Flashes of Inspiration

Hi all, and welcome back to Flashes of Inspiration, my bi-weekly flash fiction contest here at The Fine-toothed Comb. It’s been a busy week for me. Right now I’m ploughing my way through several short stories and a chunky novel, all for structural review. A convention has been announced, which I’ll be taking part in in various different panelly and workshoppy ways like some kind of pro. Oh, and I’m gradually losing the war against yoghurt. (Don’t ask.)

Anyway, enough about me. This is my forum for bringing creative people together in friendly competition. All I’m after is 400 words of imaginative prose or poetry, using the above image for inspiration. Literal interpretations are fine, as are figurative, tonal, and thematic. Whatever floats your dream-boat. I’ve been setting some specific challenges of late to try to push my own writing a bit. This week, let’s try making our narratives sound like they were written in a bygone era.

In addition, I have 3 key words that must be used in your piece in some way, shape, or form. These are:

Read more

Welcome back to Flashes of Inspiration, your (ahem) bi-weekly flash fiction competition. It’s been a bit of a busy time at The Fine-toothed Comb of late – both professionally and personally – so my apologies for keeping you waiting so long. I’ve crossed countries to see a cousin get married, attended the WorldCon in Dublin, had a teensy bit of a breakdown with regards to the day-job, and recovered myself at a pretty magical music festival. I’m back in the saddle now and raring to go again, hence the ever-so-appropriate image up top to help inspire our next round of creativity.

Forgotten how this works? It’s simple. You have 400 words to play with, an image to give you a sense of meaning, tone, action (or whatever), and 3 key words that you must use in the text somewhere. (Variants of the words are acceptable, so long as the root remains.) Confused? Frazzled? It’s just a bit of fun. Don’t sweat it.

Read more

Welcome once more to Flashes of Inspiration, my bi-weekly flash fiction contest. We’ve had 10 games of free-play, and it’s been loads of fun, but I think it’s time to get a little more challenging. For the next 10 contests, I’ll be pushing out of my comfort zone and hopefully dragging you lot with me. Why? Well, it’s all good exercise. Stretching different writing muscles and so on.

So, this first challenge is to find a new perspective. Flipping expectations. Same rules as ever: 400 words, 1 picture to help inspire and 3 key words to be included in some way…

Read more

EDIT: (ahem…)

Morning all, and welcome back to The Fine-toothed Comb. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed setting these creative challenges. I hope you’re getting something out of them too. You’ll be happy to know that this isn’t taking the place of my editing work – I’ve been feverishly working on a novella for Horrific Tales, an adventure game-book for a comic-book creator’s Patreon, and a couple of novellas expanding on elements from my Twisted Earth anthology. (EDIT: No idea what that is? I’ve written a little bit about it here.) With several customers now pre-paying for books to be edited later on this year, it’s proving to be a busy one! But enough about me. Let’s get on with the contest.

Read more

Morning peeps, and welcome back to the Flashes of Inspiration challenge – my bi-weekly flash fiction competition thingy. I’m trying to get into the habit of writing, stirring the pot of my imagination in order to keep things fresh. I’m also giving myself the licence to experiment. Making it a shared challenge seems to hook me in more and helps me drive for quality. I hope you get something equally valuable out of it.

A reminder – the images we use each time don’t have to be taken literally and needn’t figure in your creative writing at all (though they can do so if you wish). The intention is to prick the subconscious, to prompt questions, to set a tone or evoke some feeling. Take them as you will. Your work can be in any genre, take any style or form. As usual these days, I’m looking for no more than 400 words. It seems to be a sweet spot. Oh yes, and the following three words must be used:

Read more

Evening all, I’m back from New Zealand and burning to write. Let’s get back to our Flashes of Inspiration then, shall we? A friend shared some pretty bizarre stock images on Facebook the other day, and this one grabbed me as being particularly provocative. It seems pretty clear that there’s a nasty connection between the corpse and the girl, but what’s the story behind it? Is evil looking us in the eye, does it lie in the coffin, or perhaps behind the camera? Is the body real, or is this part of an elaborate prank? There are so many possibilities whizzing through my brain. I hope you’ll join me in crafting some kind of narrative from it.

Read more

Morning all. First up, congratulations to Caroline Polley for her victory with When In Cyberia in the last contest. Her prize will be winging its way to her soon. The creativity train never stops though, so on we go to the next competition. We have another image to get the grey cells chugging but how will you take it? Will you come up with an anthropomorphic crime drama, a Planet of the Apes pastiche, some scathing satire on capitalism, or a somewhat subtler and more twisted tale? You’ve got 400 words to play with and they must include the following three…

Read more