Submitted by Cody_Fox23 t3_11clxsy in WritingPrompts
#Welcome back to Smash ‘Em Up Sunday!
##SEUSfire
On Sunday morning at 9:30 AM Eastern in our Discord server’s voice chat, come hang out and listen to the stories that have been submitted be read. I’d love to have you there! You can be a reader and/or a listener. Plus if you wrote we can offer crit in-chat if you like!
##Last Week
####Community Choice
####Cody’s Choice
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/u/rainbow--penguin - "A Taste of Home"
##This Week’s Challenge
It is February and the shortened month means we are bringing back the first running theme in my time with SEUS: limbo month. Each week I’ll be cutting the wordcount down more and more. We’ll be putting your word economy to the test! Especially since I will be dictating more and more of a percentage of your stories as the weeks go by. So get creative. Get frugal. Get clever. Let’s lower that wordcount!
Oh look, week four is here. How low can you go? Can you go to the lowest and most exact wordcount I can give you? Let’s just push that limbo bar allllll the way down. 100 words should be a real challenge. It may feel like a stranglehold, but Hemmingway is said to have written the saddest story in six words with “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” Imagine what he could do wit 94 more words! I’d argue he could write an actual story, because without the pretext of it being “the saddest story” it is just an advert. Knowing the premise forces the reader to consider it in the context of being sad and so they make the entire story: a miscarriage a murder, a stillbirth, a kidnapping, or even if they ended up having to give the baby away for adoption. They are all heartwrenching because we want to understand why it is sad. In reality it could, and more likely is, that they never fit the child or they had too many and need to recover some money because babies are expensive.
breathe, Cody, breathe
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Since I’m pretty sure most people don’t read this section anyhow, so I decided to shout into the void. Anyhow, this week. Your inspiration word is Fanfaronade. It is a noun meaning arrogant or boastful talk. Do with that what you will! I look forward to seeing what all is submitted and how many stories hit that precise 100 word count. Reminder: titles don’t count toward the 100 words, but if you go all japanese light novel title on me I’ll not count the 100 word constraint met. No cheating!
###How to Contribute
Write a story or poem, no more than 800 words in the comments using at least two things from the three categories below. The more you use, the more points you get. Because yes! There are points! You have until 11:59 PM EDT 04 Mar 2023 to submit a response.
After you are done writing please be sure to take some time to read through the stories before the next SEUS is posted and tell me which stories you liked the best. You can give me just a number one, or a top 5 and I’ll enter them in with appropriate weighting. Feel free to DM me on Reddit or Discord!
| Category | Points |
|---|---|
| Word List | 1 Point |
| Sentence Block | 2 Points |
| Defining Features | 3 Points |
####Word List
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Fervor
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Freight
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Flounder
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Fluent
####Sentence Block
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Feed the fire!
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[Only one sentence this week. It is worth 4 points.]
####Defining Features
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Wordcount: 100 words
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[Only one defining feature this week. It is worth 6 points.]
##What’s happening at /r/WritingPrompts?
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Nominate your favourite WP authors or commenters for Spotlight and Hall of Fame! We count on your nominations to make our selections.
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Come hang out at The Writing Prompts Discord! I apologize in advance if I kinda fanboy when you join. I love my SEUS participants <3 Heck you might influence a future month’s choices!
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Want to help the community run smoothly? Try applying for a mod position. Everytime you ban someone, the number tattoo on your arm increases by one!
dewa1195 t1_ja3xgrg wrote
"You thought you could call me after all that fanfaronade--"
"--ooh, you're busting out the five-dollar-word--"
"--Your one instruction was to not feed the fire. Instead, you do this? You crash a freight train, flounder through the most basic French--something you're supposed to be fluent in--and nearly get yourself killed."
The office was silent. And then--
"He also completely blew up his cover," the assistant said, uncaring, unrepentant.
"Ride the desk until you learn better." He slammed the phone's receiver down with fervor.
The Commander sat down and sighed. "They get stupider and stupider every year. I need a break."
wc:100( wrote it in wordcounter.net. Seemed to be the best way to get to those 100 words. Just a little blurb.)