Decided to find a prompt by typing a word into Flickr’s advanced image search to find a photo for inspiration. Here’s what I found for “ribbon”; following the photo is my short-short story. Feedback appreciated….
Stacked up like that, the ribbons looked impressive. Rebbecca felt pride for the work she had completed with her own hands, sewing late into the evening, her fingers pricked so many times they no longer bled. She carefully folded the prize winning quilt and placed it in the cedar box at the foot of her bed. Gathering the ribbons in her arms, she scattered them over the quilt like dirt over a casket. Rebecca closed the box and whispered, “Thank you, Grandma.”
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Interesting – certainly not anything that I think I would have come up with when presented with that particular photo. I wondered why you named the protagonist rather than just sticking with a pronoun? I’d try for more active voice and perhaps set yourself a goal of not repeating words (so for example maybe say ‘cedar hope chest’ instead of ‘box’ the first time and then simply ‘lowered the lid’ instead of ‘closed the box’). Hope you don’t mind my feedback and that you’ll continue with this exercise. My goal is 50 stories for this my 50th year (or 51st I guess if you get technical). Each must be at least 1,500 words in length which believe me is NOT a problem for me – verbosity is my forte. I fully expect that 90% will be absolute crap but that I will get better over the space of a year. Write on!
Thanks for the feedback 🙂 I wrote this fairly quickly and probably should have let it sit before editing and posting. I agree that your suggestions would make for a tighter story — except using a pronoun. I like to use names, even in short stories; I find that they are a shortcut to identifying with a character, but maybe that’s just me.
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