Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: It’s ABC Meets XYZ!

Last week’s challenge: “Choose Your Random Words“

So, this week’s challenge is going to be awesome.

SHUT UP IT WILL TOO.

Here’s what’s going to happen.

I’m going to list 20 different pop culture properties — books, movies, comics.

You’re going to randomly choose two and mash them up into a piece of ~1000-word flash fiction.

Here’s why — because whenever I read reviews of my books or whenever you pitch a film to somebody you always mash up two wildly different properties to give a feel for what it is. (As I’ve noted elsewhere, Blue Blazes often gets called Goodfellas meets Lovecraft meets The D&D Monster Manual.) It’s a fun way to envision a story, so boom, that’s what we’re doing here.

Note: the result should be thematic and stylistic, not actual mash-up fanfiction. (Again, envision you take your story into a pitch meeting and to pitch it, you combine two seemingly unlike pop culture properties. It’s like that.)

Story due by Friday, June 14th, noon EST.

Post at your online space. Link back here.

Here’s the list. Choose two or pick ’em randomly with a d20 or random number generator.

  1. Casablanca
  2. Die Hard
  3. Breaking Bad
  4. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
  5. The Maltese Falcon
  6. Terminator
  7. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  8. Star Wars
  9. Game of Thrones
  10. The Handmaid’s Tale
  11. Batman
  12. The Stand
  13. Neverwhere
  14. The Godfather
  15. Planet of the Apes
  16. Rosemary’s Baby
  17. Arrested Development
  18. The Walking Dead
  19. Reservoir Dogs
  20. Pride & Prejudice

terribleminds

131 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: It’s ABC Meets XYZ!”

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  21. I got #6 – Terminator, and #14 – The Godfather. It felt good to participate again. Full time job, 3 courses a semester, 2 kids, and a 350 a day writing program have kept me busy. Plus Chuck shits out a new book to read twice a week. Anyway, I am always hoping for honest critiques of my shit so please let me know what you think. Oh, I would warn you about my liberal use of the word fuck but we are on Chuck’s site, so fuck it!

    http://disastrouscreations.com/2013/06/07/swing-away/

    Reply

  23. Decided to roll two sets, because I like options. Looks like it’s gonna be “Neverwhere meets Rosemary’s Baby” or “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein meets Batman.” With any luck I’ll get around to writing one of them. Or both. I find flash fiction especially difficult to write for some reason. A complete arc in 1,000-words is tricksy.

    Reply

  35. Oh, Dide I have a project for you… I got some flash fiction based on it here’s the pitch… Its Die Hard through the lense of Planet of the Apes… Picture… Link to come…

    Reply

  46. I am deeply and bitterly disappointed I didn’t get “Planet of the Apes” and “Pride & Prejudice.”

    Instead, it was “Die Hard” and “Neverwhere.” The end result is more of the latter than the former, I’m afraid, no matter how much I wanted my main character to engage in witty banter with Germans.

    http://billionmonkeys.blogspot.com/p/disneyland-and-devils-thunderbird.html

    At the very least, I got to set it in Hamtramck, which is about as close to the other world in Neverwhere as you can get in Michigan.

    Reply
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