#8 Postcard - Strike

     The man with the hypnotizing voice, the one the broadcast billed as Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones and Alan Rickman all rolled into one, cuddled his head in his arms oblivious to the chaos around him as the presidential election drew to a close. He was scheduled to go on air in five minutes and calm the world's fears.

     "What did you give him?" the station manager gritted between her teeth.

     "Just something for his headache.” The programmer dug through her purse. "Oh, oops."

     “I’ll get coffee and you keep trying to wake him up.” The station manager stalked out to the break room only to discover the coffee machine was broken. 

     Decision made, she clipped back to the studio and shoved the host upright. The sound of palm popping cheek shocked the crew and brought the host sputtering awake protesting abuse. 

     Her strike three.

***
For this writing prompt I found the website Writing Prompts that Don't Suck! The prompt is as follows: "Write a story in which a broken coffee maker has a huge impact on the world around it."

Twitterature... Twiction...

Curbside Message, Sacramento, CA

Have you heard of these terms before, because I hadn't until yesterday. Twitterature or twitter literature. Twiction/TwitFic or twitter fiction.

Is it possible to tell a story in 140 characters or less? 140 characters! That's not a word limit, it's a character limit which averages out to be about 12 words. The average English sentence is 16 words or 160 characters. How is a story told in 140 characters?

"How to Tweet Like a Pro in 140 Characters - Or Less" talks a bit about this. The author states that writing tweets actually makes people a better writer because "every sentence is a complete idea with a minimum of fluff and needless words."

There are several tricks to conserving characters when writing twitter literature or twitter fiction.

1. Use contractions freely. 
2. Try to avoid "and" "or" "but" as well as other conjunctions.
3. Drop pronouns, especially "that"
4. Stop using the "I" it makes the sentences more declarative. 
5. Use numbers, don't spell them out.
6. Don't double space between words.
7. Drop the very last period.
8. Use hashtag #twiction because it's shorter than #twitterature

Another tutorial for writing Twiction was found on this Teen Twiction website. Sometimes a twitter story is summed up in one tweet. For example, Ernest Hemingway once said that his best story was written in just six words: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Some authors connect tweets together to formulate their story. In this case, the story is more of a micro-fiction series.

So why am I talking about Twiction? Because I'm venturing into the twitterverse as @JennStories where I'll be attempting to write twiction. I figure like anything else, it's going to take practice and I might as well start now.

#7 Postcard Fiction - Ring Off

     April dug around in her purse, the gym bag hindering her movements as she shoved the door open to exit towards the street. Her finger tips brushed over the silicon case and she was dialing before the phone was out of the bag. With angry rapid fire words, April told of her mother about a stolen engagement ring, the stupid gym and its rude gym owners, which gave way to tears as her thumb rubbed her empty finger.

     "Chica! Hey, Chica!"

April turned and saw a rough Hispanic man with spider web tattoo on his neck. Her head whipped forward again and she clinched the phone tighter, picking up her pace. 

     "Wait!.. Hey, Chica!"
     April scanned for her car measuring the shortening distance as she dug back into the purse for her keys.
     "Oh, come on!...Flaca, tirame un hueso." April heard footfalls coming closer and faster.
     "Oh my god, Mom. There's a guy following me." A hand grabbed April's shoulder as her mother told her to run. She swung the gym bag, connecting and causing her attacker to stumble back.  As she prepared to scream, April saw the man holding out her diamond ring. 

#6 Postcard - Forgotten Friend

“Mommy. You sat on Kelly.”

                “Who’s Kelly?”

“My friend.”

“You didn’t give Kelly any toast.”

                “Here. What type of jam does she like?”

“Strawberry.”

“Kelly’s getting her jacket so she can come to Nana's too.”

                “Son, you’re getting to be a big boy. Can you ask Kelly to stay home this time?”

“OK."
"You can come anyway since they can’t see you.”

“Kelly, why’d you leave my birthday party?”

                You forgot me.

“No, I didn’t. You left. You left me.”

“Mom, I’m going next door.”

                “Is Kelly going with you?”

“…No. I'm going to play with Brandon.”

“Kelly. Where are you?”

                …

“Are you ever coming back?”

                …

“I’m sorry I forgot you.”

#5 Postcard - Fall

It was a dark and stormy night. No, actually, it was a rainy mid morning, surprisingly bright under the overcast. The first days of Texas Fall, cool, wet and windy. Hmmm, just right. I tend to curdle in the harsh sun and crack in the semi-winter.

My kind usually roam, following the whims of weather. I, however, am stuck with a responsible anchor and freedom is twenty-eight months away.

