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.
98 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Random Photo Challenge”
I found this wood-grain stump thing: https://www.flickr.com/photos/borruga/17345285803/
So here’s an ‘adult’ flash for you all: https://article94.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/stirring/
Quick on the draw, there; you just like to write smut don’t you? 😉
Like all the best, right?
Haha, exactly! 😀
Here is mine. Thanks for the challenge.
https://gatheringmypieces.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/overdrawn/
Really liked this one!
Thanks!
Powerful stuff. I also really liked this one! Thanks for sharing, J. Grace.
Glad you loved it.
Nicely done. Brings up a lot of memories.
Good memories, I hope, or at least bittersweet ones.
Great challenge. One pic jumped out at me right away.
http://allisonmaruska.com/2015/05/22/flash-fiction-talus/
This one was awesome! OMG, Chet!
I couldn’t download my photo, so I had to describe it… sorry, but the owner of the photo disabled the downloading abilities on flickr… oh well. I hope this works out just as well. 😀
http://youcantgoback-andotherimpossibilities.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/the-meeting-place.html
So sad, so sweet. Reminded me of “The Notebook.”
Well done.
Thank you. My Grandpa had Dementia, so I knew how to write it as I watched him slip away from us over a few years. It’s very sad to watch somebody do that… and yet, you wish they wouldn’t.
Yes I agree very well done. Good stuff there.
Thank you so much… I appreciate everyone’s feedback. 😀
Heartbreaking.
An image of Times Square:
We Now Return You to Our Scheduled Advertising:
http://hubcityblues.com/2014/09/30/our-scheduled-advertising/
This is brilliant. I loved it!
Love it too! Reminds me of Gattica crossed with A.I and Total Recall.
I’ll echo the other comments: excellent!
This is awesome!
Okay, so this started off funny. I was laughing. But the more I read, the scarier it got. This is too close to actual possibility. Very well done, you scared the crap out of me lol.
Joining the choir–this is great!
Dude. This is fucking *AWESOME*. Seriously. Now I want to adblock everything in the known universe.
I already do. I listen to no advertising I can avoid. The older I get, the more distrustful of advertising I’ve become. I am glad the story reached so many. Thank you for the kind words.
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
Makes me want to go drag racing!
Good challenge! It took me some time to decide which picture to use.
Monochromatic: https://hdegrim.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/monochromatic/
Wow. That was… wow. The lack of information about what was happening just added to the anxiety and the creepiness factor. Very nicely done, Haga Degrim!
Thanks! :DDD
The crazy confusion and terror-factor make this one a fun read.
http://wp.me/s6e1eO-curves
Hope this works :0
[…] 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. […]
This one took me in an unusual direction. I settled on the photo found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/50242695@N04/17851066665/in/photostream/
I found the photo sort of captivating and vaguely haunting, though there’s nothing creepy about it at all, really. Anyway…
Here’s “Solo Shot”: https://pavorisms.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/solo-shot/
Excellent writing as always. I’m at an age where I find myself going to many funerals, and this story really touched me.
Thanks. Different is good sometimes.
Man, like always, well done — I looked at the photo, too, and found it entirely haunting and I love the direction you went with it!
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/
I also posted yesterday and something ate my post, so repost: https://article94.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/stirring/
Well… very… wow!
*grin*
I’m reposting too, my last post didn’t work… Well, second try! Monochromatic: https://hdegrim.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/monochromatic/
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…
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!
Nice inner monologue 🙂
Oh man. I love the syntax/diction. The inner monologue of Cass’s own way of thinking/talking was awesome.
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!
[…] I started the third part so you could catch up if you wanted to. I also wrote this as part of Chuck Wendig’s challenge this week. The prompt was the random photo challenge. He provided a link to flicker called […]
Here’s my story and the photo I picked. https://helenespinosa.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/flash-fiction-the-beach-house-part-3/
YOW. Love your taste for chilling descriptions.
I got a lovely picture of Chicago called Blue Awakening and it got my brain gears turning. (Reminder to self: pick up Brain Gear oil on the way home from work.)
It ran a little over 1000 words, but most of those were variations on the word “fuck” so I called it good. Here it is on my brand spanking new WordPress blog thing: Wormhole Less Traveled. Enjoy!
https://wormholelesstraveled.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/blue-awakening/
I really enjoyed this.
I’m glad you did 🙂
[…] week’s flash fiction update is up on terrible minds. Actually it’s been up since Friday, but what can I say? I’m a […]
[…] Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction challenge: Random Photo Challenge. This week we chose a random interesting photo from Flickr and wrote a story based on that. I got […]
I’ve been watching a lot of bad stuff on the news, so this story’s a bit of a downer–even if I like how it turned out.
https://johnfreeter.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/strictly-business/
BTW, I’d be careful about posting copyrighted images straight to your blog.
