Janet Hamill – Synesthesia Surrealist poet and fiction writer Janet Hamill has adapted her poetry prompt for us. SYNAESTHESIA: THE SENSES AND THE ART OF IMAGERY Synesthesia – From the Greek, “perceive together.” The intermingling of sensations; sensing for example, of certain sounds through colors or ordors. Blending of sensations To write the poem/ prose poem/flash fiction, choose from the sheet a symbol/subject from section A, a verb from section B, and a sense from section C. In your poem you may use more than one item from each section. (Flash prompt is based on this poetry prompt–) Write…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Cynthia Kraman Cynthia Kraman, author of The Touch, Club 82 and others, suggested we try an “Exquisite Corpse,” or group story. The first line of the story is, “It’s 3 AM.” Add your line, then ask friends for subsequent lines. Or write your own story with that first line.
Tsaurah Litzky 1. Make an abstraction come to life by rendering it in specific details.i.e. for Old Age “Jenny was frightened that it was getting harder and harder for her to make it across the street before the light started flashing RED.You can use abstractions like poverty, joy, vanity, wealth, greed etc. etc. . 2. Take a line from a favorite poem and use it as an epigram or title before a flash fiction or a poem. I used this line, “There are hiding places in my room.” from a poem by Jack Michilene as a title for a poem.…
1. Since February is the month for love, write a story about a crush, requited or un-. Title your story with a word or phrase you’d find on a traffic sign. 2. Double soy grande caramel macchiato, cup of Joe, red red wine or good old H2O? Write a story in which a beverage is involved in the plot.
Jean Hanff Korelitz If you spend years writing a novel and every publisher in the world rejects it, put it away and write a better novel. Don’t self-publish. Despite the programs and apps and bells and whistles that appear to make self-publishing almost indistinguishable from traditional publishing, it’s not the same and it never will be. I’m not suggesting it’s easy to accept defeat, let alone to start over with a different (better) novel. Trust me, I know exactly how hard it is. But how glad am I that my first two failed and epically rejected novels…
Write a story that is based on a poem that you like. Do not use more than 5 words from the poem (other than common ones).
Rusty Barnes – Writing Prompt The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction Edited by Tara L. Masih Rose Metal Press 2009 FLASH FICTION EXERCISE Memory-Mapping Exercise from Rusty Barnes I acknowledge here the conflation/adaptation of a couple of exercises from Josip Novakovich’s essential book Fiction Writer’s Workshop (Story Press, 1995), the “Settings” chapter in particular. Where Novakovich asks writers to use lists of objects remembered from the childhood home and descriptions of the childhood neighborhood to imagine what happened in those places, using a map if necessary, I take the exercise in a different, character-generating direction. I’ve…
I teach a course in Flash Fiction, and have come to appreciate the kind of skill required for brevity of narrative and surprise/conflict. Over the years I have seen stories just over a paragraph to four pages that capture moments or even large swaths of time and the discoveries that happen to people in the midst of their lives. Post-Civil War writer Kate Chopin’s page/plus “The Story of an Hour,” about a woman’s startling realization about marriage and identity, created controversy in its time and is continually included in literature anthologies (I use it in my Intro to Lit class).…
You (or your character) wake up one morning to find you are not one, but two. However, the other you is somehow different. Try to show this difference through dialog and action, rather than “telling”.
POEMS ON LOVE OF IDENTITY / IDENTITY OF LOVE Curated by Sharon Dolin Sharon Dolin is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Manual for Living (2016); Serious Pink (2015 reissue); Whirlwind (2012); and Burn and Dodge (2008), which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Her other awards include the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Drisha Arts Fellowship. Her work has appeared in dozens of magazines as well as in these recent anthologies: Short Flights: Aphorism Anthology, The Poets Quest for God, The Incredible Sestina Anthology, Ecopoetry,…