For those of you trying to write short-short fiction, here's a new assignment. It definitely looks a little strange, but give it a shot. I'm calling it "Alarums!"
Imagine an opposite sex person inside you (the one that carries messages between unconscious and conscious mind in dreaming, art, and daily life, unbeknownst to you).
Though he or she is the narrator-character of this story, you can’t have her or him say anything out loud in the story—just to us in telling the events of the story.
At the start of your story, your narrator-character is moving toward a scene where some form of harm or alarm has occurred, and he or she is in anxiety.
She or he witnesses the aftermath in some detail; a new character becomes aware of him or her and feels compelled to tell her or him exactly what happened.
The new character explains something of what happened, and though we cannot know if this new character knows or tells the true account, we feel the urgency.
The story ends with a new, repeated sound that draws the narrator-character’s attention to another image, even while the new character still wants to explain.
Appeal to the senses of seeing, hearing and smelling.
Your story may range from four to nine pages.
I'm looking forward to seeing stories by September 23.
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About Me
- Bob
- I write short stories and essays. I have published well over one hundred stories, essays, and flash fictions or nonfictions in magazines or anthologies, as well as a novel, Jack's Universe, three collections of stories, Private Acts, Killers & Others, and Not a Jot or a Tittle, and two chapbooks of flash fiction, Shutterbug and Dragon Box. I grew up in a military family, so I'm not from anywhere in particular except probably Akron, where I've lived for forty years. Before I came here, I never lived anywhere longer than three years.
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