4/10/16

Inspired By Prompt: Nanoism #668

Inspired By: For today's writing prompt read the following short piece (it will always be something quite short, we don't have all day to work on writing, wouldn't that be awesome?) and take inspiration from it. Whether you like specific words, character names, you like the setting, the general plot structure, you want to use that piece as a sort of prequel or perhaps something in the piece irks you or you really disagree with it and you want to respond in a lyric or narrative fashion. Whatever strikes you strongest in what you read (read it twice if you have a chance), grab it and run with it.

The point of our notebooking daily prompts isn't necessarily to create a fully formed piece but to not let ourselves get bogged down in details and to just write. This will generate usable tidbits, unique sentences or ideas, and sometimes, indeed, an actual piece.

Today's inspiration: Nanoism #668 by Matthew Wester (24 words)

This Nanoism (140 characters or fewer) or if you prefer, hint fiction, flash fiction or sudden fiction is a great example of irony in the extremely short story. Like most extraordinarily short stories, it relies on the reader having numerous bits of previous knowledge. This is a place where fiction and poetry collide. I think it really embraces the idea of Hint Fiction as put forward by the term's coiner Robert Swartwood "hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story" it plants the seed of some interesting undead interactions. Zombies have been long in fashion (Warm Bodies is a thinly veiled Romeo and Juliet, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are just two examples), maybe write your own short piece that places a famous work of narrative, book/play/movie where one or many character's deaths are important and set it in a world with zombies. Mabye the characters are unaware there are zombies, or maybe you want to get really fun with the famous plots if death isn't a factor.