Tag: 200 words

Blogging, Flash Fiction

200 Words: Part 2 of Making Merry

Mandy Webster
My cat making merry in the christmas tree
My son’s kitten has been making her own bit of merriment in my tree. Stop, ornament thief!

The past two weeks, I have been participating in Chuck Wendig’s 200 Words flash fiction challenge. This week, author Michael Woods picked up my story start, Making Merry, and added the next 200 words. You may read it over on his blog.

So far, my favorite part about this activity is seeing how another author can completely change the setting you had in your head just by adding a couple of words. For example, I had originally pictured a lower-middle class suburban neighborhood with small ranch houses, but the addition of the Saab and BMW parked on the street suddenly morphed the setting I had in mind to more of an upper-middle class neighborhood. This totally changes the dynamic of the story moving forward. Continue reading “200 Words: Part 2 of Making Merry” →

Blogging, Flash Fiction, Short Story

The second 200 words: A Real Live Corpse

Mandy Webster
I took this photograph.
Today’s protagonist was staring down the barrel of a lit cigarette when she discovered the corpse. | Photo credit: Wikipedia

Last week, I posted the first 200 words of a short story as part of author Chuck Wendig’s latest flash fiction challenge. So far, I don’t think anyone has picked up my story where I left off, but there is still time to jump in. Even if you did not write a 200-word story start last week, you can still participate beginning in phase two. I would love to have someone pick up my story so I can see where it ends!

The first 200 words of this week’s story were written by Ken Crump from the Brickhouse Piggy blog. You can find his original post here. Ken did not title his first 200 words, but I really like his “real live corpse” concept. I think it would make an excellent title, so I am running with it. Of course, the next person to work with this story might think otherwise and decide to change it. But that’s half the fun!

I am going to attempt to write the second 200 words in a similar voice, so it (hopefully) will read is if written all by one person: Continue reading “The second 200 words: A Real Live Corpse” →

Blogging, Flash Fiction

Who’s up for a 200 word piggy back ride?

Mandy Webster
Mandy Webster NaNoWriMo stats
Here are my latest NaNoWriMo stats. It lies about how many words I’ve written today. I just haven’t added any more words to my NaNo project.

I finished NaNoWriMo Tuesday, and guess what? I haven’t stopped writing since! Today, I am joining a writing challenge hosted by Chuck Wendig over at the TerribleMinds blog. It’s a five part challenge in which participants will collaborate to write several flash fiction pieces 200 words at a time.

To participate, this week you should write the first 200 words of a story and post it to your blog. Then head over to TerribleMinds (where you can also find full details of the challenge) and share a link to your post. The next week, you will choose another author’s first 200 words (maybe even mine!) and write the second 200 words of that author’s story. The following week, you will choose yet another story and add an additional 200 words of your own, and so forth, until you have written a total of 1000 words on 5 different stories.

Sounds like fun, right? Okay, so here’s the first 200 words of my story: Continue reading “Who’s up for a 200 word piggy back ride?” →