Anybody Interested in a Friendly Flash Fiction Competition?

Seeing as how I am newly arrived on the fiction scene, I am looking for ways to tighten up my skills and grow my support and communication network. I’ve never done flash fiction and frankly I find the whole concept a little intimidating. But since I often seem to perform well under pressure in other areas of my life, I figure it is time to dive in!

And to make it really interesting, I thought it might be fun to create friendly contest of sorts around it.  So here’s what I’m thinking – we’ll create OOFF – Object-Oriented Flash Fiction. Every week (or two weeks or two months) we select a random object…a shoe, a chair, a dock.

Each participant must then write a flash fiction story that he/she submits or posts online. We grab a few unbiased other writer friends for judges and they pick a winner who gets something really special (Amazon gift card, free copy of one of the participant’s novels, etc.) The real treat is of course to practice our writing skills and build our community of peers in the process.

Yes, I know there are already established Flash Fiction competitions all over the place. But I’d like to use this  to build connections and relationships with other writers rather than a byline. If you’re interested in participating, let me know. This is all collaborative and I am very open to the ground rules we establish.

What’s the minimum amount of people needed to make it fun? How long/short should the stories be? How often should we do it? What else is necessary to make this fun AND useful? Who’s with me?

4 comments on “Anybody Interested in a Friendly Flash Fiction Competition?

  1. jannatwrites

    I’ve never done flash fiction before, but your idea sounds interesting. If you get enough people together, I might give it a shot. I could be horrible at it, but there’s only one way to find out 🙂

    Reply
    • Greever Post author

      Great – thanks for joining me Janna! I’ll get back to you as soon as we get a couple more people interested. I’ve only done two so far myself, one fiction and one non-fiction but the process wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. I think the key is to drop into the scene without much backstory and then drive quickly to a climax and resolution. There is no time for a lot of character development, so that is definitely a tricky part (at least for me). But I do think you’ll enjoy the challenge of it!

      Reply
    • Greever Post author

      Awesome! As soon as we get a couple more we can take a shot at it. I’ve only done a few of them myself, but they are great for opening up a tiny little microcosm and testing your detail development.

      Reply

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