Here is my random photo story. I liked this challenge because I have a hard time keeping things 1000 words or less. I managed to do it here. Hope everyone enjoys.
https://crazyphils.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/chuck-wendig-flash-fiction-challenge-random-pictures/
[…] This flash fiction challenge was a type of writing prompt I’ve never attempted before. You can see the challenge post at terribleminds.com. […]
Still struggling with the 1000 word limit but not quite as awkwardly I hope:
http://samkdsonlinepace.blogspot.com/2015/05/flickr-photo-1000-word-challenge.html#!/2015/05/flickr-photo-1000-word-challenge.html
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.
Thanks! 🙂
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.
Thanks 🙂 In a small way you’ve endorsed the Actual Novel idea kicking around the back of my head for years.
I found this beautiful picture of a building’s atrium: https://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_hamburg/18009740635/
And that, of course, made me think of noir and spies and eventually Carmen Sandiego, though that’s not exactly how it turned out.
Here’s 999 words of the good stuff: http://fistfulofwits.com/2015/05/28/flash-fiction-the-long-way-down/
Hello! I have been lurking around these parts for a while but decided to finally take the plunge and join in the flash-y fun. I’m a bit of a reluctant blogger, but I’m trying to get better! Anyway, here is my story:
http://codenameprocrastinator.blogspot.ca/2015/05/terrible-minds-flash-fiction-challenge.html
And here is the photo that inspired it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnkok/17881770710/
Enjoy!
I tried posting this yesterday but it seems that I’m still under moderation for some reason…Was it something I said? Eek… Anyway, let’s try this again…
Hello! I have been lurking around these parts for a while but decided to finally take the plunge and join in the flash-y fun. I’m a bit of a reluctant blogger, but I’m trying to get better! Anyway, here is my story:
http://codenameprocrastinator.blogspot.ca/2015/05/terrible-minds-flash-fiction-challenge.html
And here is the photo that inspired it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnkok/17881770710/
Enjoy!
It’s the links. More than 1 in your reply and you end up in a moderation queue, I believe.
Lesson learned!!
I got this ethereal photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottbaldock/17601415068/
and made a little horror-ish story for it: https://tonij.net/2015/05/28/tears/
I embraced brevity, as it’s been a very busy week. My not-quite-500-word flash:
http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2015/05/friday-flash-fiction-bench.html
I linked to the photo, as I’m not sure of protocol regarding copying.
I’m a brand new writer, so this was a great lesson. Thanks Chuck!
and I’m so n00b, I forgot to leave a link back to my blog. Here ya go!
http://withapologiestojt.blogspot.com/2015/05/flash-fiction-challenge-from-chuck.html
I broke the rules. It’s over 2k words and the picture doesn’t come into play until almost the end. Nonetheless:
https://storiesaboutnorah.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/the-arches-in-jerusalem/
Really enjoyed that picture site, thank you Chuck.
I’ve got a Pete and the Swede story out of it, ⌗viridiansystem and I hope you like it. I went long, too – 1700
http://jemimapett.com/blog/2015/05/29/friday-flash-fiction-the-alien-among-us/
Here’s my story inspired by one of the Flickr pictures. I fictionalized something that actually happened.
http://www.mymothersbooks.com/five-hundred-books-in-a-convertible/
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.
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.)
Some pictures leave the door wide open.
Thank you Chuck.
http://lissaword.blogspot.com/2015/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html
A romp with characters as colorful as that photo demanded there be. Sympathetic, yet oh so gross… Well done. You may have to take this show on the road; it’s a tale which deserves an expansive treatment.
Wow, cool! All manner of potential…
I loved everything about this! From the photo that made me shudder slightly to the third paragraph about Rocinante the Wonder Horse which actually made me laugh out loud! Great stuff.
[…] This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is based on a photo. A random photo. A random photo from the Flickr “Interestingness” page. […]
It’s short, just over 500 words, feels like the opening scene of the opening chapter of something. I like it.
http://pauljwillett.com/2015/05/28/flash-fiction-deluge/
An intriguing open. The scene was skillfully crafted and strongly visceral. I could FEEL the devastation all around me. You’re right. This has the taste of something bigger. Chase it!
Thanks! I will!
Here’s my stab at it, “It’s Not Easy”: http://nickegelhoff.com/2015/05/29/flash-fiction-challenge-random-photo-challenge/
Neat twist on the image.
Here’s mine!
http://www.loudlyintroverted.com/beach-brothers/
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!
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the feedback! Maybe some rewriting is in order 🙂
Here we go: http://wp.me/p1wqZB-OK
Sweatslicked, feverdreamed, whitesunspace… what beautiful language. I can’t wait to read more of your work.
Got tied up over the weekend. This actually went up on Thursday…
http://www.bradpeirson.com/flash-fiction-outcasts/
[…] I’ve been lurking around Chuck Wendig’s blog for some time now and I finally decided to take the plunge and join in on one of his flash fiction […]