2024 Prompts

 

2024 National Flash Fiction Day Prompts

Welcome to The Write-In! This year, we're celebrating the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology theme of time. Throughout National Flash Fiction Day, we posted one time-related prompt on the hour every hour from 00:00 until midnight (BST), for a total of 25 prompts in all.  

 

You can submit your work for possible publication at The Write-In until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 16 June 2024. Full details on how to send in your work can be found on our Submit page.


You can earn a badge for completing prompts.  These are honour-system badges that you can award yourself. These will be available until 23:59 BST May of 2025 when we set up for National Flash Fiction Day 2025. Find out more on our badges page. 

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0: Braving the Elements....
ELEMENTS prompt A

For the first challenge of 2024, write a four-sentence story that includes all four classical elements: 'earth', 'air', 'water' and 'fire'.  

You are welcome to use these words in any derived form...'earthen', 'watered', 'airy', etc. are all fine.

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1: Castles in the Air
AIR prompt A

Pick a fairy tale, fable or folk story.  Write a version of it where you change at least one very important element.  Maybe Sleeping Beauty has insomnia.  Maybe it's Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother who eats the Wolf.  Maybe Pinocchio's nose grows but he's actually telling the truth....  

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2: Bread Upon Water
WATER prompt A

Write a story in the form of an ingredient list.  This could be the ingredient list for a recipe, a list of ingredients in a cupboard or fridge, the ingredient list on the back of a package, or whatever else you can imagine.

(Your story doesn't have to involve bread or water; we were just shoe-horning a water-themed title into this hermit crab prompt!)

Thank you to Audrey Niven at The Propelling Pencil for this prompt. 

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3: Why on Earth?
EARTH prompt A

Write a flash or micro in which every sentence includes at least one use of the word 'why'. 

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4: Fast Burn
FIRE prompt A

It's the 13th year of National Flash Fiction Day, so let's celebrate in style with this prompt.  Write a micro flash of exactly 13 words.  Give it a title.

 

The title does not count towards the word count. Hyphenated words and words with apostrophes count as one word. For example, ‘five-o’clock shadow’ would count as two words.

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5 Elemental Quadriptych
ELEMENTS prompt B

Write a flash in four sections, with each section having a heading 'Air', 'Earth', 'Water' and 'Fire', in any order.  It's up to you whether the sections read as stand-alone, linked flashes or whether the whole piece reads as one continuous story. Just make sure the whole thing is no more than 300 words!

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6: Walking on Air
AIR prompt B

 Write a flash about flying.  Who or what is flying is up to you....

Thank you to Audrey Niven at The Propelling Pencil for this prompt.

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7: Ends of the Earth
EARTH prompt B

Write a flash in which someone (or something) encounters the end (or ends) of the earth.  This could be the the end of an overland path, the end of our planet as we know it, the heat-death of the universe, or a metaphorical take on the theme.  Feel free to be creative in your interpretation!

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8: Testing the Waters
WATER prompt B

 Write a flash in the form of a test or quiz.

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9: Great Balls of Fire
FIRE prompt B

Write a flash about a rare weather or meteorological phenomenon.

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10: Flash Chemistry
ELEMENTS prompt C

Choose an element from the periodic table. Write a flash where that element is important to the story.

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11: A Breath of Fresh Air
AIR prompt C

Write a flash with a genuinely happy ending. 
Of course, how you interpret 'happy ending' is up to you!  

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12: Ground Rules
EARTH prompt C

Write a flash which involves a set of rules.

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13: Flood Zone
WATER prompt C

On National Flash Fiction Day, NFFD's sister project FlashFlood publishes one story every five or ten minutes.  For this prompt, find a FlashFlood story that you like and choose five interesting words from it.  

Write a flash of no more than 100 words that uses all five of these words.

By 'interesting', we mean solid nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.; 'he', 'and', 'is' don't count as 'interesting' for this prompt.

The title does not count towards the word count. Hyphenated words and words with apostrophes count as one word. For example, ‘five-o’clock shadow’ would count as two words.

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14: Blaze a Trail...
FIRE prompt C

Write a flash in the form of a series of directions to somewhere.  You can choose the format; maybe you're recording spoken directions from a SatNav or mapping app, or maybe it's a list written down by a human.... Feel free to be creative in your interpretation of this prompt; the directions don't necessarily have to lead to a real or physical place!

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15: Elementary, My Dear Watson
ELEMENTS prompt D

Write a flash using or referencing characters from fiction or poetry that was written at least 100 years ago. Set it in modern times.  

If you are submitting for publication, you must include a note naming your source (even if it is obvious), and you should double check that your source work is in the public domain.

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16: Out of Thin Air
AIR prompt D

Write a story about someone who plucks something out of thin air...literally.  Is it a magic show? Magic realism? A worm-hole in space-time? Something else entirely?  It's up to you to decide....

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17: Like Nothing on Earth
EARTH prompt D

Write a flash that takes us to a different place from our earth...this could be a different planet, a different reality, or a defamiliarised here and now.  Feel free to lean in to scifi, fantasy, speculative fiction, absurdism, or anywhere unusual you care to explore....

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18: Fish out of Water
WATER prompt D

 

Write a flash about someone who feels like a fish out of water...maybe they're stuck in an unfamiliar or uncomfortable situation...or maybe there's something else fishy going on....

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19: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
FIRE prompt D

Write a flash with an unreliable narrator, or a narrator who isn't telling truth (or at least, who isn't telling the complete truth).  Write in the first person (using 'I', 'me', 'my'). 

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20: Element of Surprise
ELEMENTS prompt E

Write a flash with a twist ending.  Can you make the twist feel 'earned' such that it's enjoyable to read and re-read the story even after the twist is discovered?

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21: On the Air
AIR prompt E

Write a flash in the form of something heard over the radio.  This could be a station announcement, an advertisement, a snippet of an old-time radio drama, a radio news report, or anything else you fancy.

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22: Face of the Earth
EARTH prompt E

Write a flash from the point of view of the earth (or another planet or moon).

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23: Fluid Dynamics
WATER prompt E

We're nearing the end; only one more prompt to go after this.

 

Choose at least three words or phrases from this list of scientific vocabulary and use them in a flash.  You do not need to use them in a scientific context or strive for any sort of scientific accuracy.

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24: Burning the Candle at Both Ends
FIRE prompt E

Here we are at midnight with our last prompt of 2024, so let's celebrate this full twenty-four-hour write-a-thon extravaganza with one final prompt.

Write a 50-word flash that starts and ends with the same sentence.

 

The title does not count towards the word count. Hyphenated words and words with apostrophes count as one word. For example, ‘five-o’clock shadow’ would count as two words.

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