Hey hey writertron! Here’s your Flash Face Off prompts for the week.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and find out what we’re actually doing. Or quick links here:
Book the Flash Face Off live reading
The week’s prompts are:
SOOT Vs SEQUINS
With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.
The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
I’ve talked to trees, had long-winded conversations about thrownness with Japanese maples,
talked to redwoods about hydration, macronutrients, love languages, relatives down South, how
some trees miss me when I’m gone and
some trees shiver like a spineless creature, dickmatized, and
some trees glitter in the dark, leaves like gold sequins, silver sequins, red sequins, orange sequins
Bardo Baby by Adrienne Chung in DIAGRAM
Where she would go as bare as a missing sequin…
Patricia Lockwood (No One Is Talking About This)
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
“Geometrischer Ort der 2 Mio…“, John Bock, 2003
The Tree in Soot, Jim Dine 1981
Pot of green sequins by Paulo Pescada on UnSplash
Annette Kellerman, ‘the original mermaid’ National Film and Sound Archive of Australia on Flickr
Chim Chim Cher-ee by Derek Bruff on Flickr
Motorcyclist with soot on his face by Kaj17 on Flickr
What are these prompts for please?
Every week, we post a set of flash fiction prompts. You write a super small story (500 words or fewer), post it on our forums, give and receive feedback, and at the end of the month we pick our faves for a Friday night online open mic night. It’s pretty amazingly awesome and you should definitely join us. Yes you should.
It works like this:
Use the prompts to write in any way that inspires you. Pick a side, pick both, pick a quote or pick an image, or just go with the general aesthetic and vibe of the themes. Whatever floats your writerly hoozits. And remember—flash doesn’t have to be dark and traumatic to be effective.
Edit your writing into a beaut 500 word story and post it on the Flash Face Off forums (please submit no more than 2 stories per week thanks!)
While you’re waiting for the awesome writerly community to read your story and offer wise words and critique, read at least two other stories and give your constructive feedback.
That’s it! At the end of every month we gather all our faves and have a big ol’ open mic party. Sign up here.
NO WAIT ONE MORE THING!
Please do make good use of the workshopping forums to offer feedback to others, receive feedback on your own story, and tweak/edit as much as you like. This really is the absolute best way to develop your writing (and it’s a really nice way to be part of this
Ok now we’re really done. Go write.
