Flash Fiction Challenge: The Three-Sentence Story


Pretty straightforward — given that we’re in the long haul of National Novel Writing Month, feels like a shorter, sharper flash fiction contest deserves to be in play. What does that mean?

It means I want you to write a single story in three sentences. The shorter those sentences are, the better. Remember: a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It is not merely a vignette — not simply a snapshot in time.

You can deposit this story in the comments below.

Due in one week — by Friday, noon EST.

I’ll pick three random participants on that Friday and will toss each winner a copy of my newest writing e-book, 30 Days in the Word Mines. (A book that has been described as an advent calendar for NaNoWriMo, which is a description I quite like.)

Sound good?

Get to writing.

Three sentences.

Short as you can make them — clarity and brevity are king.

Go.


263 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: The Three-Sentence Story”

  1. His family gathered by his bedside to celebrate his life and to send him on his continuing journey in the next life. As he was drifting away, he let the loving sounds in the room drown out the bombs and screams he still heard when he closed his eyes. He was finally at peace.

  2. He knew that if he left she’d get to keep the dog and the coffee maker. Latent anger hung over their heads in the tiny kitchen like low clouds blocking out the sun. But he loved that fucking coffee maker.

  3. She sits, she stares. I watch her silently from afar. She comes hard–or at least, I imagine her coming. I can only glare.

    • In retrospect, that second to last period was supposed to be an em dash. That’s what I get for posting whilst drunk.

  4. Night fell and down in the cellar a lid creaked open. It was time to feed once more. Van Helsing reached forth, a large steak in hand. “Nice,” he said, before dropping the freezer door shut and heading back upstairs to light the grill.

  5. She travelled almost literally to the end of the earth where the stars are said to intersect, perhaps emulating the arms of lovers parted by oceans of grief, regret and, finally, resignation.  But as sun and shadow shifted and time itself crumpled like a damp, twisted tissue, she came home again both before and after her last wistful goodbye.

    And so nothing at all ended that was meant to, and the world kept turning in vain.

  6. The world fed and sheltered the millions of refugees that made sudden landfall all along the Pacific Rim. They wore strange clothes and spoke a language outside of all known groups, and drew us maps of terra incognita. Once they learned our languages, and us theirs, we had no choice but to systematically terminate them and pour their ashes back into the ocean from whence they came.

  7. Man was born, but he knew not when, for he was busy cutting woods and wandering what all that was. In a blink, he built buildings, for he wanted money to live by the rules he put on himself. Man died, and in the last of his second, he still didn’t know, why, all this.

  8. Vanni looked up at the one remaining flight of stairs before him. Human sacrifices traditionally took place on highest ground; the Aztecs had done so. He swallowed hard, lifted his chin and began climbing.

  9. Riding the subway late at night was always the ultimate drawback to staying this late at the office. But why did there have to be the odd looking one in my car watching my every move? And why, when I get off the train, is he speeding up his pace as I try to do the same?

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