{"id":15119,"date":"2012-08-10T10:18:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T14:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=15119"},"modified":"2012-08-10T10:18:15","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T14:18:15","slug":"flash-fiction-challenge-the-opening-lines-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/08\/10\/flash-fiction-challenge-the-opening-lines-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Flash Fiction Challenge: &#8220;The Opening Lines, Revealed&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ahem, ahem.<\/p>\n<p>Hear ye, hear ye.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the three opening lines I&#8217;ve chosen:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Brendan Gannon<\/strong>: &#8220;Everyone else remembers it as the day the saucers came, but I remember it as the day a man in a suit shot my father.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joe Parrino<\/strong>: &#8220;Three truths will I tell you and one lie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Delilah Dawson<\/strong>: &#8220;Thursday was out to get me.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was, as so many contests here are anymore, a tough one to pick. Nearly 200 entries (!) and many of them good. (Though, pro-tip: bad spelling and\/or typos will never help you win here.)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s roughly what I ended up looking for:<\/p>\n<p>I wanted lines that told multiple potential stories. Meaning, a writer could read it and find a world of stories coming out of that one line &#8212; not just the one obvious one, say. Some lines were very specific to a genre or to an event and so I hesitated using them, despite their inherent awesomeness. The exception here might be the &#8220;saucer&#8221; one, but it was so cool I had to use it. Don&#8217;t judge me.<\/p>\n<p>So, the three who won:<\/p>\n<p>Contact me, I shall hook you up with a copy of Bait Dog.<\/p>\n<p>(<a title=\"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/08\/08\/bait-dog-is-scratching-at-the-door-waiting-to-be-let-in\/\" href=\"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/08\/08\/bait-dog-is-scratching-at-the-door-waiting-to-be-let-in\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Bait Dog is now available, by the way<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Just $2.99 until next Wednesday. Plug, plug, hint, hint.)<\/p>\n<p>Everybody else:<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got 1000 words.<\/p>\n<p>Write a story using <em>one<\/em> of the above opening lines.<\/p>\n<p>Due by Friday, Aug 17th, at noon EST. Post online, link in the comments.<\/p>\n<p>You know the drill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wanted lines that told multiple potential stories. Meaning, a writer could read it and find a world of stories coming out of that one line &#8212; not just the one obvious one, say. Some lines were very specific to a genre or to an event and so I hesitated using them, despite their inherent awesomeness. <\/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":[71,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-15119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","7":"tag-fiction","8":"tag-fridayflash","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-3VR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15119","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=15119"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15126,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15119\/revisions\/15126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}