Tag: fiction (page 8 of 17)

January 20, 2012 / 41 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Random Photo Story”

Last week’s challenge — “Three Sentences For Bear71” is up. I’ll keep folks updated on that page if any are selected and incorporated into the Bear71 experience at the Sundance Film Festical.

This challenge?

Pretty straightforward.

Go here: http://bighugelabs.com/random.php

It will pull up six random Flickr photos.

You will choose three of these photos and incorporate them into a single piece of flash fiction.

Be sure to give us the links of the three photos as well as the link to your story.

You’ve got 1,000 words.

You’ve got one week (Fri, Jan 27th, noon EST).

January 13, 2012 / 120 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Three Sentences For Bear71”

Here’s your challenge.

Choose one of the following wild animals:

Bear

Wolf

Deer

Cougar

Mouse

Eagle

Bighorn Sheep

Mosquito

Now, write a three-sentence story from the perspective — first person POV — of that animal.

You are encouraged to anthropomorphize the animal — meaning, the animal acts and thinks as a human would. It’s okay to write about the animal as an animal, or the animal in the animal’s expected spaces, but it’s also fine to think outside of the box (a spy story featuring a cougar, a science-fiction story starring a wolf, a morality tale starring a mouse, etc.).

Any genre will do.

The stories should be PG-13. No sex or gore or strong profanity.

I know. Unusual for this site.

And here’s why:

Bear71 is a documentary and installation about the life and death of a tagged grizzly bear and the surveillance that surrounds this bear. The experience will present at Sundance New Frontier this year — information here — and the best stories of this bunch will become a part of the overall installation (they may, for instance, show up at the installation itself or be included as a part of the Bear71 social media outreach).

Why submit a story? It’s for a good cause and a poignant storytelling experience.

(Also, you retain all rights to your story and can do with it as you wish.)

You’ve got one week — till January 20th, noon EST, to get your stories in.

To submit: please post your three-sentence story in the comments below. Make sure to include a name to receive credit and/or a Twitter handle where appropriate.

Go forth and write.

January 11, 2012 / 11 Comments

How Will You Die?

The main character in my upcoming novel BLACKBIRDS can see how and when you’re going to die just by touching you. A little skin-to-skin contact and — *snaps fingers* — she knows.

And now I want to know how you’re going to die.

I’ve started a Tumblr page.

This Is How You Die (how-you-die.tumblr.com).

Think of this as a community storytelling and art project in the vein of, say, Postsecret.

This is what I want from you:

I want to know how you’re going to die.

This can be fantasy. This can be parody. This can be a meditation on the fear or power of death.

Maybe it’s how you want to die. Or are afraid to die. Or how you’ve always expected to die.

You can send it to me at terribleminds at gmail.

If you want to send something physical in the mail, email me and I can get you an address.

Or you can submit direct to the Tumblr: http://how-you-die.tumblr.com/submit

It can be straight text (preferably under 100 words; shorter is almost universally better).

But I’d also like a mix of other media if possible:

Photos, music, videos, postcards. Anything that tells a story of how you expect to die.

(Again, Postsecret is a good example as any if you need it.)

If you’ve got a Tumblr blog, I’d appreciate you following along.

I’ll keep running this up to and ideally beyond the BLACKBIRDS release on April 24th, 2012 (with the mighty Angry Robot Books). Keep your eyes peeled to that blog as I may do story snippets and giveaways for the book that you can’t find here. But mostly I hope you’ll keep in touch for the stories and the art the community creates.

Which means, it’s time for the disclaimer:

Whatever you send to me, you’re giving to me. I can do whatever I want with it. I can manipulate images and text and edit accordingly. I don’t want to say I own it — but by sending it over, you give me permission to use it as I see fit. Obviously if the time comes you need me to take something down, I will. And feel free to submit anonymously — I will be posting them all anonymously anyway.

Please spread the word.

Please participate.

And thanks!