Folding clothes and watching the news is slowly killing me. Maybe relief will come sooner. Everyone seems to believe the world will end. Election day, either way, one side or all sides lose. 

#4 Postcard - Self-ish

Explorer, how will the successfulness of this experiment benefit all? The query interrupted the internal count down within the critical processor.

The Explorer observed the gelatinous liquid from which all biomass emerges. An experiment was submerged in the holding tank approaching its final stages. Though, that may prove to be false. The Explorer is considered an unfinished experiment by all, an inadvertent result of biomass and metal merged.

To postpone further queries while the countdown completed, the Explorer responded with reams of data point coding as the biomass broke the viscous surface – a corpse.

Explorer, this experiment does not benefit all. The experiment is halted.

This experiment benefits the Explorer. The experiment continues. The Explorer disconnected from all directives and severed the pathways.

#3 Postcard - Killing Clubs

   

 Tournament lost and a spectator loaded into an ambulance, Abby was banned from golf until further notice. 

     "I'm a nice person, really, and I love the game," Abby insisted, "but when the club disobeys. It has to die."

     "If you stuck with killing clubs and not people," the therapist trailed off. 

     "But I didn't mean to."

     "Look, expelling aggression is healthy just not when it impacts the health of others. And your aggressive temperament was increasing exponentially." The therapist clicked her tablet and showed Abby a montage of tantrums starting with a nine iron pounded into the ground and ending with a putter soaring, twisting into a crowd of spectators.

     "If I don't change, I'm going to be banned and lose my endorsements,” Abby bemoaned.

     "Which is why I suggested the charity game and art project which benefits domestic violence victims," the therapist reiterated.  

     Abby felt weighted under the measured, judging stares of the spectators while she played, poorly. After three bogeys, she was determined to make this last hole a par. Her grip tightened around the putter as the ball skirted the hole and again after a second tap. Abby instantly raised the club for a pounding as the crowd gasped in an audible collective. They held it as Abby’s club paused mid descent. She marched pass the spectators to the silent auction table and rammed the club across her raised thigh. The bent club was added to her sculpture "Dead Clubs."

~JRogers
8.25.2016

***

Today's story prompt comes from the Story Shack: Flash Fiction and Illustration Magazine which has a flash fiction generator that breaks the story down into categories.
Word Count: 250
Genre: Adventure
Character: an Art Therapist
Material: a golf club
Sentence: "I'll deal with you later."

These prompts gave me a fun idea for a story but I was stumped by the genre classification of adventure. What did that mean? According to Children's Literature Classics, adventure stories are dominated by fast paced action. While useful to define adventure stories, it doesn't tell me what elements need to be included to write an adventure story. I need a recipe with clear ingredients like the ones listed by Elizabeth Sims in her article How to Map Out Your Hero. Based on the idea I already had, I mapped out my plot to keep me on track while writing.

1. Something goes wrong. => Abby loses a golf tournament.
2. Why is this a problem? => She lost her temper and threw her club injuring spectators.
3. Someone is chosen to solve the problem. => Abby required to go to a therapist.
4. Identify the challenge. => Only gets angry playing golf. Jekyll/Hyde syndrome. 
5. Refusal by the hero. => Abby doesn't think she has a problem.
6. Acceptance of challenge. => Forced to watch video montage of tantrums and realizes she has a problem.
7. Hero encounters danger. => Abby risk losing backers.
8. Helper or mentor arises. => Therapist suggest solution. 
9. Setback occurs. => Charity tournament mishap.
10. Hero regroups and has breakthrough.=> Creates art from killed clubs.
11. Foe is vanquished. => Anger is managed.
12. Hero has fixed the problem. => Returns to tournament circuit. 

That's a lot of information to cram into 250 words. But one of the first tricks I learned about flash fiction was to start in the middle of the story, plot point #6. 

#2 Postcard - Modern Magic

Tyrone’s sister watched shocked as he slipped into their boss’s office towards the gated computer. Getting through the password guards was a matter of understanding resources, standard company IT password protocols (word length, caps, numbers and special characters) and his boss’s phobic forgetfulness.  Shaking the mouse bared a screen image of orange and black butterflies. Easy. “Manoarch100.” 

Tyrone opened Outlook for the second shield. Chewing his lip, he spotted an old email queued to the top. The subject: “Town on Friday. 2 nights stay. Back on Friday?" I know this one. “Fr1day1sH0rse!” 

Skin tight, Tyrone searched the emails for proof. The file labeled “Originals” was sealed with a bizarre riddle. Tyrone blanked. As a professional journalist, he knew writers would always find help with an O.W.L. (the Online Writing Lab). Tyrone opened a chat and typed, “What's the shortest sentence in the Eng lang?”

“Go.” pinged back. 

