Flash Fiction Challenge: I LOVE… SOMETHING!!!

Posted byDan Alatorre AUTHORPosted inUncategorized

00love 1.jpgLast week we did hate; this week we’ll do love.

LOVE

But that’s as easy as it gets, gang.

(Can you believe this? My Google image search for “love” got about 35 pictures before a dirty one!)

We all love someone or something, but how do we describe that in a character? How do we show that? Well, you’re about to find out. This week, take a random character from the random character generator and put them into a 1000 word scene where LOVE is evident.

00love 2.jpg

Yep, it’s just like last week’s challenge. Except love, not hate. There’s a method to my madness. With a bunch of descriptions and stories involving descriptions of LOVE, we will have a terrific reference for those times when our story needs a love description. And here it will be.

As you read others’ essays here, you’ll see various methods of expressing these emotions. That worked pretty well with hate, and love is obvious, but the emotions will get harder as we go, so you’ll really need to test yourself in upcoming challenges, but it’ll be totally worth it! (I learned a few things reading the essays last week.)

Brilliant, eh?

I thought so.

What do you love? Who does your character love? How does that emotion physically manifest itself in your character’s actions? (Get your mind out of the gutter.)

There are many types of love, though. Let your character speak to you and GO THERE with that character.

Be creative.

Be daring.

Be on time; there’s a one week limit.

00love 3.jpg

Here’s your random character generator (is anybody else humming “All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles right now?)

http://writingexercises.co.uk/character.php

Plus, as an added bonus, you get to work within a set genre. Using the magic random number generator, you’ll be writing in one of the genres listed below.

  1. Fantasy
  2. Science Fiction
  3. Western
  4. Mystery
  5. Suspense
  6. Horror
  7. Crime/Detective
  8. Action Adventure

Notice that romance is not one of them! Bwahahahaha!!!

Hit the random number generator and see what setting your get for your character! (Set a range first. 1-8.)

http://www.mathgoodies.com/calculators/random_no_custom.html

00love 4.jpg
A little love for our friends in frostier climates. Cos it’s 54 degrees in Florida today and I’m freezing.

But I’ll give you this: usually you have to stay within the parameters. This time, you can bend your character a little to fit within the genre. Because the Random Character Generator might give you a space alien and your genre might be westerns. That could be a tough fit. Or a fun read.

Or a terrific challenge.

Other than that, NO CHEATING! One spin of the wheel of fate for your character, one for the genre. Next week it will be much harder and you’ll be glad you built your writerly muscles up with these easy ones!

When you have finished, every reader should come away KNOWING that the character loved the other person or the thing or whatever; the LOVE will be obvious to everyone, regardless of the manner in which you showed it. It’s harder than you think!

 

You know the drill:

  1. Use the Random Character Generator to pick your character
  2. Use the Random Number Generator to get your genre
  3. Tell us what you got for a character and genre
  4. Write a story up to 1000 words that is obviously written using both the character and emotion, in the genre.
  5. Post your story below in the comments with a link to your blog where
  6. Have fun with it!
  7. You also post it on you blog (No blog? Just copy paste the whole thing here.)
  8. And mention what the heck this is so people don’t think you’ve gone schizo
  9. Read and comment on OTHER people’s entries. That makes it fun. Allegedly.
  10. You have one week. Noon Friday a week from this posting date (sunny, warm Tampa, Florida, USA time. Which is freaking cold this week.)
00love 5.jpg
I do love me some pizza…

One more thing! Vote yes or no on this idea as a upcoming flash fiction challenge, submitted by two of our faithful readers:

The idea was to see how people referred to underwear in different scenarios, and how it varied based on genre.  So, how about something like….

Random character from the generator

Numbered list of genre’s – number generator

Write about that character in the chosen genre, 500 words, but must mention two different pieces of underwear.

Thoughts on that one?

Okay, get to writing!

.

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Dan Alatorre is the author of several bestsellers and the hilarious upcoming novel “Poggibonsi: an italian misadventure.” Click HERE to check out his other works.

 

 

 

Published by Dan Alatorre AUTHOR

USA Today bestselling author Dan Alatorre has 50+ titles published in more than 120 countries and over a dozen languages.

35 thoughts on “Flash Fiction Challenge: I LOVE… SOMETHING!!!”

  3. Pingback: Flash fiction challenge: What matters most – AngieTrafford

  5. I have to write a

    **fantasy**

    about

    **An anxious 25 year-old woman, who comes from a comfortable background, lives in a country cottage and tends to be a hoarder.**

    That will help me to avoid editing tomorrow morning!!! This will of course be a real challenge for me because I’m expected to be good at writing about love!!

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  6. OK side note here – you have ZERO to whine about, weather-wise. By order of those of us in the frozen tundra of the Upper Midwest.

    Incidentally, when I got off the plane in Erie today, it was 45 and I was stunned at how WARM it felt.

    I’m broken. Clearly.

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  8. love.

