Flash Fiction Challenge: Just The Opening Line


Behold last week’s challenge: “A Terrible Lie.”

(Alternate name for this challenge: “Just The Tip.”)

Normally, this challenge is about utilizing brevity — be it with a 1000 words, 100 words, or three sentences — to tell a complete story. Well, not today, my little red balloons.

Today, I just want a single sentence.

I want to read the opening line to a story.

One you’re just making up now.

One whose opening line will drag me kicking and screaming and shove my face into wanting more.

One whose opening line is sharp, enticing, potent.

So. You’ve got a single sentence to promise a killer story.

I’ll keep the challenge open for a week.

Winner gets a postcard in the mail from yours truly.

This postcard shall contain a piece of writing advice on it for you and you alone.

You’ve got one sentence and one week. Enter by 4/13/12 at noon EST.

Enter below in the comments — normally I’d have you post elsewhere, but these will be brief.

EDIT:

To clarify, please enter only once.


229 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Just The Opening Line”

  1. I had a vague notion that jumping off of a fifty-foot wall to attack a twelve-foot tall Troll may not have been the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop me.

  2. Somewhere in between running for my life in little more than my cabana wear through a heavily secured fortress, I forgot to look for important things like not teleporting myself into a concrete wall.

  3. “I was standing by the frozen lake when she came out of the mist, her head surrounded by a golden halo.”

    OK, now I have to go and write the story that goes along with this!

  4. He was nine when he watched his father die, brawling with the other men of Llangennith for beach salvage like dogs over a carcass, and he grinned madly as the man he knew as “Da” fell in the surf and failed to rise.

  5. One of the downsides to living in the digital age, as opposed to the forties, is the fact that a laptop computer and a cell phone with voice mail can do everything a secretary can–except make coffee, screen clients, and fill out a skirt.

  6. The most significant image in my memory – the most prominent, outstanding, strange and wonderful image – was the last thing I can remember seeing before I died.

  7. He looked more like an avenging angel of God than a young computer hacker as he strode through the smoke and flames to sweep me up in a single fluid motion without saying a word.

  8. *typo in the first one*

    You couldn’t really explain twelve bodies, a torched summer house, an Amber alert and four broken ribs, but Tommy had to try, for mom’s sake.

  9. *Oops. The previous was draft, here is the edited version. *

    After loosing everything last year, I never would of thought that my nightmare inspired screams of torment would change my existence again.

  10. Okay, I can deal with the two card counting Elves and the Dwarf trying to palm aces, but what really chaffed my Licensed Hero ass was the dyslexic Dragon taking up seats five, six and seven who was a better card cheat than I’ve ever been, and not knowing how to expose him without becoming a tasty snack in the process.

  11. The echo of his last shotgun blast was fading as Thor Slaymaster stepped over the broken, bleeding bodies of what had once been a minor Canadian pop group known as “Nickelback.”

  12. Connie wanted so badly to back away as she closed the iron door of the wood stove, but instead she forced herself to watch through the window until the baby’s shoes, their white canvas now stained a bright red, finally caught.

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