{"id":12481,"date":"2012-01-27T06:51:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T11:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=12481"},"modified":"2012-01-27T06:51:47","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T11:51:47","slug":"flash-fiction-challenge-the-present-tense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/01\/27\/flash-fiction-challenge-the-present-tense\/","title":{"rendered":"Flash Fiction Challenge: The Present Tense"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Last week’s challenge, “Random Photo Story<\/strong><\/span><\/a>,” says, “Come look at my entries! They’re super<\/em>!”)<\/p>\n

So, maybe you saw an article on io9 yesterday — “10 Writing ‘Rules’ We Wish More Sci-Fi And Fantasy Authors Would Break<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.” It’s a very cool article. And I pretty much agree with all of it. In fact, BLACKBIRDS<\/strong> (which gets its first official review right here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>!) features a potentially unsympathetic character (though I love her dearly) and is written entirely in the present tense.<\/p>\n

Now, for this challenge, I’m scraping all that away and saying —<\/p>\n

Write a piece of flash fiction, 1000 words or less, in the present tense.<\/p>\n

Doesn’t matter if it’s sci-fi or fantasy. I’m not asking you to write an unsympathetic character that yet remains compelling (aka livable over likable) — no, that’ll be a separate challenge.<\/p>\n

Why do I love the present tense? It feels fast. Urgent. In the moment. It feels like you’re telling a story that’s evolving as the reader reads it as opposed to a story whose events have come and gone.<\/p>\n

I am a big fan.<\/p>\n

So, do that with your story this week.<\/p>\n

Write whatever you want. Whatever genre, whatever character, whatever story.<\/p>\n

As long as it’s in the present tense.<\/p>\n

Post your stories at your site and drop a link into the comments here so we can come read ’em.<\/p>\n

You’ve got a week.<\/p>\n

I’ll see you back here on Friday, February 3rd, by noon EST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, maybe you saw an article on io9 yesterday — “10 Writing ‘Rules’ We Wish More Sci-Fi And Fantasy Authors Would Break.” It’s a very cool article. And I pretty much agree with all of it. In fact, BLACKBIRDS (which gets its first official review right here!) features a potentially unsympathetic character (though I love her dearly) and is written in the present tense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[71],"class_list":{"0":"post-12481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","7":"tag-fiction","9":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-3fj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12486,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12481\/revisions\/12486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}