Well, you could always take a news story of the day, and have us put a spin on it.
For instance, if the oil disaster on the Gulf had happened May 14, you could say we all had to write about something to do with that - broad strokes, but same specific theme.
You could decide which news story of the day to select - could be from MSNBC in any category; news, entertainment, health, technology, etc. and then let everyone run with it as either the crux of the story or the background of events leading up to it or after it, or whatever.
Just an idea, but would constrain the topic yet allow your own style to come through as you incorporate it into your story.
I’ve been messing around with alternatives to the ‘test paragraph’ idea. May I suggest the following? A combination of a randomly selected photograph and three randomly selected words.
As an example, this photo (from the random photo generator on Flickr) in conjunction with the following three words - Wheel, Adventure, Bed. (Derived, in this case, with a 12 sided die and a copy of Walt Whitman - The Complete Poems.)
Please, let me know what you think - would that be open enough so as to allow free creativity and yet, provide a common basis for comparison for the readers and voters? It might also be a good way of establishing that the story was written within the time frame imposed by the contest.
I would like to participate though my work schedule makes the time frame less than ideal (night shifts, 9pm-4am Pacific Thurs, Fri, Sat). I’ll still definitely give it a go while I am awake and not working, though.
I’ve dabbled with the Flash Fiction challenges on AbsoluteWrite on and off (mostly off) for the past couple of years. They use single word prompts over there, but I like the random picture + three random words as a prompt.
The three words should all be used in a way that’s *significant *to the story. So, for example, if one of the words was “bed”, it isn’t enough just to mention in passing that there’s a bed in the room. The bed would have to figure into the plot somehow. Maybe some kids are jumping on a bed and fall off and get injured, maybe there’s a hospital bed race, maybe someone steals a bed, maybe the whole story takes place in bed, etc.
Unrelated rules question – when we say ‘‘all genres welcome’’ does that mean sex, violence and obscenity are fair game? My fiction tends to include liberal doses of all three.
I like 33.3% of your idea. Figuring out how to squeeze three disparate words into a story AND make them correspond to a picture will create a lot of contorted stories. How about including all three words, but having just one of them be central to the story? That would create a wider range of stories and a little less contortion.
Or perhaps give 5 random words and 3 have to be used.
Of course I’m remembering an old LAUGH IN sketch. Old-maid teacher Lily Tomlin tells her class “Today you’re going to write a story in which you will mention religion, royalty, romance, and mystery. You have one hour.”
A student (Flip Wilson) writes a sentence and raises his hand and says “I’m done!”
Teacher: That’s impossible, you barely took five seconds.
Student: But I finished.
Teacher: And you mentioned religion, royalty, romance and mystery in that time?
Student: Mm-hmm.
Teacher (patronizingly): Then by all means, let us hear it!
Student:
“Good Lord”, said the queen. “I’m pregnant! Whodunnit?”
Could you elaborate on how specifically one incorporates a photo into their story?
I second what someone said upthread – is it silly to just ask everyone to swear that they didn’t cheat? I think just about everyone would play by the rules, and for the one or two people who didn’t, they have to live with the ignominity of cheating in a contest with no prize.
The photograph could be many things. The doll in the gutter (prior to reading the caption at least) from the example brought to mind an abducted child, or something dark and sinister that would cause a kid to drop a cherished toy in the street. I could totally run with something like that, but it all depends on the image I suppose.
Has anyone else checked out the decidedly creepy flickr collection of abandoned dolls listed in the comments? A kid I grew up with had a gazillion dolls and always had a few of the older ones tied to the yard fence, waving “hi”. People still kept one there many many (many) years later. When Cabbage Patch kids came out, this girl seriously role-played hard with them. She was also pregnant by the time she was 19 I think, and now has like 5 kids.
I think the photo idea, while cool and less limiting than the paragraph seed, is probably still too limiting for flash fiction. I’d just point out that the idea here is to prevent people from turning in stories they had previously written. That’s it. Making it a rule that you have to include X words out of a list of Y random words does that without really adding any limitations. It isn’t likely that a lot of people have stories sitting around that will happen to have those words, so it works towards the goal.
Using a photo doesn’t prevent someone from coming up with a contrived BS explanation how, really, that story about the formerly zombie poodle is totally just a metaphor for a young girl abandoning a doll in a gutter. Not that any of the fine folk here would do that, but, just saying, the photo doesn’t actually achieve what it intended to achieve.
Either way, I’ll probably give the contest a shot!
