This single jingle bell isn’t exactly funny on its own. It depends who is wearing it and how, or where you put it, or what song you try to play with it. Use your imagination. I bet you can turn this single jingle bell into a very odd decoration indeed.

I know the photo’s a little blurry, but I love how the shadow looks like earbuds. Imagine it’s moving because it’s jingling.

#vss very short story

Sarah heard the jingle of the bell and froze. She didn’t know why she kept trying to steal Santa’s cookies. His elf caught her every year. She was perpetually on the naughty list.

Today’s Poetry Prompt and Poem

Today’s prompt was inspired by last year’s Christmas Eve prompt on Poems for the Writing. Their prompt came from a submissions call from Three Rooms Press’ Maintenant, a dadaist magazine, Issue 11.

Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition.

Today’s prompt: Make a collage using images and words to create a Dadaist poem with the theme EYE FOR A LIE.

EYE FOR A LIE

But now,
Shouldn’t be doing those things,
but that’s OK.
I could ask you people–
you know, is it the worst you’ve seen
once it’s done–it was my original theory

Once you’ve won, once you’ve done it,
and they’ve done it, once you’ve done it,
there’s a lot less pressure.
It’s like a surreal experience,
in a certain way,
but you have to get over it,

This is actually the heart, though.
a good–he’s a good boy.
We keep it interesting.
But so we’ll see what that’s all about.

But once you get that motion, it’s in
It’s hard to get in, but once you get in
So we’re going to see.
Once you’re there, you can, you
know, Gerard–
oh, say hello.

Editing Focus

from Revision And Self-Editing (Write Great Fiction) by James Scott Bell
Scenes- look at your scenes and try to find ways you can ratchet up the tension a few degrees. Can you:

• Make the stakes more important?
• Make the incidents more challenging?
• Bring in a surprise character?
• Have the setting or weather provide an obstacle?
• Make the odds greater?
• Make the characters care more?

#FlashFicHive

graphic by Anjela Curtis

It’s time to put some of my ideas to work. I think I’ll story cube, writer’s emergency pack and oblique strategies again. Let’s see what I’ll be writing today.

Oblique strategy: “from nothing to more than nothing”

Today I rolled the story cubes one at a time from right to left starting with the fish. It looks like my story is about a fish asking a turtle about a bridge getting struck by lightning and catching on fire and according to the Writer Emergency Pack it’s the end of the world!

Don’t Forget To Read!

Another reading challenge from Revision And Self-Editing (Write Great Fiction) by James Scott Bell:

Reread a favorite novel and analyze:

• how the author establishes a bond between you and the Lead (MC)
• how the author establishes the objective and makes it super important to the Lead
• how the author creates confrontation and opposition that is stronger than the Lead, thus creating tension
• the elements that go into making the ending a satisfying one

Are any of those four elements weak? How would you do things differently and better?

I’ll be thinking about these elements while I reread Tourist Seasonand Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen.

Happy Reading and Writing!