Rebooting fiction prompts

Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

The last few prompts that have intrigued me enough to write about have a wee bit of a problem when it comes to the stated goals of including more prose fiction to this site.

As I work on the barebones outlines and start making headway into the actual writing of the stories based on the prompts, I discover that they are regularly exceeding the length of what folks normally consider to be flash fiction (<1000-1500 words by most standards; my personal limit being <2000 words).

With only the beginning scene for the occult noir story the prompt handed me last week, I am already at 1000 words, which makes it hard to have a middle and end in the next 1000 words. To complicate matters I only have the vaguest notion of where the story might end up, so it could easily be quite a bit longer by the time I’m finished.

But I’m enjoying this world that’s coming into shape and I don’t want to rush the story just to fit in with an arbitrary limit that no one but myself is imposing on me.

So, first-off, I will stop calling those prompts “flash-fiction prompts” and just call them “fiction prompts”.

Secondly, due to the added length, I’m going to post fiction offerings longer than flash-fiction lengths in episodic format to keep the posts within the average attention span. Plus, this particular story will benefit from the technique of employing mild cliff-hangers. I probably won’t post an episode daily when I do this, but I will try not to let it go longer than a week between episodes (I’m also taking additional editing steps that are not common to my posted fiction).

I also have a rough outline of a story that I may pursue for Jolene’s prompts, and that will likely also exceed my original limits (if I share it at all, it depends on if my take on the humorous tale feels right when it is done).

Just letting everyone know where my head it at and explaining my thought processes. The first episode from the files of Vivian Locke will post later today. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

michael raven

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14 responses to “Rebooting fiction prompts”

  1. Tansy Gunnar Avatar
    Tansy Gunnar

    Sounds like a solid plan for moving forward. I’ll keep an eye out for your stories.

    Reply
    1. michael raven Avatar
      michael raven

      We’ll see if they continue to emerge. You never know around me. Thanks!

      Reply
      1. Tansy Gunnar Avatar
        Tansy Gunnar

        Short stories are not my personal strength. You at least have an imagination that likes to work creatively. I have a difficult time coming up with ideas that are interesting. Also, I find cutting away everything that isn’t needed difficult. The only way I can make a story within its word count limit, is to do a trick that one of my professor’s taught me… turn it into a poem after the first draft. What doesn’t make the cut, can automatically be removed. It helped with my grade, but not with my lack of imagination. Some of my stories read like trying to guzzle a mug full of molasses. (My words gag/choke the reader at the first sip). 😁😉

        Reply
        1. michael raven Avatar
          michael raven

          It’s a skill that I’ve far from perfected and I’m out of practice to boot.

          Part of the reason I’m enjoying these prompts is that they give me a quick framework to develop my story around, usually with unexpected elements outside my normal thoughts and I am forced to dance a bit to make it work.

          I doubt your stories are that bad, but most of it is about practice and critically evaluating (not just reading) the writers you admire. Some folks are better than others, but I’ve always heard that someone who practices is almost always better than someone who does not.

          Reply
  2. shredbobted Avatar
    shredbobted

    I am leaning ever more towards long fiction posted in flash-fiction sized posts for consumption. I think 1300-1800 words, about 8-12 minutes read time is perfect for this platform, and anything longer than that is too long to hold a reader’s attention, as most of us are reading multiple posts daily.

    I do think that “cliffhangers” should happen about that often in a story anyway, so I think it all actually works out pretty well. Then I just go back later and join the posts into longer chapters or full stories. The only drawback to this is losing the comments that came in on the original individual posts. Keeping those requires a WordPress upgrade that looked to me to be in triple digits, and I’m not doing that. So I just save the drafts of anything that’s got good comments in it for ‘someday’ when I want to read them again.

    I love that prose writing is gaining more traction with folks on here and I want that trend to continue. Selfish, I know. But I love reading everyone else’s stuff too. We give, we receive, we grow. Or, as Jake Burton Carpenter put it, when one rider progresses, we all do. I think that goes for writing on WordPress too.

    Reply
    1. michael raven Avatar
      michael raven

      I think keeping it episodic instead of converting to a single document is probably better in the long run. You can easily generate have a chapter TOC page that points to the individual posts instead of merging them if you categorize and/or tag your post right and install previous/next links at the end of the post with a minimum of effort to make it easier for your readers to navigate (which is what I intend to do when part 2 of Sunny Day Parasol Co, goes live).

      Of course, you’ve gone for longer chapters than your posts, which creates an additional layer of difficulty, but I have a few creative ideas to overcome that (including the use of “page breaks” to minimize the flow disruption).

      I’d have to experiment, but I don’t think you need to spend any additional money on hosting fees to get what you want. Lemme know. (You might need to migrate to a different theme to get what you want if the tools are not offered for your current theme).

      Switching away from WP-hosted domains would be more cost effective than paying what they want you to pay for plug-in and full theme capabilities. That’s always been a bit of a racket, if you ask me (which is why I switched a year ago).

      Reply
      1. shredbobted Avatar
        shredbobted

        Oh yeah, I’ve done lots of formatting within Kelly theme, and I think it’s organized and easy to navigate, but I’ve been unable to give up on the idea of book-style chapters and breaks, page numbers, etc. That’s the traditional publishing dream refusing to quite let go of me, I think. For better or worse . . .

        Reply
        1. michael raven Avatar
          michael raven

          Let me set up a background demo of what I’m talking about and show (easier to show than explain). I’m not talking about changing your scheme. Just playing tricks with the blocks and options. It’ll take me a couple of days of playing and I’ll let you know if my conceptual model doesn’t work being the empty space between my ears.

          What’s your wordcount/page target?

          Automagical page numbering might be impossible with my abilities, but it certainly would be less overall futzing around and you already hard enter those anyway.

          Helps me out to figure out the finer details in case I continue to do more prose. Been meaning to test out some ideas for a while anyway.

          Reply
          1. shredbobted Avatar
            shredbobted

            I’m interested in seeing what you come up with🙂

          2. michael raven Avatar
            michael raven

            Sent you a link via email. It’s a bypass for the “under construction” page.

          3. shredbobted Avatar
            shredbobted

            Got it!

          4. michael raven Avatar
            michael raven

            Actually. For the time being, anyone interested in checking out this proof of concept is welcome to visit the placeholder content: https://gutenberg.ravensweald.com/?bypass_code=VNokHReNAzGkOGNA

            This was mostly to avoid search bots and random visitors visiting the site that I put it into maintenance mode. There is no meaningful content, most of it is lorem ipsum gibberish. There is no FOMO content here.

            I may change the bypass at some point if I decide to extensively mess around with the playground I created. But the above link will work for the immediate future.

          5. shredbobted Avatar
            shredbobted

            I usually count pages as 250 words but that varies of course with dialogue vs. description.

          6. michael raven Avatar
            michael raven

            I went with 300 as a metric. You can set page breaks as you want, if it is based in part on type of content. I think it is worthwhile to keep it to whole paragraphs for online page counts and presentation, rather than split paragraph, but that’s entirely up to you if you try out something like the proof of concept.

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