Challenge 35

Put two characters you already know from your own fiction in a wilderness of some sort. It doesn't have to be a forest. It could be a desert of a big foreign city where the characters don't speak the language. Do not explain to us why these characters have landed in this wilderness. Stick to one POV. Slowly describe the other character, which does not want to be seen but leaves a handful of traces.

Word limit: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 24

Ways of Seeing

Imagine a person with an idiosyncratic way of seeing the world (for instance, an occasional drug dealer who is prone to seeing danger where there is none; an entomologist who tends to categorize the world dryly, as if seeing it through a microscope etc). Have this character witness a traumatic even that does not directly involve her. Narrate the event from a first-person POV, making sure that the perspective is carefully built around the idiosyncrasies of this personality.

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 21

Clothes

Use a particular and fairly vivid piece of clothing to tell a story: a sweater worn by two sisters who sleep with the same man while wearing it, or a loud sports jacket someone buys at a Goodwill store before realizing the jacket has three bullet holes in the back... What does clothing say about us? How does it select us, as opposed to being selected by us? Who tells us to buy this or that thing (other than salespeople)? What is the most alluring piece of clothing you've ever seen or worn and why? Why do some people seem to fit their clothes and others not? What do clothes hide? What do they reveal?

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 17

Synesthesia

Use synesthesia in a short scene - surreptitiously, without drawing too much attention to it - to convey to your reader an important understanding of some ineffable sensory experience. Use sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

Synesthesia is a description of "One kind of sensation in terms of another" (A Glossary of Literary Terms by M. H. Abrams). An example from Bruno Schulz reads "Adela would plunge the rooms into semidarkness by drawing down the linen blinds. All colors immediately fell an octave lower..."

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 16

Two Paintings

This is another version of two images separated at birth: Write a story that is an attempt to bridge two very dissimilar photographs or paintings. Include the images or links to them in your post.

Words count: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 15

Two Images Separated at Birth

Think up a vivid, haunting image. Work hard to construct this image so it is not only visible to the reader but exciting and thought-provoking. Then think up another unrelated but equally vivid image. The key to this exercise is to work at composing two unrelated images, two scenes or situations you do not think are part of a story. Now write a story fragment out of the two images.

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 6

The Royal We

Write a first person-plural narration of an event from the POV of a close-knit couple (not necessarily lovers or opposite sex). This means the narratice should sound a bit like this:

We found the body in the outhouse, and Jenny got the can of gasoline from the garage while Benjamin removed all the toilet paper folls stacked up on the door shelves (no sense wasting them).

The reader should not be able to discern who is telling the story - do not use 'I' at all in this exercise (not even in dialog).

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)

Challenge 1

Write a first person story in which you use the first person pronoun (I, me or my) only two times. Keep the 'I' somehow important to the narrative you are constructing. The point is to imagine a narrator who is less interested in himself than in what he is observing.

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)

Bonus Challenge 1:
Write an up-beat and cheerful scene following these rules.

Bonus Challenge 2:
Write a scene between two lovers following these rules.

Thus the ultimate Challenge is to incorporate both bonuses!
Good Luck Authors!