    “So you think all three guys are in love with you?” Dr Heffner leaned forward, his eyes skimming the hem of my skirt.
    I crossed my legs. Three guys were enough. I didn’t need some psychiatrist suffering from doctor patient transference. Although wasn’t I supposed to be the one falling for him. With a sigh I gave him my best straight forward glare. “I know I have three guys in love with me.”
    “Hmm.” He scribbled something on his notepad. “What makes you so sure?”
    “For starters, two of them tell me they love me out right.”
    “What about the third?”
    “Well, the third only tells me when he’s drunk and wants something. But I married that one, so does he really count?”
    Dr Heffner’s pen made more scraping noises as it’s ink scrawled across the paper. Jeez. Something was seriously wrong with this dude. Why didn’t he use an iPad like everyone else?
    He stopped writing and gave me a half smile.
    He didn’t believe me. He assumed I was some sort of histrionic personality, suffering from confirmation bias. Why didn’t he fucking agree with me so I could go home? Of course home no longer existed since my my dumb ass husband locked me out of the penthouse. A temporary situation which would be modified by my being overly obliging.
    I stopped digressing, and smiled back.
    Dr Heffner chewed the end of his pen. No doubt giving me time to burst forth and ramble with nonsense, thus strangling myself with my own words.
    I remained quiet, and uncrossed my legs.
    He frowned. “Let’s start with guy number one. Tell me something about him.”
    What’s to tell. “I was a child. I needed someone. He was there.” This was the one that hurt the most to talk about.
    “So he’s older?”
    “Two years.” I shrugged. “I banged on his door one morning when my dad kicked me out. He let me in. I slept beside him. He fed me.” My thoughts were scattered and coming at me too fast.
    “Your dad kicked you out.” He wrote something down. “How old were you?”
    “Fourteen.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
    “Tell me something about your relationship with your dad.”
    Jesus, now he was a psychoanalyst. I shifted in my seat, the room becoming unbearable hot. “Ask me direct questions.”
    “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” He raised his eyebrow.
    “I can’t answer such an open ended question. I…my memory is shot. I don’t know if I trust my own deductions.”
    He placed his pad of paper on the table. “Did you enjoy a good relationship with your dad?”
    I nodded. Should I be nodding? “Until I was older. You know around twelve.” What in the shit did this have to do with my three guy problem? Or my more current issue of being homeless?
    “Can you tell me what happened then?”
    “I was a smart ass. I deserved it.” What did I just say? Counsellors ate this shit up. Here I was spoon feeding him when it was my standard policy to be more unaccommodating when someone was picking my brain apart.
    “Deserved what?”
    “Specific. Ask me specific fucking questions.”
    “Did your father touch you inappropriately?”
    “No!” My stomach rolled over. He tried to strangle me with a belt once, but that wasn’t the type of touching Dr Phil eluded too. I closed my eyes. “Never. I have questions…never mind.” My mind always fogged itself up when I went there.
    The doctor examined me like I was a juicy steak.
    For the love of God. Ask me another question. Now. “Next.” I managed to get out.
    “Did your father hit you?”
    I stared at the man across me. What did he know about being hit? What did he know about laying crumpled on the floor like a piece of garbage? My mouth was almost to dry to get words out. “People like to hit me.”
    He remained quiet, but looked sad. Super, I just made a man that hears all sorts of bullshit, on a daily basis, sad.
    “Please go onto something else. I don’t want to be twelve.” My body shuddered.
    “What about your mother?”
    “I refuse to discuss my mother on the ground that it might incriminate me.” I tried to laugh. It was a joke after all.
    He didn’t smile. “Did you feel like your mother loved you?”
    I coughed. “What part of not wanting to talk about this did you not understand.”
    “If you don’t talk, you’ll never move forward. You’ll never heal.”
    “Heal?” Is that what he thought my desired outcome was? Healing implied damaged. I wasn’t damaged. “Change the subject.”
    “What do you want?” His voice was soft.
    “I want somebody to love me.” Crap. She reminded herself of some stupid county love song.
    “I thought your problem was you had to many people loving you.”
    Love. Such a useless word. It meant nothing. It didn’t make promises. It wasn’t a contract. It disappeared at random, only to show up when you had finally conquered it and mind fuck you into the next century. I laid a hand across my stomach and pressed, trying to stop it from spilling onto the floor.
    The doctor watched. “What do you want.” He asked again, probably thinking he was clever to repeat the same question, some sort of emphatic value.
    “I want to be sixteen. I want to be curled up in my friends bed. I want him to tell me he loves me, with words. Like he does now. Because now it’s to late.”
    “Too late?”
    “Too late for me.”

    Suzanne

    An arrogant twenty seven year old woman who lives in a penthouse, comes from a poor background, and tends to drive too fast.

    Okay I got western. She could have a horse outside.

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    1. That… is probably true. One day you’ll have to share with me how much of this might come from true life. Scary! (You have my email now…)

      Thanks for signing up for the newsletter. I wanna be there to help your book go to number one, and the things in the marketing book(s) will help a LOT. Tell any CC buddies that you like, too. They’ll need it as well.

