Last week’s challenge: “1667.”
Once again, time to write just the opening line to a new story.
No more than 15 words long.
Plop your opening line in the comment section below. Only one entry, please.
Then, the following week, it will be the task of other writers to pick one opening line that they will use in a new piece of flash fiction.
If you write the line that is most chosen by other authors, I’ll send you a signed physical copy of my new writing book, The Kick-Ass Writer. I’m not doing the picking, so your goal is to write a line that excites other writers enough for them to write a story using that opening line.
Tricky? Could be.
So, get to writing.
You’ve got one week — due by Friday, November 15th, noon EST.
(I’ll send the physical book and pay for shipping if you’re in the United States. Outside the country, you’ll have to front the shipping, I’m afraid, or be okay with an e-book copy.)
300 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Another Opening Line Challenge”
Some words, like mythical watermelon seeds, grow roots and vines inside you when swallowed.
Every second Saturday Tom Pope had a beer with Devil.
I love this!!! I still haven’t decided though…but I am dangerously close to choosing yours.
This is my favorite out of the 200+ entries. Let’s see if I can turn it into a story…
Later, Andy realized he owed his life to a man he thoroughly disliked.
I won’t tell you how I died, and they can’t tell you why.
I think you might have the winner here, damn it. Great opening line.
Lucan jabbed the elf. “Now what the hell do we do about all those dragons?”
Jared exhaled a plume of pot smoke, just as he stepped on the creature’s entrails.
Appropriately enough, it was a shopping trolley that killed her.
The moment they landed, Martine decided mistakes this egregious were worth homicide charges.
The bloody Arc de Triomphe is up the arse end of the Champs-Élysée again.
I was sitting in the hot tub with the morning’s paper and the bottle of cyanide when they walked into the bathroom and informed me that my brother was dead.
The bloody Arc de Triomphe was up the arse end of the Champs-Élysées again.
Nothing good ever happened after midnight.
I accepted the fact with humility, that I would worship myself against my own will.
Lock. Unlock. Lock. Unlock. Lock. He always locked doors three times. Everything in threes.
They sell happiness for a buck but if you want to know fear that will cost you extra.
Sam was puzzling over the hatch in the basement floor when he heard a knock.
Cracking up is never easy, but the rewards can be quite spectacular.
Like this…a lot
I haven’t always been blind.
Aunicks bit his tongue gently while aiming for the guard’s head through the arrow slit.
Seven whole inches. Caligula would approve, and request impetus.
Last time I saw my dad he was dancing naked in the rain singing Sinatra.
Jesus returned today.
It’d been awhile since I’d killed someone with kindness, or any other weapon.
Killing with kindness…I like it!
“It was a dark and stormy night” was once an acceptable beginning to a story.
Lolly dropped the crayons, picked up the knife, and snuck down the hall.
And then the screaming started.
[…] so, Chuck Wendig threw in a Mickey for this week’s Terrible Minds Challenge. This week it is another cooperative […]
I thought back fondly to that last punch before they started in with the electricity.
When I woke up I realized I wanted to be free.
“Oh Fuck…stick it in already!” She screamed.
As the gaoler marched past, the torch lit his path and the prisoner heard screams.
On the scale of colossal fuck-ups, this was between High Karate and the Hindenburg.
Now, I’m not exactly saying the cat was plotting to kill me. But.
This one is priceless!!!
She was the kind of typical bleeding-heart liberal who thinks drowning kittens is somehow “wrong”.
They danced like they would shatter the walls with only the movement of their feet.
It doesn’t feel like I’ve lived my own life.
Of all the front yards in the world, the spaceship had to land on mine.
“That’s a dead man’s bong.”
“I can see why you don’t have any friends,” said the poltergeist.
The apocalypse was loud. Loud like Mrs. Baker taking the stairs in her wheelchair.
Um…about Mrs. Baker and those stairs. During the twenty-plus years I’ve used a wheelchair for mobility, I’ve never “taken the stairs.” So if there’s a way, I’d love to know what it is,
So there’s a story in that opening, then. One that would tell you “what it is.” (I’m thinking it might have been involuntary, for example.)
I have a friend who was stuck in a wheelchair during his later teen years, and often tells the story of hopping down the stairs to escape the hospital for a night with his friends. So.. it’s possible. At least by high-risk-taking teens…
Sometimes it takes a zombie bite to reorganize your priorities in life.
“Don’t cry, honey,” said Mama, wiping blood off her hands, “He’ll never hurt you again.”
Washing her husband’s blood off her hands, she smiled at her reflection in the mirror.
At the time, we were fresh out of the ground.
Before the rebellion turned its turquoise waters red, Tunides was a paradise.
The first I knew I had done wrong was when my father praised me.
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The Eyeless Rat took another drag from her cigarette and said “Welcome to the show.”
[…] for this: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/11/08/flash-fiction-challenge-another-opening-line-challenge/ […]
We decided it would be best if Frank died; he was sleeping by the fire anyways.