Tyrone entered capital ‘g’, zero, period. His original email with the attached article, “Magic Mirrors – Revealing True Selves,” and a headshot of himself in drag was the latest in a host of pirated articles. Determined, Tyrone composed an email to the editor and attached the file as the door thrust open.

“Move away and your sister goes free.”

"It's done.”

“Doesn’t matter. I won't get fired for one article. But you will.”

"Will they for 28?"

~JRogers

7.27.2016

***

Prompt from Fairytale Plot Generator on Springhole.net:

"The story is about a brave queen who must defeat a tyrant, find a magic mirror and solve 3 riddles to save the kingdom. Things are complicated by the villain kidnapping the main character’s sister. Assistance comes in the form of a magic owl.”

This prompt made me question my ability to write anything on an adult level. Then I remembered the fairy tale writers I enjoy now are Jasper Fforde of the Thursday Next series and Seanan McGuire of Indexing series. These authors and others like them take literary/fairy tale tropes and turn them into something excitingly new. Using some tips from Miss Literati's blog Write, Share & Shine!, I took a stroke at modern day fairy tale writing. 

Miss Literati's first suggestion is to bring the fairy tale into the modern world which meant I had to change the way I defined things in the prompt.

"brave queen" = "Drag Queen"

"tyrant" and "villain" = "boss"

"magic mirror" = "reflection of true self"

"magic owl" = "O.W.L. (Online Writing Lab)"

Word Count: 219

#1 Postcard - Unnecessary Reminder

Starting in the early hours of high school days, Mom grouched into her coffee while I awoke with a smile. I'd check my math homework or practice a piano tune, waiting for her brain to hum along. Why not start the day smiling? Like I told her, nothing bad has happened yet.

Today I rolled to the edge of the bed opening Facebook notification on my phone. My mother turned 53. Would I like to wish her Happy Birthday? Scripted platitudes fanned her wall.

The stunted glazed urn next to the bed held my mother’s ashes.  I do not want your thoughts and prayers; our grief is not the same. Why won’t you all leave me alone? I curled fetal into the sheets and tasted the sea on my pillow. 

~JRogers 

7.26.2016

***

Once I decided on the project for my 72 postcards, I blanked on what to write. I have books which suggest different writing prompts, but they were at home and I was eager to start NOW! Instead, I turned to Google for writing prompt generators and found page after page of suggestions.

The first Writing Prompt Generator came from Adam Maxwell's Fiction Lounge. The generator kicked out: "I was sad to see in the phonebook that he still existed."

I had trouble with this prompt because a) phonebook, who uses that today? b) I can't relate to being sad that someone is still alive. So I changed it around to: "I was sad to see on Facebook that he/she had died." That I could write about.

Since I'm doing this postcard fiction challenge, I thought it would help me to sample some of the advice the internet offered. Here's one I enjoyed: Stories in Your Pocket: How to Write Flash Fiction - the author described postcard fiction as "stories that took less time to read than to suppress a sneeze."

After I finished writing the rough story about grief, I realized I had an outline. Not a story. I turned back to the internet for more advice and found Writer's Digest "Writing Effective Grief in Fiction."

1. Make the reader care. "Help the reader get to know the character before you rip their hearts apart." => Provide some background to the mother/daughter relationship.
2. Grief has conflict because those grieving desire isolation and often can't get it. => Use Facebook notice to break the isolation and provide a grief trigger.
3. Additional conflict arises when grieving occurs at the worst possible times or places.
4. The story doesn't need to end when the character stops grieving.

Word Count: 131

72 Postcards Project

Postcard Fiction or short fiction are known for their extreme brevity. One would think short fiction was a self explanatory term. However, there are many different categories of short fiction based on word count, though these labels are arbitrary. Here's a rough cataloging:

Sudden Fiction, 1500 word
Flash Fiction, 1000 word
Micro Fiction, 300 word
Drabble, 100 words
Nanofiction, 55 words
Twitterature (Twitter Fiction), 140 characters, about 23 words

In the 1970s, a science fiction magazine editor, George Hay, presented a challenge to Arthur C. Clarke to write a short story that fit on a postcard, a micro fiction approximately 250 to 300 words long. The result was Arthur C. Clarke's micro fiction "Quarantine" which is 188 words. 

It just so happens that in the course of minimizing my life by slowly dismantling my scrapbooks and digitizing the contents, I am now left with 72 postcards from a 1998 trip to England. They are perfectly good postcards and I could use them to write notes to friends and family but it feels weird to send a UK postcard from within the US. 

I've decided to assign myself  the 72 Postcards Project and write microfictions to mail out into the world. I'll also publish the Postcard Fictions on the SummerTroll blog.