Writing flash fiction, generally tales of under 1000 words, is a great exercise to force yourself to be succinct and make every word count in storytelling.  There are also plenty of opportunities out there to hone these skills further with micro flash writing.  Whether you do it to develop writing dexterity or just to keep your brain in tune, it’s a fun exercise and my personal favourite is the New Zealand Book Council‘s (@nzbookcouncil) Rāmere Shorts (#Rāmereshorts). Every Friday, on Twitter, the challenge is laid: six randomly chosen words which must be included in a short tale within the 140-chararacter limit of a tweet. That generally amounts to around 15 to 20 words, with flexibility granted around word form, grammatical accuracy and punctuation.  The challenge is also given a competitive edge with a winner selected at the end of the working day, the prize being purely the honour. Each week, working within such tight boundaries, a surprisingly varied ranges of entrants surface, including the topical, lyrical, comical and emotional.

Give it a go with some past Rāmere Shorts challenges:

bully, robotic, glitter, pandemic, wax, dizzy.

mask, winter, careless, prayer, insane, homewards.

blender, mask, moonwalk, gobsmacked, duck, blink.

Here are some of my own efforts.

And my own personal favourite:

 

3rd April 2017