Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: Random Photo Challenge

Flickr has a function called INTERESTINGNESS.

Click that link. Go on, do it.

It will be the basis of this week’s challenge.

Click that link, and you’ll get a page of recent “interesting” photos.

Choose one, and use it as the basis for a 1000-word story.

Due next Friday (5/29), noon EST.

Write it at your online space.

Give us a link so we can see it.

Choose a photo.

Write.

terribleminds

98 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Random Photo Challenge”

  6. Okay, so this is totally cheating. I admit it. But since I was late on the last challenge, I chose a picture from the site to match the story I wrote for the chase challenge! Cut me some slack, I’m a newbie to blogging, and it’s my very first post. Hope the link works … And hope you think the story is fun (campy, cheesy, cool-io daddy-o, or something)
    Btw the picture website is awesome, thx Chuck!

    http://wp.me/s6e1eO-curves

    Reply

  9. […] Chuck’s challenge this week: Interestingness. In short, find a photo, write a story. I found my photo here. Something about it immediately haunted me, though I guess there’s nothing overtly creepy about it. […]

    Reply

  11. I posted once but I think I overdid it with the links. Hope I don’t end up in the spam oubliette.

    I found a photo sort of captivating and vaguely haunting, though there’s nothing creepy about it at all, really. The photo can be found in my post, but it’s an image of a lovely lady looking over the photographer’s shoulder as he/she shoots a picture of a mirror.

    Here’s “Solo Shot”: https://pavorisms.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/solo-shot/

    Reply

  14. Okay, I hit the Flickr, and this was the first picture I saw. I liked it, so I clicked it to make it bigger and easier to see, and then hit the back button–and my picture went away! ;-( So I kept going through the pages, and didn’t see anything I liked better, and luckily it showed up again. This time I trapped it and kept it!
    So here’s my story, and here’s the link:

    https://warjna.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/the-tunnel/

    Hope you like it!
    BTW, can anyone tell me how to upload a picture to WordPress? Cause I can’t figure it out. And apparently I don’t know how to add a link here, either…

    Reply

    • It was hard to follow at first, but as I got used to Cass’ style of speech, I found it to be very engrossing. What would happen? What would she find? Me want know her finding! Nice story, nice plotting, nice ending, Five gold stars says I!

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    • Thank you all! Yes, I do like playing with dialects, A LOT. I think Cass came out somewhat from recently seeing Mad Max: Fury Road, and remembering the child colony from Mad Max: Thunderdome. Wow, I REALLY loved what they did with their language there! “Listen, and ‘member.” Children tend to do that, elide parts of words and do strange things with syntax until adults teach them otherwise. But if there are no grown-ups to do that, they evolve their own from imperfectly remembered speech.

      That’s what I was trying to do with Cass. Whatever happened, there was a breakdown of society to the point that there became two different stratified societies — Eloi and Morlocks, if you will. I don’t usually have a problem with that kind of thing, but this time it was hard — I had to keep going back and “correcting” the proper grammar in the story to fit with how Cass thought and spoke. Not her words — the story’s!

      Thanks for the gold stars, StarNinja! I had no idea at all what I was going to write, I just started and let Cass tell me. I’m sort of a pantser with suspenders and a belt, meaning I generally start off as a pantser and then when I know what the story is I start to organize and see where it needs to go.

      Something in the picture just struck a chord, I guess. That, and hearing some of the doom-saying from Stansberry Research about how the economy is going to crash and burn, and the fact that I’ve been out of work for — dear god! — five years and getting desperate for a job before MY economy goes down in flames. I think that the people in the Towers have some way of knowing who outside has skills they need. That’s where the “You get your Summons, you pack your bag, and you show.” came from. I don’t know what happens if you DON’T show; maybe they just go on to the next on their list. Or maybe there’s some security types Outside who enforce the Summons? More likely. It hadn’t been relevant to the original story, so I didn’t need to go there. Maybe I’ll come back to it later, though. It feels like the kind of thing that sticks in my mind like a sandspur. I do know that the City is based on my memories of Brooklyn and NYC, and the waterfall in the Atrium is a vague memory from some fancy hotel I saw somewhere. They do say ‘write what you know,’ yep!

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    • That was very entertaining, SamKD. Great job! It reminded me a bit of the classic movie, The Sword in the Stone for some reason. Minus the tentacles of course.

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    • Holy cow! This thing is wild, untamed and yet even as it bucked, I felt compelled to understand what was happening. We never get the whole story, it just escalated into full-fledged pandemonium. Keep writing this, it has seeds of greatness within.

      Reply

    • So beautiful. My mother-in-law just passed away and we were confronted with the same dilemma. You captured it flawlessly. Thank you for sharing.

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    • I agree–this really sings. I watered up a bit in the reading which is a sure sign of success.
      (When my mother died a couple years ago I too canceled a return ticket in favor of driving her car home.)

      Reply

    • I love this!

      I have one tiny bit of criticism — the only bit that niggled at me.

      You state he didn’t talk, and I felt like that was half the point — that he didn’t talk, but right after that, before the beach, you have him ask his brother if Iron Man can come.

      Other than that, it’s a real heart-wrencher, and I loved reading it!

      Reply

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