Tag: flash fiction

  • Stupid exposition…

    Sometimes you have to know when to just give something a rest and a rethink.

    I was merrily pounding on my keyboard a story for the flash fiction prompt I posted earlier, having quickly developed an idea earlier in the day — when I came to a sudden impasse.

    Two things went wrong.

    My imperfect memory of the geography of Seattle was partly to blame. The light rail system did not exist when I lived there and my planned story relied on several elements that were just not the reality of the situation on the ground. When I grew suspicious I checked out a few details and caught that flaw.

    That was a hurdle I probably could have overcome. Just change assumptions to fit the real world geography and modify a few words here and there. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.

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  • Flash fiction prompt — 10feb26

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I am sharing flash fiction prompts generated by AI for my own use unless I don’t think they are worth pursuing. Readers are welcome to try their hand at writing based on the prompts generated for this exercise.

    Notes about modifications made to the AI instructions or this post template are at the end of this post if you are curious about such things.

    Feel free to skip these posts if you feel you are not the target audience. If you choose not to participate, there is no need to let us know about your preferences and opinions about these prompts, or the use of artificial intelligence to generate writing prompts.

    Today’s prompt:

    Genre: Speculative fiction

    Subgenre: Biopunk / Post-Apocalyptic

    Target Length: < 2,000 words

    Key Elements:

    • A genetically modified plant that blooms only in moonlight.
    • A rusted key that opens nothing in the protagonist’s possession.
    • The sound of running water where there should be none.
    • A faded photograph of a skyline that no longer exists.
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  • Kasumi-no-Kuni — flash fiction

    This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted earlier and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.

    Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech

    Rin looked out over the Land of Mists from the tower she kept her watch from, a tower built entirely of unmarked rice paper and bamboo where she slept when she needed rest, and where she ate when she was given offerings by visitors coming to pay their respect to the memories of the ancestors — those memories captured in the paper of the lands proper. True to the name, the mists and clouds flowed through the city with only a single living resident, that being Rin. The white fog snaked through the streets inked with the stories of ancestors, often obscuring the memories unless someone were to stand before them.

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  • Flash fiction prompt — 09feb26

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I thought I’d start sharing those flash fiction prompts generated by AI that I find compelling enough to consider attempting to write about for my own purposes in case any of the folks dropping by here are tempted to try their hand at the prompt as well.

    It would be fun to see how others approach these prompts and contrast/compare the output.

    Feel free to skip these posts if you feel you are not the target audience; if you choose not to participate, there is no need to let us know about your preferences and opinions about these prompts or the use of artificial intelligence to generate writing prompts.

    Today’s prompt:

    Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech

    Plot Elements to Include:

    • The Object: An ornate silk kite that flies without wind, pulling its handler toward “emotional ley lines.”
    • The Setting: A floating city constructed entirely of paper and bamboo, held aloft by the collective memories of its inhabitants.
    • The Conflict: A “Memory-Scribe” discovers a blank spot in the city’s archives—a day in history that has been physically cut out of the paper foundation.

    Target Length: < 2,000 words

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  • Dead zone — flash fiction

    See my notes in this post about the prompted flash fiction pieces on this site about personal drivers and rules I use while writing them.

    Plot Elements to Include (all prompts and genre randomly suggested by Gemini AI):

    • The Object: A heavy, brass-bound radio that doesn’t receive signals from this decade.
    • The Setting: A city perpetually covered in coal-dust fog where sound is regulated by the government.
    • The Conflict: The protagonist discovers a “dead zone” where the fog clears, revealing a sky that hasn’t been seen in fifty years.

    Genre: Dieselpunk / Alt History

    “Gimme your ETA for finishing Delta sector baffler maintenance, Zed-Ought-Three-Stroke-Seven-Ex. We’ve got a situation in Epsilon and you’re needed immediately. Dispatch over.”

    Cinder let dispatch stew for a few moments before responding. She’d been done fixing the bafflers ten minutes ago but had quickly learned that being too much of a go-getter in City Maintenance just go-got you more thankless tasks and a fistful of disgruntled coworkers to boot. No one liked a brownnoser, including the bosses because then they had to find more make-work for you and explain to their superiors why that was the case. And if their superiors thought there were inefficiencies in the system, they would reduce the workforce to account for those inefficiencies, keeping only the overachievers, who would then be saddled with more work than they could handle on their own. Let no good deed go unpunished was the unofficial motto of the dome maintenance worker.

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  • A few notes about stories & prompts

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    As I mentioned a few days ago, I am going to try to increase my output of short fiction on the site to stretch out those muscles in that part of my brain which have atrophied somewhat in the past few years.

    I feel that I should provide some disclosures before publishing many more stories and to make clear what my personal rules are, and to set expectations about what you see in the coming days. Rather than post a few disclaimers for every story, I thought I’d point to this post. It is intended to be a living document and I will modify it as needed to clarify or correct its contents.

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  • The Bell Palimpsest — a prompted fiction exercise

    Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

    The following is written from another fiction prompt from Jolene (Chico’s Mom). On-the-fly, off-the-cuff and keeping edits to a minimum (my personal rules). The required included elements from her prompt are:

    1. Person who never gives up
    2. Plastic surgeon
    3. Secret meeting
    4. Library

    As expected, it ended up like another Twilight Zone reject, and I expect that’s just the way my mind is wired. I may make small edits in the next day or so as I read it with a fresh mind, but I don’t expect anything substantial to change during that time.

    Doctor Eliot Thorne was not a patient man in the best of times. And he was losing what patience he had as he waited for Miss Clara Bell in the candlelit library of her ancestral home in the wealthy end of town. He had thought to ask for more lighting, and had turned to the butler to ask for the lighting to be increased, but Gunter, her manservant, was already through the double-hung doors before he could think to ask.

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  • Stonerot

    We are Slaved of the Riverbound, and so even more stone than they. We are to be culled and carved away to make way for the flow which our overlords assure us is necessary for live to carry forth.

    I could see in the guards eyes and with the way he held his crop that he toyed with riding me. There was a gossamer thread between enforcing compliance and wanton thrill, and the guard had yet to decide if there would be his own punishment or glory in mounting me — if my transgressions warranted it, or were it to premature and hasty to act yet. Overly-eager guards were subject to the same punishments as the slaved. Our overlords wanted their workforce compliant, but largely intact and able to work, after all.

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  • At Winterkiss

    conceptual portrait of hands with red thread
    Photo by Amirhossein Kianbakht on Pexels.com

    Lingering at midnights, the skin’s hollow drum thrumming with tension tugging taut the skin in anticipation as black coil fingernails trace leys down the soft flesh of an inner forearm. First right, then left, setting lines burning like fireflies down to the fingertips.

    Comes at winterkiss. “Are you ready,” said she. A nod with it begins, her kiss leaving every nerve burning alive.

    A furtive nod, afraid the spell will break and longing for the neverending. Miraculously, there is only long vibrations humming through, a guitar string of tension bound under flesh.

    All bells break, shatter the water’s razor edge and then begins a falling, a falling lingering a twilights all that remains is the skin’s hallow drumming while wondering at Elektra and if might this be that hunger she beheld.

  • Death at the Wharf

    Photo by Izzy E on Unsplash

    I was murdered at Fisherman’s Wharf late one night in the month of July, way back when in 1995.

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