Yeah, that’s why I asked my question about what the OP means by “incorporating” a photo. I’ve had some of my stories paired with artwork before and the connection is often tenuous at best, so I’m wondering if a similarly tenuous connection would fly here, or if one would actually have to mention a doll dropped in a puddle.
i love it - going to send this thread to my writing group - we’ll make dopers out of them yet!
I am officially in! Please add me to the list of people interested in this activity.
I… am going to take a swing at this.
I can write a decent scene, and can even come up with good ideas. This length sounds just about right for me.
Jules Andre, quixotic78: A required element, or set of elements, is only partly there to thwart cheating. One of the interesting things (from a reader’s standpoint) about a contest like this is seeing how different writers take the same elements and use them to shape a work that is entirely their own.
I’m put in mind of something Stephen King said in the foreword to Night Shift -
Anyway, in the Poetry Sweatshops (to which this thread is a not-so-distant cousin…), my original idea was that each poet should have his or her own set of words to work with. (That had been how it had worked at the Toronto-based poetry sweatshops that took place in various bars at different times in the early '80s including, but by no means limited to, The Rivoli, the Cameron House, Sneaky Dee’s, the Pour House and the Idler.) That idea got changed in the logistics thread to the very first Poetry Sweatshop, and I’ve never once regretted that change. There is something very interesting about seeing how different writers react to the same inspiration.
So, as it applies in this case - my original idea, the ‘seed paragraph’, didn’t suit many of the people interested in participating. The idea of a random photo and three words has met with more approval. Nothing is set in stone. (At least not until next Friday - it’d be a good idea if we’re all working from the same set of rules by then. 
)
If I were working from the previously linked photo and those three words, these are some of the ways I’d think of building a story. How you would do it is entirely up to you. (Please forgive me if I seem like I’m teaching my Grandmother to suck eggs.)
The story could be from the point of view of the doll, the girl (or boy) who lost it, the parent that now has to search for it, the stranger who found it…
The story could tell how the doll came to be there - simple accident, forgetfulness, mugging, murder, military invasion…
The story could tell what happened after the doll was left there.
Is there something hidden in the doll?
Is the doll actually a doll? It could be a robot, an alien life form, a highly evolved animal, an improvised explosive device, a one of a kind collector’s item… If it is animate, it could be benign or malevolent…
What now about wheels? How about the bicycles locked up across the street? Wheels of a car driving right up against the curb? Wheels of a wheelchair?
Bed - can the doll’s owner go to bed without it? Is the owner a homeless person whose bed is in the park across the street? Is the doll actually a sex toy?
Adventure - is this the result of a 5 year old’s failed adventure? Successful adventure? (For me, Adventure is the hardest aspect to work in - it just presses my ‘cliché’ button.)
There’s a lot there to work from and those are just the ones that have come to my mind in the last 15 minutes. I’m much more interested, though, in seeing what some of the Doper writers would see…
As far as setting a rule for incorporating the words/photo in a significant way, I’m not sure if we need to. It hasn’t proved necessary in the Poetry Sweatshops, though poetry is a very different discipline. (In the Sweatshops, someone could theoretically use the three obligatory words, cite their entries in Roget’s Thesaurus and claim that was a poem, for instance.) I think that aspect of the Flash Fiction Contest would be covered in the poll - a piece that used the obligatory material in an interesting way would likely do better than something where the material appeared thrown in. What say all of you?
I am not a Moderator, but I’d say that the Rules for Posting at the Straight Dope ought to apply at some level. Other than that, I don’t see sex, violence and obscenity being a problem. Did I mention that I’m not a Moderator? 
I had actually meant ‘genre’ in the sense of genre fiction - mystery, science fiction, fantasy, etc. - but I’m glad you brought that up.
I am a moderator, and I wouldn’t have a problem with it – as long as it’s integral to the storyline. (Isn’t that the starlets say before taking off their clothes?)
Seriously – since it’s not going to be directed at another person, I don’t see an issue.
You know, you’re probably right. My suggestion was overkill.
One other logistics question – is there an upper bound on post length on the board? Will posting 2000-word stories break some character limit?
Hmmm, that’s a good question. Maximum characters per post is set by administrators on phpBB forums, with (IIRC) the potential for an unlimited max. So I guess the question is what SDMB is set to.
I checked into that last week - according to TubaDiva, there is a 20,000 character limit, which boils down to 3,333 words (assuming an average of 5 characters plus a space per word). So we’re within that with a 2,000 word limit.
I debated about the word limit for a while - 2,000 seemed like a good balance between challenging experienced writers to be brief and giving less experienced writers a better chance of finishing and having time to edit within the time frame. (Plus there are a number of short story contests and first time publishing opportunities where the limit is 2,000 - 2,500 words. It seems to me that ‘Teemings’ has a limit of 2,500 words, come to that…)
I am definitely in. As in, marked on the household calendar. And very excited.
I’m in, too. Sounds like fun. I guess my vote would be for basing your story on a photo and any three randomly-generated words, which must appear in your story but need not necessarily be central to the plot. But I’m flexible either way.
Ah, yeah, I guess I misinterpreted the full intent of the seed paragraph. My apologies. I’ve used photo prompts in writing fiction before and it was a good time. I’ll almost certainly give this a shot this time.
A recent example of the use of a seed in a publication was in Triage, featuring three completely different stories utilizing the same opening sentence or two. The use of a few sentences seemed to give a slight nudge to the writers but they were very different stories; I think a key to the success of such an exercise lies in finding a few opening sentences that are unusual enough to spark something while leaving options wide-open; and here is where I propose something like cheating; why not use the opening sentence(s) from Triage since they’ve already been used for this sort of thing successfully?
Just finished mine (I know, but I love to get my homework done early). I would love some feedback from my fellow Flashy Fictioneers.
“I can take being a hundred feet away from safety”, I bellowed “but not when it’s a hundred feet up!”. The wind had died down somewhat, but the temperature was dropping and there was only an hour left until sunset. It was curious - from the ground I’d never noticed how much transmission towers swayed with the wind. Precarious, slippery, cold, I had expected but unsteady was something I hadn’t thought of. Another gust of wind threatened to blow me off my perch, and as I gripped the railing even tighter, I thought again about what I was doing here.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…” The wind plucked my last cry from my throat as I lost my grip.
Damn, I’ll be out of town this weekend!
That’s definitely preferable to the initial full paragraph suggestion. I also like what someone else mentioned: offer X options, out of which people must use X - Y. Back when I used to take the time to write, a friend introduced me to the concept of blogprov: you’d solicit opening sentences, then pick one and use it to write a short story. Having a range to choose from in that circumstance was helpful.
There didn’t seem to be much support for the notion of a seed paragraph. The specific problem with using the opening of Triage as source material is that it is copyright. I’m afraid that puts it out of consideration right there.
I’m glad to have found another interesting book to put on hold at the library though. Do you know of ‘The Floating Admiral’, by the way? It’s a 1931 piece of chain fiction, with one chapter each written by some of the greats in the mystery genre.
Some friends and I did something like that to pass in the time in a college class once–each of us would write one sentence, then fold over the paper, so the next person to get it could only see the previous sentence. The results were… interesting. 
I was surprised that there was so much opposition to the seed paragraph idea - it sounds like a very interesting challenge. The photo/three words idea sounds good too, though, and I’m in barring unforeseen circumstances!
I agree with what someone else said - it exerts too much control over the plot, characters and writing style. Plus, it raises the unappealing possibility that people might like the seed paragraph more than the 1,900 words I put around it.