Writing Fiction and short stories

Hi everyone,

sorry this didn't get posted to the website earlier; apparently the link was still up to last week's assignment

This week's assignment is to write a complete "short short"  (sometimes called Flash Fiction)  -- a story with a beginning, middle and end which is 500 words or less.  The story can be on any topic. If you need a place to start, choose any five elements from the random list of elements  below:

Characters:
Edith, a serial killer
Jack, a male prostitute
Sarah, unemployed artist
Michael, handyman

Props:
chair
milk bottle
camera
DVD
fan

Place:
Seattle
Green Lake
bathroom
kitchen

If you're not familiar with this form of short story, here's a Wikipedia article that covers some basics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction
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OR, if you'd like an alternative assignment:

Write a short story based on an incident in your own life. It could be a good or bad experience.

Start with the event as it happened, jotting down your thoughts, memories and free associations: who was involved? what happened? how did you feel? how did others feel? were things worked out, or did they end in a tangle?

Then, fictionalize it. Your goal in this exercise is not to write an accurate account of what happened. It's to use your knowledge about what happened as a springboard for a piece of fiction.

Remember that it's an exercise in fiction, not journaling. If you find yourself journaling, past the initial stage of free associating, try writing from the point of view of someone else who was involved in the experience, and had a different point of view. (For example, if you're writing about a divorce you went through, you might try writing it from the POV of your spouse, or an imaginary child or parent or best friend witnessing it and trying to help out.) If you're writing in first person ("I walked to the door..."), and feel this is hampering you, try switching to third person ("Chris walked to the door...") as a way of opening up story possibilities.

When you've finished the first draft, set it aside for a while then go over it again, making changes where you feel like it. If the story feels right as written, trust your judgement about it. If it doesn't, try looking at the elements of writing we discussed in If it does, it may be stronger without them.

Have fun with it; aim to come up with a complete story, with a definite beginning, middle and end. (That doesn't mean you have to write the parts in that order, but eventually they should be organized into a coherent story form.)