Dragon Writing Prompts

Flash fiction are stories less than a 1000 words and come in many varieties with sometimes very specific rules. Some other names are: short-short stories, sudden, postcard, minute, furious, fast, quick, and skinny fiction. Many have websites where you can share the torture of confining your writing by word count:

365 Tomorrows posts a new flash fiction everyday. You may submit your (science fiction based) stories for consideration.

Camille Renshaw provides a good overview of the craft in The Essentials of Micro-Fiction.

Here are a few types of flash fiction with specific limitations:

• pinhead stories (50 words or fewer)
• nanofiction (less than 50)
• 55 word (55 or fewer but must include a setting, character or characters, conflict, resolution, so it’s not, for example, a slice of life piece.) You can read the 2008 winners of the 55-word contest run by New Times magazine for inspiration.
• 69er, 88er, 99er
• microfiction (under 100)
• drabble (100 exactly and its spinoffs: dribble - exactly 50 words, droubble - exactly 200 words) The Drabble Project has some examples from drabble’s beginnings.
• ficleys (64-1024 words but you can continue someone else’s story).

From Slate Magazine:

The Encyclopedia Baracktannica

Now with more words and definitions!

By Chris Wilson

It’s hard to imagine that Barack Obama would be as big of a phenomenon if his name were, say, Tom Smith. As numerous fans, detractors, reporters, and bloggers have demonstrated, it’s a name that lends itself to neologisms—everything from Barackstar to Obamania to Omentum.

We present the unabridged Encyclopedia Baracktannica, a list of words that have been Obamafied by Slate. This is a widget, so you’re welcome to add it to your site. To do so, click the “Get & Share” link below and choose a service.

Creative writing often generates flabby writing. That’s okay! You *should* be sending your editor on vacation while the creativity flows. Getting out the ideas is way more important than proper grammar.

Ah, but afterward, when it comes time to edit, how do you get out the flab? Check out Autocrit.

Paste in up to 800 words and click Analyze. Autocrit returns with a check list of weak words. If you click on the check box it highlights the words in the text you pasted. Here’s a list of weak words it identifies:

could
feel/feeling/felt
generic descriptions
had
have
hear/heard
initial conjunction
initial ing
it/there
just/then
knew/know
look
ly adverbs
maybe
see/saw
smell/taste
that
was/were
watch/notice/observe

(They also offer a subscription with more critique and some free courses and writing articles.)

Seventh Sanctum has a wealth of information for writers and oodles of generators of all sorts. Need a less cliche vampire character? A sword of power? A god or goddess? Legend? Name for a gadet or dark ritual or disease or corporation? They’ve got them and lots lots more.

One is the Writing Challenge Generator. These ideas can be used to drive a story or you can pull out pieces as plot ninjas for a story or your NaNoWriMo project. You can generate 1-10 challenges at a time, with a complexity of 1-5 elements in each (or a random amount). Here are 10 randomly generated writing challenges:

• The story must have a jackal at the beginning. The story must involve an idol in it. A character is optomistic throughout most of the story. During the story, a character is attacked.

• The story must have a drum appear in the middle. A character becomes joyous during the story.
• The story is set during a funeral. The story takes place ten years in the past. The story must involve some musical pipes at the end. A character is lustful throughout most of the story.
• The story ends during a war. During the story, there is a need to ask directions. A character will read someone’s diary.
• The story starts during a riot.
• The story must have a chipmunk at the end. The story must involve a bracelet in it.
• A character will eat a meal, but the action goes terribly wrong. A character becomes enraged during the story. The story must have a barracuda at the end. The story must involve a magical grimoire in it. The story takes place in the late evening.
• A character attacks someone. A character is negative throughout most of the story. During the story, a character becomes pregnant.
• The story ends in a sunken ship. During the story, there is an explosion. A character opens a door, and they aren’t happy with it. During the story, a character finds a pleasant surprise.
• The story ends during a holiday ceremony. The story takes place in the winter. The story must have an elephant at the end. The story must involve a formal outfit in it.

“All the life’s wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie.” — Anu Garg

Well I hope the lived/devil anagrams are lying but the Weekly World News keeps reminding us that Elvis does indeed live.

Anu Garg sends out A Word A Day newsletter through Wordsmith.org. He also has the Internet Anagram Server there.

The best anagrams come from phrases and names, like:

Sopranos ends = Snoops snared
Gas prices highest = These piggish cars
Claude Monet, Self Portrait = Coloured paints flatter me
William Shakespeare, The Bard of Avon = He, of silken phrase, at a live drama. Bow.

But here are some (mostly) one word anagrams. Use each pair in a sentence.

squeak - quakes
ashman - shaman
heroes - reshoe
froth - forth
lived - devil
listen - silent
funeral - real fun
regal - glare
heart - earth
cold - clod
kiss - skis
dog - god
wrong - grown
mashed - shamed
ganged - nagged
mating - taming
wolves - vowels
paging - gaping
thorn - north
Elvis - lives

At Scholastic is a Myth brainstorming machine.

(If you’re on dialup it may take a while to load. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s loading, just sitting there with a yellow and purple screen, so you’ll need to be patient!)

There are several settings, gods/goddesses and monsters to choose from, and some special effects to change the time and mood. At the end you have a picture and a word version of the picture (names, mood, personality, …) (Note, you can click on “Effect” on both the Idea Drawing and Idea Outline.)

Pretty nifty!

To expand on that, in the Writing with Writers section, there are Myth making ideas from Jane Yolen:

A myth is a made-up story that explains the existence of a natural phenomenon — such as where thunder comes from or why snow falls from the sky. Myths — which often include gods and goddesses and other supernatural characters who have the power to make extraordinary things happen — are popular even when people know the actual reasons for natural phenomena.

At Scholastic there are several Writing with Writers series:

• Biography Writing
• Descriptive Writing
• Folktale Writing
• Mystery Writing
• Myth Writing
• News Writing
• Poetry Writing
• Speech Writing
• Writing a Book Review