The Goodreads Author Programme sent me a story prompt idea which was to write a horror story in two sentences. Okay, I’m a flash fiction writer so this is very much up my street!

The link below is to my author dashboard slot. Please do send in questions via Goodreads, I love Q&As like this. I also like the idea of being sent a story prompt like this every so often, so thank you, Goodreads. Great writing exercise.

And my two sentence horror story?

It took three days to get the blood off the walls. It took another five to remove the last drops off the carpets.

I could reduce that to one long sentence, but think it works better as two shorter ones. There is a rhythm to two shorter sentences you simply wouldn’t have if they were joined.

And the story is very much to the point! The image is from Pixabay – it is always good to have plenty of reading material…

Says it all really.  Image via Pixabay

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

The Goodreads Author Programme sent me a story prompt which was to write a horror story in two sentences. (I’ve shared this on my Allison Symes Author Page. I would welcome questions sent in via Goodreads too).

The two-sentence structure is interesting. Just enough to get the story going and then you come to an abrupt halt! The story works fine as it is but I could extend it into a standard length short story, one of my 100-word tales, or anything in between.

This is another advantage of flash, which I’ve used. You can write a flash piece, submit it, hopefully have it published and then take the same idea, expand on it, send it to somewhere that would take longer fiction and hopefully enjoy success with it again.

You would have created two stories, effectively around a common theme/lines, but then gone in different directions with it. The longer version would have more description and maybe more characters than the short piece. (Flash works best with 1 or 2 characters in it and others referred to). Short stories catch a moment in time, flash fiction even more so.

The magic of stories. Image via Pixabay