
  4. Jumper
  5. Permanence
  6. Ossuary
  7. Supernumerary
  8. Sidereal
  9. Bushcraft
  10. Tourmaline

terribleminds

64 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: One-Word Titles”

  3. “Do not speak them aloud because they may be a magic spell or launch codes.”

    Damn. I just spoke them aloud and some guy with a metal arm showed up and tried to kill me.

    Reply

    • Sorry about that. When I read them out loud my arm turned to metal and I got sucked over to your universe. I wasn’t really trying to kill you per se, but the whole ordeal had put me off my tea. Apologies.

      Reply

  16. Still don’t have this one written because I hate the title the random number generator spit back at me and I’m silently protesting the fact that I feel like I must obey the generator.

    But in looking through some of my old writing stuff, I came across some items I wrote for a different challenge and thought I’d offer this suggestion up because I found it so difficult. It really make me think about editing as an important ally and not just as the usual idea-eating judgmental self-flagellation.

    Write a story in 101 words.

    That’s it.

    We writers (even the unpaid unprofessional pen monkeys, of which I am one) have big love for words and we use them all, as if they are cheap or something. But what if words were premium and we had to pay to use them? What if words cost us like, a hundred dollars each? Could we write a whole story for the low, low out-of-pocket price-gouging cost of ten-thousand simoleons? Oh the precious, shiny, expensive-as-heck words! Chuck, I would be delighted it if you would not only use this challenge, but also do it with us. You’ve got 10,100 clams just laying around to spend on words, right?

    Reply

  17. I started out with Permanence as the title, thinking I’d write something about memory and change and just about anything but permanence, so then there was Ossuary, which I just couldn’t get out of my mind, and I’m sorry oh so sorry…

    http://wp.me/p1Vfyv-8z

    Reply

      • Thank you!

        To comment, you need to sign up to medium (I use Twitter for that) and look for the comment box at the end of an article. And depending on the browser you use, it might not be there. Works well with Chrome and Firefox, not on Vivaldi.

        Reply

  44. Hi, all. Being new to this community, I have a protocol question: do authors prefer to have comments made on their stories’s website, or here in the forum. I’ve seen both, so maybe it’s either or?

    Thanks Mr. Wendig – this is a very fun place to hang out.

    Reply

    • My personal preference is to comment on others’ blogs, and to have comments left on my blog. That way it doesn’t clutter up Chuck’s comments feed, and allows story links to be seen more easily here.

      Sometimes I have to leave comments here because Blogspot hates me and won’t always let me comment, plus I don’t have a Facebook, which more and more people seem to be using for some reason I just can’t fathom.

      This isn’t technically a forum, and the limited nesting of comments makes it difficult to hold any multi-post conversations. Plus, more comments means slower page loading times (AFAIK).

      Reply

    • No offence, but your post is very difficult to read. Light grey text on an off-white background is challenging enough, but the fancy font (which looks very pretty, BTW) is very jarring. I stumble over every capital letter, and the capital “I” looks like “J”. I quite like the font in your menus and as a title font, but for the main body of the text, it’s just slowing my reading right down to a crawl. If I’m honest (which I always try to be) it makes me want to just close my browser window instead of putting the effort into reading it.

      Reply

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