A member of a writer’s group I’ve been attending suggested we all write a 140-character short story for Thaumatrope. For those who don’t know about it, Thaumatrope is a Twitter-based magazine of flash fiction. The character limit for Twitter is 140, thus, the guidelines. You can check them out at http://thaumatrope.greententacles.com. I wrote a stor, but they are closed to submissions.
It’s a cool idea. Create a story with a beginning, middle, and end and do it in 140 characters. I am extremely interested in the mechanics of editing out needless words and phrases. This forces you to do just that. You cannot have anything taking up space that doesn’t accomplish an objective. I’ve always liked flash fiction. This is less a flash than a spark.
I thought I would post it here, since the idea I used originated from this blog. In “Opening A Vein,” I gave some insight to how I sometimes generate story ideas. You can find the original post here: http://jackcampbelljr.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/opening-a-vein/
Without further ado, “What the Fire Consumed.” This story is based on a single phrase of the Sylvia Plath poem “On Looking Into The Eyes of a Demon Lover.” Thanks for reading. Feel free to try the 140 character story yourself. Post it in the comments, if you like. I would be interested to see your results.
###
What the Fire Consumed
By
Jack Campbell, Jr.
The plungers descended; promised painless death. A gallery of gawkers faded. Consuming shadows crept, clawing for portions. Soul-fueled pyres blazed. They lied.