I’m on a kick about writing prompts. Three weeks into writing to prompts with a writer friend, I’m thinking about genres. Do I like to be stretched to write to different genres than my usual writing habits? So far I’ve put forth a futuristic prompt and my friend has led with a finish-the-sentence that could be general literary genre and ghostly topic that had a few stipulations like repeating the first line. The latest invited magical realism.
I do like to them to stretch me. How far could that go? Horror? What we write in ten-minutes is flash fiction. I’ve enjoyed making each piece stand on its own though they could become something longer. Can you develop suspense in flash fiction? Some genres take building. You can create a fantasy in two paragraphs but it’s not the same as world-building.
Here’s a bit of flash fiction.
Sandler stomped along the sidewalk. He really didn’t need to be so rude, she thought. But wasn’t he always? Why did she let him get to her. She huffed a sigh. Lifting her aggravated gaze up, she realized she’d hardly noticed where she was going or what she was passing. Anxious to get off the boulevard when she left the coffee shop, she’d taken a different turn than usual. Now she faced a truly strange shop. If there hadn’t been books in the window, she probably wouldn’t have gone in.
A gust of thick air hit her as she shoved the old door open, making a cowbell clank. Dust motes made her cough as they swirled in a ray of errant sun on this mostly cloudy day. What had the name of this peculiar shop been? RavenQuill’s Books & Sundry, something like that. Old volumes filled shelves or sat precariously in stacks on tables. Drawn in by some unseen magnet, she wove her way past shadowy alcoves until an instrument caught her eye. She stared at the compelling mechanism. Then it struck her. She’d seen it before, in a photograph on her grandfather’s wall. Not one like it, This very object. It had the same worn place in the metal. A gouge. She’d asked Grampy what it was, and he’d told her, “I don’t know but it’s what got your daddy killed.”
Instagram pics:
Marie Judson 