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  11. Pingback: Granny’s Cottage | ladyleemanila

  13. Dan, due to the recent chaos that reigned in my life, I’ve bookmarked several of your posts, and will be reading them in the near future, so; I’ve not forgotten your site, just put it on the ‘definitely’ read later backburner 🙂

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  14. Dear Dan,
    This challenge was hard for me but I wanted to do it because it was about love. The challenge was in the category I randomly got–science fiction which is something I never read, let alone write. But I think it came out OK. The subject was a 33 year old woman living in architecturally designed house that comes from a poor background and is gullible. Hard to change into a Sci-fi thing but I tried.
    Genetically Engineered Love

    He was dead. It looked as if he was still alive in the vacuum packed drawer I was told to put him in, but he was dead. I tried to feel the emotions I was programmed to feel, but about him there was nothing, just a vast emptiness as desolate as this planet.
    Thirteen years of our arranged marriage and I couldn’t stir up anything for him, not even pity. I didn’t hate him, but I didn’t love him either. There was just a sense of uncertainty now that he was gone and my reason for existing was gone as well. The purpose I was born to, created in that petri dish thirty three years ago. I wasn’t even given a name until I married him. I was simply F-773. I think the F was for female, but I wasn’t supposed to be intelligent enough to figure that out.
    I had pushed the button my husband had labeled “push in case of extreme emergency” as soon as he was dead, and now someone was coming to collect his body and me too, I suppose. Today was when I calculated they would arrive, based on other messages and the monthly deliveries of our food and the various things I was able to request—makeup, high heels, clothes— the things that kept me happy, and him working, always working.
    The bell sounded. I jumped, startled out of my thoughts. They were on time. I pressed the button and the blind from the only observation window started to ascend. The ship was there. The lights blinked the same as all the other times. I released the airlock so they could come in. I had no doubt it would be the other scientists, my husband’s colleges, the arrogant, patronizing bunch of intellectuals who would take over and order me around like an errant child. I braced myself. At least I was wearing a new dress.
    I was wrong. The man who stood before me was someone I had not seen in thirteen years. The shock hit me as a physical sensation. My knees weakened, my fingers began to tremble, my eyes filled with tears that escaped the confines of my lids and traversed down my cheeks. He reached out to steady me and I reacted again to his touch. My throat tightened, my breath would hardly fill my lungs. The rest of it was taken when he kissed me softly at first like he used to, then with just the right amount of firm pressure I remembered, never enough to cause pain. I put my arms around him and embraced him tightly. I kissed his neck. Yes, it was him my M-774. His scent was the same, spicy and citrusy, like a lime crushed into a bit of basil.
    He opened his mouth to speak but I put my finger to his lips. “Not here.” I gestured to the sterile laboratory filled with my husband’s equipment, the area I couldn’t stand to inhabit for one more second than was necessary. I took his hand and led him into my room, the place I had decorated and where I spent all of my time. It was lavender, furnished with a satin chaise, heart shaped sequined pillows, a four poster bed and of course my white vanity with the oversized mirror. We sat next to each other on the chaise, his arm around me.
    “Why did they send you?” My voice was breathy, like the film stars I watched. “Where’s your wife?”
    “She’s dead. I’m being retrieved, like you.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.”
    “I’m not. She was a cold hearted bitch. The experiment’s not working. Most of them are dead, while all of us are very much alive.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ve missed you, every day. What did he name you?”
    “Alicia, after his mother. Whenever I took too long with my appearance he used to say, ‘Vanity, thy name is Alicia.’ I never told him it was a misquote. We were supposed to be the stupid ones, here for one reason only.”
    “She named me John. Not very original. She was all business, worked all the time.”
    “So did he, but they were designed to do that, just as we were designed to be their…is whores too strong of a word?”
    He laughed. “Maybe, but that’s essentially accurate. Do you remember the names we gave each other?”
    “Of course, Remy.”
    “And you were Kika. Do you remember us playing in the same pen? We were raised together until we were how old? Thirteen was it?”
    “Twelve, then they felt our hormones would get us in trouble.”
    He touched my face. “My hormones got us in trouble long before age twelve. Remember?”
    I felt the heat of a blush. I nodded. “I missed seeing you after that. All I could do was wave across the exercise yard, until we turned twenty.”
    “Yes, when we were forced to marry the other part of the experiment. Those people born with pure intellect, and nothing else. I actually cried when I saw her. She looked like she was made of ice.”
    “I was so lonely at first. I missed you, and the carers that were like our mothers.”
    He stretched out on the chaise and pulled me gently so I reclined beside him. “It all went so wrong.”
    I bushed his jaw with my fingertips. “What’s going to happen to us now?”
    “No idea. I suppose we’ll find out when we get back to Earth.”
    I touched the indentation on my forearm, the implant that caused me never to conceive. “I hope I can get rid of this thing.”
    He sighed. “I hope they let us be together. But whatever happens, we have tonight to get, well, reacquainted.”
    “How did you manage that? Who came with you?”
    “One of the scientists, but he’s busy fixing something that I accidentally broke.”
    “It wasn’t really an accident, was it?”
    He kissed me again. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

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        1. Hey, you did a terrific job. There were lots of elements in play, a nice surprise, and a good ending. Not easy to do in so few allotted words. Thanks for sharing it with us. It’s great to see your writing progressing so well and to see you stretch your writing muscles.

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