If you wanna get right to the challenge skip down to “WELCOME TO OUR FIRST FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE!” and champagne Leo.
As most of you know, my character names tend to be just as boring as watching the grass grow or paint dry.
Steve. Melissa. Barry.
Yawn.
It’s just never been one of my things to name my character Zora or Borax or something like that. With me you might get a Nikki.
I think the most exotic name I came up with was Gina. No, actually it was probably Julietta.
Yawn.
I know, right?
Another problem I struggle with is titles. We’ve discussed this. It’s tricky to get just the right name for a story. I bet every one of you has a WIP with a goofy name you don’t love.
Now, one day while I was thinking up character names, I thought – go to a list of baby names on the internet and see what’s there! THAT will solve your problem!
It didn’t.
So I used the name of the kids in my daughter’s preschool class.
But it occurred to me that if there are websites for random number generators, there are probably websites that are name generators!
In there was!
And it sucked.
It gave me names like Zora and Borax.
However, it also occurred to me that there was probably a random title generator.
And there was!
And it… was kinda interesting.
I chuckled as I looked at some of the titles it gave me – but it made me think how FUN it would be to write stories based on some of those titles.
So I of course immediately thought of you. Why not? You’re a fun type of person. Mostly.
CONGRATULATIONS!
WELCOME TO OUR FIRST FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE!
Did you see that coming? So here’s the deal. First of all you go to this website
http://www.kitt.net/php/title.php
And get six titles. Pick ONE to write your flash fiction story about.
BTW, the definition of flash fiction is: whatever you want it to be. So sayeth Wiki:
“Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity.[1] There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category.”
Basically I’m looking for something around 1000 words. It can be less, it could be more. If you’re closing in on 3000 words and you haven’t really nailed it yet, think about some editing.
THE RULES
- You write 1000 words more or less on the topic
- Post it on your blog
- Reference us on your blog and this challenge so your regular readers don’t think you’ve gone batty.
- Post your link to your story here in the comments section.
- You have until Friday 10/16/2015 at 12 noon EST, that’s Tampa Florida US of A time, for those of you who live elsewhere.
GET TO IT!
.
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Got a QUESTION? ASK IT! Hit the Contact Me button and I’ll see what I can do. (I have lots of smart friends.)
Dan Alatorre is the author of several bestsellers and the hilarious upcoming novel “Poggibonsi: an italian misadventure.” Check out his other works HERE
72 replies on “FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE”
Im in!
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What random title did you get?
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The Invisible Boy!
I’ve already got some ideas whirling! I’ll get onto it this evening.
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I present to you, The Invisible Boy by Tess M Garfield.
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Great job!
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And she did it in one day Jenny! Can you imagine?
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Great, great, great job with this. and fast! Holy cow, people think I’m proficient!
Nice job kicking this off for us. I appreciate that!
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I got Final Theft. Hmmm.
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Final Theft. I like it. Could be anything. What are you thinking? What direction are you going to go in?
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Bookmarking to do later since I have a series going. Great idea to flex the brain!
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Be sure to let us know what title you end up with, Josh! We wanna give that brain a workout!
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Will do!
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Don’t forget your story, Josh!
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What Friday? Next one or today?
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Oops, yes, I’d better clarify. One week. You have until Friday 10/16/2015 at 12 noon EST
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Did you mean next Friday 10/16?
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The deadline is Friday 10/16. Sorry for the confusion!
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Everybody be sure to tweet about this so we get more people in the challenge!
I’ll do some more tweets after dinner – gotta go make my pizza dough into pizza!
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Love this idea.
Have you tried these name generators?
http://www.behindthename.com/random/
http://nameberry.com/search/advanced
http://www.fantasynamegen.com/
My favorite one went belly up several years ago but these have been useful.
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Thanks for the suggestions! We can use them for next week’s challenge.
Let us know what title you end up with!
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[…] but focusing on my novels has prevented me from doing so. That is until today. My author friend Dan Alatorre set a challenge on his blog; use a ‘book name generator’ to choose a name, and write a flash fiction short story to […]
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That was fast! Somebody must have some nervous energy to burn off!
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That would be one way to explain it! It will only get more intense because I’ve got a secret, but I’ll use it to pound out some more words for Lightning Attraction 2 over the weekend! 😉
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Keep after it!
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The deadline is Friday 10/16. Sorry for the confusion!
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Thanks for making my blog topic choice for this week easy! I’m in! 🙂
My title is The Sky’s Bridge.
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That’s intriguing. Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
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I think you’ll be surprised…
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[…] flash fiction challenge comes courtesy of Dan Alatorre. We were to generate six titles using a random title generator and pick one to use for our story. […]
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This went in a different direction than I thought it would go.
