Postcard Notes

Hi! I was tasked to give you some background story about the how the entries posted here under tag and category of ‘flash fiction in a postcard’ came to be. I was told that before the Christmas break, their CW teacher, Prof. Jhoanna Cruz, gave a project about it. It was an exercise to practice how to make a story so condense with limited words but effective, jam-packed plot. Their professor asked them to send her a flash fiction in a postcard, wherein they have to pick one among the first lines, in the book Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway [page 282]. That was their flash fiction exercise. The opening lines listed in the said book were already published short stories. The class was tasked to choose one of them, and write them to completion with their own plot in mind different of course, as that of the original.

 

That was a very challenging writing exercise in preparation for writing the standard flash fiction, which is 300-1000 words.

 

And you know, something to do over the Christmas break aside from getting themselves fat.

 

 

The following below are the opening lines of published short stories wherein the CW students have to pick one and write the rest of the story. [You might find this exercise really tough but exciting! Try it!]

1. She stood with her black face some six inches from the moist window-pane and wondered would it ever stop raining.

2. It was Sunday – not a day, but a gap between two other days.

3. Mother says that when I start talking I never know when to stop.

4. He wasn’t pretty unless you were in love with him.

5. Once upon a time I was dissatisfied with how I used my brains and with how Sam used his.

6. He had no body hair.

7. I wasn’t his friend, but I wasn’t one of the main kids who hounded him up onto the shed roof, either.

[Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc., 2003, p.282]

[The pictures/images in the blog were taken from http://www.deviantart.com]