{"id":12774,"date":"2012-02-10T06:58:44","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T11:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=12774"},"modified":"2012-02-10T06:58:44","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T11:58:44","slug":"flash-fiction-challenge-the-unlikable-protagonist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/02\/10\/flash-fiction-challenge-the-unlikable-protagonist\/","title":{"rendered":"Flash Fiction Challenge: The Unlikable Protagonist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Last week&#8217;s challenge &#8212; &#8220;<a title=\"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/02\/03\/flash-fiction-challenge-one-small-story-in-seven-acts\/\" href=\"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/02\/03\/flash-fiction-challenge-one-small-story-in-seven-acts\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>One Small Story In Seven Acts<\/strong><\/span><\/a>&#8221; &#8212; is deserving of your penetrating stare.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Next week, I&#8217;ve got a post queued up about protagonists.<\/p>\n<p>And, in one portion of this post, I discuss the power of the unlikable protagonist.<\/p>\n<p>The balance is writing an unlikable protagonist that still remains compelling &#8212; we still find some reason to keep reading, and we may even find empathy or sympathy with that character.<\/p>\n<p>Even<em> if<\/em> we don&#8217;t want to &#8220;go out and get a beer with him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s your task.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got up to 1000 words to write a tale featuring an unlikable protagonist that still remains readable and compelling. Having this as a flash fiction challenge offers up one bonus and one disadvantage: the disadvantage is that you won&#8217;t have more than those one thousand words to establish the complexities an unlikable protagonist might need. The bonus, however, is that flash fiction is short &#8212; you can get away with a lot more because you&#8217;re not expecting that the reader will have to hang with your story for 300 pages.<\/p>\n<p>Get to it, ink-slingers.<\/p>\n<p>One week is all you&#8217;ve got. Challenge ends at noon EST on Friday the 17th. The drill is the same: post your story somewhere on the web, link back here in the comments so that we can all come and read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The balance is writing an unlikable protagonist that still remains compelling &#8212; we still find some reason to keep reading, and we may even find empathy or sympathy with that character. You&#8217;ve got up to 1000 words to write a tale featuring an unlikable protagonist that still remains readable and compelling. <\/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-12774","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-3k2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12774","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=12774"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12778,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12774\/revisions\/12778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}