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THAT was a good story. Why is it my sunny, happy, bubbly friends go all psycho dark when they write a short story? That kinda creeps me out about you guys. Do I do that? Brrrr.
Great story. Makes me think there’s a whole evil dark scary novel percolating in there somewhere. I may do this challenge again just to see how dark I can get you to go. Chilly. Chills. Brrr!
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Better than being psycho dark IRL, right? 😉 Glad I surprised you.
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See, if I reply to your IRL comment, where does this go?
Oh, it went in the right place. Nevermind. It looks like it’d be backwards though. Like not in order. I thought that’s what happened a few times before so I stopped.
It’s still counterintuitive to go to the original comment and reply there to your later comment. I stand by my confusion.
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Okay, here it is…My first ever Flash Fiction story!
The Sky’s Bridge
http://wp.me/p6aesT-4m
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Oh, and then THIS! I’m sitting here after breakfast, reading your story and pretending my allergies are attacking me so my family doesn’t revoke my Man Card. Holy cow, what a story.
I’m not sure I can take hosting another Flash Fiction Challenge. You guys are killing me. I wanna rewrite my last 17 chapters now. Wow, good stuff. Wowwwww!
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Thanks, Dan!
I hope your “allergies” are better. (Nice cover, BTW…lol) I shed a few tears myself writing it.
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A little. Sniff.
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Wow! What a moving story.
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Thanks, Allison!
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IRL = In Real Life? How do I know you’re not? Maybe the FB posts are the fake stuff!
BTW, I have this site set up for limited replied to a single comment, I think. All of you can comment but I can only reply once and then like after that if yo reply to the reply I THINK, so I need to figure that out. Some people have asked questions i can’t seem to go back and answer. Anybody have any ideas?
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You can go into admin settings and mark how many steps into a thread replies can happen. I think two is the default. I changed mine to five.
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On it. Thanks!
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[…] Alatorre posted his FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE, asking authors to go to kitt.net and use the random book title generator as the basis for a […]
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Woohoo! Fun idea! Here’s my entry based on the random book title generator result “Hunter of Obsession”… http://andreamalexander.com/
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Can’t wait to check it out! Thanks!
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Oh, I enjoyed that! Great bunch of characters, each so unique and bizarre in their own way. Terrific!
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[…] FICTION CHALLENGE from the awesome site (I call his a site, rather than a blog, not sure why) of Dan Alatorre. You can click on his name if you’d like to be transported through the magic of the […]
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And I didn’t know you were in a black hole. Hope it helped!
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Fun challenge, thanks! Here is mine. http://myfridayblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/11/the-guardian-of-the-girl/
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Awesome! Thanks!
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I tend to call it a site, too – not sure why. And: intertubes??? BTW, I was a Sig Ep in college, so this hooked me right off the bat.
Great job with this. brutal and funny and real and a little shocking – at several points! Nice job!
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I have a couple of friends who were Sig Ep. They weren’t anything like the ones that inspired that. I think it depends on the campus.
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No worries. We get that it’s fiction. Nice work.
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I’m not worried, just saying. Thank you.
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Got it
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Oh yeah, I call the internet the intertubes because of that Senator that said it was a series of tubes.
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It’s not???
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HA!
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Great ending!
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Thank you!
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It was a surprise, wasn’t it? I liked that.
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[…] I’m submitting this one both to Blog Battle (http://rachaelritchey.com/2015/10/13/blogbattle-week-31-scar-entries-voting/) and Dan Alatorre’s flash fiction challenge (https://danalatorre.com/2015/10/09/flash-fiction-challenge/). […]
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Can’t wait to read it! Great title!
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Okay, I’ve got one for you. My title was Dance of the Lights, and it’s here: http://cathleentownsend.com/2015/10/13/the-dance-of-the-lights/. It’s only fair to tell you that I blew through a thousand, and my word count ended up at 1300 after critique.
And it’s creepy.
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It WAS creepy! You did a good job of building tension and suspense! I liked the little figure pointing and shaking its head – pretty haunting. Nice job!
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Great story!
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May have a go at this next time I write a short story. 🙂
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Please do!
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[…] morning my power went out, so I didn’t get a chance to post my submission to Dan Alatorre’s Flash Fiction Challenge in time for the deadline. BUT, I’m throwing caution to the wind and submitting it anyway, […]
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Better late than never?
I can’t wait to see the other submissions after my shift tonight!
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What a great story! Thanks for doing that, even though it was late. Now, just FYI, there’s a time limit on the next one, too. Tick tock. It started today, ends in a week.
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[…] Dan Alatorre offers a Flash Fiction Challenge which you can get involved in: https://danalatorre.com/2015/10/09/flash-fiction-challenge/comment-page-1/#comment-2547 […]
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