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.
Your three key words this time round are:
Dove
Proximity
Rattle
I’ve said that this second season of Flashes is supposed to be upping the ante a bit, urging us to step outside our usual zone of comfort. It’s always good to see things from a different perspective, so let’s take that as our challenge this time. It might be based on age, gender, species, culture, ability – whatever you choose, but try to write something from a perspective that is worlds away from your own.
Please e-mail your entries to me at dion@thefinetoothed.com by midnight (GMT) on Wed 4th September. I’ll post them all up on the site the following day and announce a winner.
Until then, have fun!