Hacking the Hacks

This morning I learned about a “Hackathon” short story contest by Owl Canyon (details here) and the premise is unlike any other writing contest I’ve ever seen: they provide the first paragraph and the last, and it’s your task to complete the story with exactly eighteen intermediate paragraphs of at least fifty words each.

Naturally, I’m gonna try my hand at it–and because they also allow multiple submissions, I thought it would provide an excellent opportunity to do something daring.

I’m going to write multiple stories–and each of them will have a different genre.

So, to get started, I thought I’d take some time to dive deep into the writing “prompts” and brainstorm some ways I can tackle it from such different perspectives.

p. 162

The car rattles underneath me. Wedged between a dark woven seat belt and the child seat to my right. Plastic presses into flesh with the lust of Draculean fangs grown yellow from thirst.

Streaks of rain splatter across my window like comets across the stars. A meteor plows through, a cavalry leaving wet steps behind it amid the crosshatch of rain marks.

Gregory Maguire’s Lost lies open in my lap. I’m reading the fictional account of a writer recounting her own fiction, the embedded character referencing literature three layers of lies deep.

I spin lies easily. Fiction is the art of convincing the unbelieving to believe the unbelievable.

Maybe I’m another fiction. Maybe I’m just another character, four layers deep, and you’re reading my story.

NaNo 2014: Story 7

I’ve fallen a little behind in posting my stories–so I’ll put this one here today, and another tomorrow. This one in particular came from an idea I had while riding the elevator to work one day. What happened if suddenly everyone on the elevator disappeared? It’s meant to be horror, but has a surreal ending. I like it.

Marley looked up at the ding of the elevator arriving and then watched as the door rolled back and a small crowd of people came out. There were two or three others waiting around, and as they filed into the elevator, Marley went with them.

She stepped back and watched the door swing shut. She was trapped there. The door shook as it fell into place and Marley looked up. There was her reflection, facing her, smiling at her from the other side of the glass. It waved to her, though Marley kept her hands at her sides, and then it walked away; Marley saw her reflection on the door a moment longer before it vanished.

Inspire my next story by clicking here.

NaNo 2014: Story 4

When I began asking for story inspiration, the first response came from one of my aunts, and I knew I had to make the story special. Her prompt was simple–Walter, an English coastal town in the 1960s, and aging–and at first I wasn’t sure where it would take me. I held onto it for a few days, and it slowly took on a few faces….

The Devil’s Genius

The crows circled the tower outside as Rainald rested his hands on the stone balustrade surrounding the balcony. Inside he could hear the beating hands of a thousand clocks, each an echo of a heartbeat comingling with the cawing above him. It formed a cacophonous symphony that at once inspired him and terrified him.