Writing a #flashfiction for my local writers group. 350 words with the prompt: birthday party, locked cupboard, twins. The variety is always interesting when we read our stories aloud.
Have trouble keeping it short? First, write without concern for word count.📚
Then hack and prune that wild shrub.🌳
Select one word instead of three.📌 Delete any sentence that changes nothing.✂️ Repeat. ♻️
@mjjmori@bookstodon@amwriting After I have written and edited an essay, white paper, or whatever, I always do one last pass where I try to take out one line from each paragraph without losing any meaning. That rids your work of wordyness. I have been a professional nonfiction writer for 50 years, so I have experience.
@BertL@bookstodon@amwriting The more I write (I’d like to get to 50 professional years, but that’ll be impossible for me now 😉), the more I can see when two sentences say the same thing, even when they are totally different. It can happen surprisingly easily, and I used to do it all the time. Not so much now. Writing a lot of micro-narratives over the last couple years helped with this a lot, I think.
It was Johnny's 5th birthday party, and all his friends where gathered to celebrate. Presents overflowed the kitchen table, and his parents beamed as they sang over the cake, recording the event on a small camcorder.
They would, of course, never forget these happy memories, but they needed to share them with Henry, Johnny's twin brother, who was not with them that day.
He was locked in a cabinet in the basement. He would be allowed to have a birthday next year
@kinyutaka@bookstodon@amwriting A bit of darkness was certainly there the moment it included “locked cupboard’”. My writer group came up with that prompt by having three people say the first thing that came to their mind. One or two of them always right dark thriller and murder mystery pieces, so it keeps things interesting. 😇👹
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