Fifty-word Stories: Phoenix Writers and GCSE English Revision.
Here’s a very easy and most portable way of creating rapid ‘sketches’ or plans for your short stories.
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Students have found these prompts to be very effective, bringing out lots of fresh and vivid ideas.
Attempt writing a flash fiction tale of fifty words in as short a time as possible!
These wonderful ideas were originally delivered by Georgina Parfitt and then tried again with Phoenix writers. They put you on the spot and encourage you to construct a whole story in a very compressed or distilled manner.
These compressed stories can act as revision notes or ‘creative store-houses for your examinations. You can tutor yourself to write several stories as possibilities for the GCSE examinations.
Below are your 24 prompts for writing a mini-story in 50 words. You can choose as many or as few as you like, but each one is restricted to just 50 words. You may end up with something that reads like the start or possibly the end of a short story, but each piece must be complete in itself.
Prompts
1 In the middle of the wood
2 When the battle was over
3 On the first day of Spring
4 As the sun went down
5 At the bottom of the garden
6 In the middle of the jungle
7 At a quarter past midnight
8 Every Thursday, at sunrise
9 Inside the belly of the whale
10 As the last lights went out
11 Five thousand light-years away
12 On a distant rocky island
13 In a tiny cabin inside a submarine
14On a warm beach where the warm sand meets the sea
15 One wild and stormy night
16 In a valley below the hills
17 Deep inside a cave
18 In a room at the top of the tallest castle tower in the land
19 Underneath a seat on the top deck of a bus
20 Far above the earth
21 From inside a tree
22 Behind a thick velvet curtain
23 At the top of a winding staircase
24 At the entrance to a tunnel
Here are a few of my attempts.
At the bottom of the garden.
At the bottom of the garden, a dry cane gate where two ancient terriers dedicated themselves to the morning sunshine. Behind them, after breakfast, two smiling faces, forever married, crowned by white hair, one carrying crocuses and the other a tray of lemon cakes.
Did I ever say goodbye?
In a tiny cabin inside a submarine
In a tiny cabin inside a submarine, the spy who came in from a lonely Scarborough quay ate chocolate and reminisced about his jockey days.
Regrettably, the conversation in his left earpiece confirmed everything.
Above the waves, thousands of miles away, a man without a heart pressed a button.
On a wild and stormy night
On a wild and stormy night, the local laundrette was crowded with Romantic storytellers hoping to impress Paulette Darcy in return for a year’s worth of forty-minute wash cycles and a lifetime’s supply of Ariel. Sometimes we laughed, sometimes we wept.
We even managed a divorce.
Underneath a seat on the top of the bus
Underneath a seat on the top of the bus, handsome Jason Stitch abandoned a small gold ring. It had never belonged to him, but later he convinced himself otherwise because that was his way.
‘I needed my beauty sleep,’ he told the duty solicitor. ‘So I took her with me.’
Behind a thick velvet curtain
Behind a thick velvet curtain, Miranda Henderson prayed for the kindness of strangers and that seat D4 in the Front Stalls would be occupied by love.
Miranda’s glorious voice remained undiminished by tragedy and when she risked a glance at the stalls, imagine her joy that her wait was over.
Inside the belly of the whale.
Inside the belly of the whale, Isadora gave up breathing in a strictly human way. Contrary to her expectations she was astounded at the amount of space available and at her freedom from all responsibilities.
‘ Helloa !’ bellowed an ocean deep voice. Who goes there?
‘Call me Issy ‘ she cried. ‘ Forever. ’