January 6, 2012 / 115 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Song Shuffle Stories

Some administrative stuff — first, don’t hesitate to run your eyeballs over last week’s challenge, “Revenge Of The The Sub-Genre Mash-Up.” Some very cool and bizarre-o stories there that deserve your unswerving gaze. Second, regarding Blackbloom: Blackbloom is not dead, but I am putting it on hold in order to take a look at some new ways of handling it. Not only were the last two challenges a bit wan in terms of content but my time as of late is busy enough where it’s difficult for me to properly give the challenge the time it deserves. Oh, and I worry that it took the focus off the flash fiction challenges too much by alternating week to week? I don’t know. More on that soon-ish, I hope.

This week’s challenge is based off of music.

Your music, actually.

Go to Your Favorite Music Player. Dig out your digital music collection.

Maybe this is iTunes or Spotify, or use Pandora if you’d rather go that way.

Hit SHUFFLE, then “Play.”

Meaning, let a random song come bubbling up out of nothing.

The title to this song is the title to your story.

Use the song for inspiration, too, if you feel so inclined.

Let’s tighten up the word count a little, too —

You only have 500 words this time.

Once again, the deadline is a week: noon EST on Friday (DUN DUN DUN) the 13th. Any genre will do. Post at your blog or whatever Internet space you’ve carved out, and link here so we can all come gaze at your fictional offerings on the terribleminds altar. Some folks ask what they do if they don’t have a blog? You can post direct to comments here, but that often looks shitty in terms of formatting. You can try Google+ or Tumblr. Or, get an easy Blogspot or WordPress blog on a lark.

Crank some tunes. Splatter some ink.

See you on the other side.

December 30, 2011 / 46 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Revenge Of The Sub-Genre Mash-Up

Last week’s challenge — “Christmas In A Strange Place” — is live and deserving of your eyeballs. So, make with the clicky-clicky.

Someone the other day cited the sub-genre mash-up challenges — where I offer up a short list of weird sub-genres and you must choose two and force them to have sweet sweet story babies that result in the birth of your flash fiction response — and I thought, yes, yes, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

And so here we are, again.

From this list of six sub-genres, choose two. Then mash them together into a single piece of flash fiction, no more than 1000-words long. Here, then, is the list:

Dystopian Sci-Fi!

Cozy Mysteries!

Slasher or Serial Killer!

Lost World!

Spy Fiction!

Bodice Ripper!

Not sure what one or some of these mean?

Demand answers from the Lords of Google.

You have one week. Till Friday, January 6th. 2012, baby.

Go forth, rock it big, and I’ll see you kids next year. Have a killer rest of 2011, penmonkeys.

December 23, 2011 / 36 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Christmas In A Strange Place”

First up, last week’s challenge — “The Unexplainable Photo” — is live and worth checking out. Killer stories there. If you’re looking for the next Blackbloom challenge this week — there shan’t be one at present. The last challenge received only tepid response (I think eight total entries), which isn’t enough to sustain the challenge. My hope (assumption?) is that the holidays maybe cut into the Blackbloom stuff, so I’ll try again with the worldbuilding challenge in the new year. Check back in another two weeks. (Which means, the Create-Your-Own-Myth challenge is still open.)

For now, then, it’s all flash fiction challenges, all the way down —

Today’s challenge is simple enough.

The challenge is the phrase, “Christmas in a strange place.”

What does that mean? I dunno. Prison? A distant moon? An underwater base? A WWII submarine? Your call. That’s why it’s a challenge, after all. Oh, except the challenge is heightened:

You’ve got till tomorrow, Christmas Eve, by noon EST, to write.

Not a week, then.

Merely one day.

You have up to 1000 words, as usual. Any genre. Post at your blog, make sure we have a link. By now I expect you know the drill, but there it is, just the same.

One random participant will receive… well, I don’t know what. A holiday gift of sorts.

Now get to writing, my little elves and reindeer.