March Flash Fiction Draw

Aloha! (I say that because I’m in Hawai’i.)

As a kind of challenge to myself (and anyone else who wanted to try), last January I started a year-long monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge.

The first draw (which was a Fairy Tale involving a Tattoo Machine set in a Prison!) and the results were fantastic in January, and February’s draw (Crime Caper, Compass, Soup Kitchen) and results were—I think the general sentiment agreed—much more of a challenge. Well, it’s the first Monday of March, so I’m back and I’ve made the third round of draws.

I made a video of it (you can go check that out on my Facebook page if you want).

The chart from which the draws were made was this (minus the cards from previous draws, greyed out):

And the result for March? Ace of clubs, jack of diamonds, and queen of hearts. Which means anyone who wants to play along is going to write a flash fiction piece of 1,000 words within the following guidelines: a romance, involving a VHS cassette, set in a firewatch tower.

If you do participate, please pop a link to this post, or to the Facebook video above so I can gather all the stories again for a round-up post next week.

But the most important thing? This is supposed to be fun and inspiring. If it’s not working for you, take a pass. There’ll be another challenge on the first Monday of April (that’s April 2nd), from the remaining ten items on the list. The “rules” such as they are are pretty limited: You have to use the genre, the item, and the setting (though you can play a bit fast and loose within those guidelines), no more than 1,000 words, and the piece needs to be finished by next Monday (March 12th). That’s it.

Enjoy!