Sarah Salcedo

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friday-fiction:

Today is #FridayFiction!

#FridayFiction is a flash fiction workshop that runs every week on Twitter from 3 - 6 p.m. PST, facilitated by Richard Hugo House. Each week, we pick a theme and create a story based off of that theme. We share it with the community of #fridayfiction writers by using the tag in our tweets. You can contribute more than one story. You can use the same character in every story, or multiple characters. The important thing is that your story, with the tag #FridayFiction, not exceed the 140 character limit that Twitter sets.

Why do we do this?

Flash fiction gives us a chance to re-examine our language in a way that we normally wouldn’t be able to do. The confines of the tweet force us to think of different ways of saying something, finding the word that communicates the biggest idea in the shortest way, and using Twitter allows us to find other writers on social media.

For more on why we write flash fiction and use Twitter to do it, read “Exercises in Brevity” on our website.

Last week’s #FridayFiction was “Shame”, a wonderfully deep theme for any writer to work with. We received some amazing submissions last week.Click on the stories above for an expanded view of each person’s stories. 

This week’s prompt is “Isolation”. All writers, at one time or another have either retreated from others or been excluded by them. It’s something we seek out, to be on our own, and sometimes, it’s not something we choose. There can be both sadness and relief found in isolation. You’re either Thoreau in Walden or you’re Frankenstein, driven North to the ice flows.

Write a story that deals with isolation. Is your character the one isolated or is he or she the one banishing someone else?

Is isolation a relief in this case? A punishment? How does the positive/negative aspect of isolation reveal character?

As you write, try and experiment with POV, different characters, and feel free to write more than one story! Writing within the confines of a tweet is difficult, but it gets you into an incredible mindset. Find the right words to create the mood, the plot and convey character in the tiny space that you have.

Also, interact with the community! Every week, a lot of amazing writers gather together and share their stories. These people don’t just offer up great stories, they are great people to follow throughout the rest of the week as well. Being on Twitter is all about curating the conversation you want to be apart of and this is a great way to meet people who love being creative.

If you’ve been reading for a long time, please continue to enjoy our great stories, but also, feel free to offer up your own! You wouldn’t think, as vast a social network as Twitter is, that it’d be a safe space to offer up your fiction, but it is, and it’s a wonderful way to network with other creatives online.

Hope to see you and your flash fiction this afternoon!

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