Challenge Overview

The twenty-fourth of fifty-two short stories completed! 

Back to science fiction this week with a 306-word flash fiction created from the following writing prompt: “Write a story inspired by a favorite song.” Source. I chose Space Oddity by David Bowie. It ended up being, much like the song itself, a piece composed purely of dialogue, which was a new experience and an interesting challenge for me. It was a fun story to write and I look forward to revising it sometime later this year.

Onto the next story!

Challenge Overview

The twenty-third of fifty-two short stories completed! 

This was another week I wrote an epilogue story for my recently finished D&D campaign I DMed. It dramatizes the final battle that two NPCs the players had many interactions with–Hlin and Trovus–and shows the leadup to a battle with a metal-forged dragon and how the two defeated the dragon by sacrificing themselves. I’m overall happy with how the first draft, which ended up being 1,675 words, came out.

Onto the next story!

Challenge Overview

The twenty-second of fifty-two short stories completed! 

Well, I still didn’t end up finishing the fantasy mystery novelette I started the previous week. I realized that the lack of a defined emotional story and what turned out to be a bland protagonist made it difficult to find joy in writing. Also, I’ve realized I am burnt out on drafting after writing first drafts for over twenty stories in a row. I’ve done next to no revision in the last five months. Only drafting, which is the most mentally taxing part of writing for me.

However, I finished out the D&D campaign I’ve been DMing for over two years with an epilogue session where I brought the story to a close. Part of the session involved having the Player Characters roll percentile dice to determine what Non-Player Character allies they’ve meant along the way survived the battle with a mechanical dragon. Some NPCs survived while others perished. Afterwards, I was inspired to dramatize some of these results. So this week I wrote a 3,501-word fantasy short story about two of the NPCs important Sorla’s–one of the PCs–character arc journey: Arla and Vellynne. It was enjoyable to write, and I was actually excited to work on it. I look forward to revising it in the future and presenting it to my players.

Onto the next story!

Challenge Overview

The twenty-first of fifty-two short stories completed! 

I got about a third of the way through this week’s intended story–roughly 4,500 words–before I realized three things: one, I’ve lost interest in it to the point it has become a grind to write it; two, I’m still going to finish it because there is value in finishing things; and three, given the novelette length of the story and the grinding slog it is taking to write it, I’m not going to finish it this week.

So, I wrote another flash fiction piece. It is 815 words and inspired by the following image I saw on Twitter a while back: LINK. When I saw the image, the bit of dialog that came to me was, “What creatures of dull curiosity have you brought me this time.” I then discovery wrote the story from there. I’m not sure what I think about the story, but it fulfills its purpose as this weeks story.

Onto the next story!

Challenge Overview

The twentieth of fifty-two short stories completed! 

This week ended up being a break week, mostly. With the climax of my D&D game taking place last Sunday, work still very busy, and keeping up the one new story a week, the last four months caught up to me this week and the result was a lack of desire to write and a feeling of needing some space from it actually. So, while I did write up the story area for a new short story–probably around six to eight thousand words, I ended up writing a quick 388-word piece of flash fiction for this week’s story. Unlike all the other stories from this challenge which fall into the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, this flash fiction is a literary piece. It’s been a while since I wrote such a story and it was a nice change of pace.

With the conclusion of the twenty-nine month-long D&D campaign happening next Sunday, the following week’s story will also be a flash fiction piece. Once D&D has concluded, my plan is to get back to writing longer short stories.

Onto the next story!