Create an imitations of A Tricky Leak.
By “imitation,” you should create your own flash-fiction piece (between 500 and 1,000 words) that should do the following things:
follows the tone of the original piece
uses the fantasy genre in order to give “the feeling of the feeling” of some uncomfortable or annoying situation
uses characters that embrace either some kind of magic or high technology
has a sense of humor, but isn’t super-jokey or laugh-a-second
It should not do the following things:
follow the same plot line with slight alterations to character or situation
use the same basic situation with slight alterations to plot line or character
any other permutation of the previous two points
That said, we can obtain a usable outline that follows the situation in general:
A character is introduced, with some very mildly humorous details.
The character is in an immediately problematic situation that they don’t want to be in.
They try to resolve the problem, but the problem’s intensity escalates. There is some specific scene or plot point that illustrates this intensity.
This escalation in turn escalates an issue with another character.
The character uses magic (or high tech, or something of that nature) to solve the problem.
The story wraps up with an imperfect resolution that emphasizes some specific reception of a message of some kind.
In conference, we discussed one possible category of subject matter that could be used to formulate a message, or specific reception: class or power conflict between two characters.
Note that A Tricky Leak doesn’t take a hard stand, one way or another, on the nature of class/power conflicts, or try to teach the reader a big lesson. It simply describes a problem and illustrates a flawed, though still emotionally satisfying resolution.
Be creative and enjoy this task. It’s probably not the best idea to settle for the absolute first thing that comes to you.
When you’re done, review your work for grammar and punctuation and effective paragraphing. If your story has dialog and you’re uncertain about how to format it, then look it up or send me a question.
Turn the story in here as a link to a Google doc.
Length: 500 to 1,000 words
