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The 2+4 Challenge

My response to the VSS challenge.

I had never heard of #vss365 until recently. It stands for Very Short Story, with a new writing prompt each day of the year (posted to Twitter, I think).

I’ve recently read several other authors talking about and responding to VSS challenges by writing 10-word stories. I believe those started with a post by Sheri Jacobs, which I, in turn, learned about from Sara Larca and Carolyn Hastings.

I also read a post by Nikolaos Skordilis (link to story below) that took it a step further. He suggested creating two tweet-sized stories (280 character limit with a hard limit of 50 words) plus four 10-word stories. Yikes!

Nikolas suggests that you can use one or all of the following prompts if you like (but you don’t have to):

fountain, bliss, sadness, hope, change

My tweet-sized entries are poems. For my 10-word stories, I tried to adhere to the convention that a story contains five parts: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution. Is that even possible in 10 words?

So without further ado, here are my two tweet-sized poems and four short stories.

Into The Blackness

Hope changes to sadness, When love sinks into blackness. At the fountain of madness, No more will you find true bliss.

The World Watches

Hope falls like tears from a fountain, As children are killed but not forgotten. With sadness, the world watches, At our change from innocence and bliss.

Ten Word Stories

1. All hope died when the justices lied. Bliss, now sadness. 2. Like water from a fountain, hope falls and becomes sadness. 3. When people die, sadness reigns. When the war ends, hope. 4. Tears fall like fountain showers. No hope, God help us.

If you decide to participate, be sure to tag your story with Vss365.

This is Nikolaos Skordilis’s 2+4 challenge.

Special thanks to Carolyn Hastings for tagging me for the 10-word challenge.