This year I decided to give NaNoWriMo 2012 a shot by reviving an idea that I started and abandoned for NanoWriMo 2010: writing a collection of 100 500-word flash stories. (I have no evidence that I did anything for NaNoWriMo 2011.) This time I wrote down 100+ ideas on 3×5 cards. Most of which were headlines taken from the weird news section. Others are old story ideas and situations that I have noticed in daily life.
All of these ideas are worthy of being turned into a flash story. None, however, have grabbed me by the literary throat to be written immediately. I need to write 25 flash stories per week. Since I want to keep my weekends open for other writing projects, I need to write five flash stories per day from Monday through Friday to finish.
On Halloween night, I’m going to pick five 3×5 cards from the stack and take them to work the next day to think about, write notes and scribble down a rough outline. After I get home from work, I’ll write three pages for each flash story in a 70-page spiral notebook. Writing the rough draft of the flash story will be quick. Revising and polishing a flash story takes two to four hours. This is why I’m writing everything down on paper instead of using a computer.
Although I only need 100 ideas to write 100 flash stories, I want to have 150 ideas in case I have a few uninspiring stinkers from the list below, and have more than 100 flash stories written by the end of the month. Unless I overwrite a few flash stories, I may fall well short of the 50,000-word goal.
I have no intention of publishing this collection in its entirety after I revise and polish all the flash stories. A dozen are for submitting to the annual flash anthologies, some to expand into longer short stories, and most for submission to publications and/or included in original flash story collection ebooks that I’ll put in 2013.
Updated 11/04/2012: This NaNoWriMo, like all the others, had a great idea and terrible execution (i.e., it never got off the ground). This list of flash story ideas should keep me busy writing throughout 2013.
Flash Story Idea List
- Blue ice falling from airplane passing overhead into kiddie pool.
- Man walks into the BART tunnel that goes underneath the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Large blue eyeball from sea creature washes up on beach.
- Mother glues daughter’s hands to wall and beat her in punishment.
- Flu shot makes arm sore and falls off as person turns into a zombie.
- Bullied girl makes video before committing suicide.
- Planet with four suns.
- Orbital skydiver.
- College students beheading exotic animal at casino.
- Zumba instructor arrested for prostitution.
- Sewer smell at cemetery.
- Nude old men sitting in front of coffeehouse.
- A deep secret outed by social media.
- Teenager steals celebrity’s sports car from showroom floor.
- Spacecraft going down the street.
- Someone pretending to be Big Foot on side of freeway.
- Husband cooks wife in oven.
- Haunted house scare pictures.
- Politician crashes soup kitchen for photo-op.
- Mysterious invitation to a tech media event.
- Dial day for new area code.
- Mother leaves young daughter at store with stolen groceries.
- Father shoots masked bugler who turned out to be his son.
- Creativity as a psychological disease.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Throwing litter into street.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Gambling.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Quarreling.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Teasing animals.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Playing with electrical wires.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Playing with tools.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Flying kite on open roof.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Damaging public property.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Eating uncovered and fried foods.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Stealing.
- Indian Bad Habits Poster: Playing on the road.
- Man robs bank for $1 USD to go to federal prison for healthcare, food and shelter.
- Snail rancher.
- Aliens at a comic convention.
- Talking urinal cakes (“Hey, buddy, stop pissing on me!”).
- Robo squirrels versus rattle snakes.
- Iranian hostage crisis (1979).
- Puppy disappears from animal shelter.
- Parents run strip club out of foster home.
- Uninvited visitor who won’t leave.
- Apartment blaze blamed on man cooking squirrel with propane torch.
- Man dies after cockroach eating contest.
- Plastic-wrapped truck brings out the bomb squad.
- A black-and-white costumed girl shot in backyard by relative who thought she was a stunk.
- Newspaper cancels extra Sunday subscriptions for extreme couponing enthusiast.
- Two naked men set their house on fire, break out car windows, slaughtered animals and assaulted police officers.
- Robber with fake mustache robs drug store.
- Man dressed as a superhero harassed by police.
- High school students has fantasy sex league game.
- Gas stations robbed of 300+ gallons of gas at night.
- A fireball erupts over a major city and crashes in minister’s backyard.
- Robber puts cash into bag but grabs bag of rolls and shoots partner in ass during a failed restaurant robbery.
- An abandoned green transfer mail box terrifies a little girl.
- A person sees blue cars everywhere.
- A murder at a diplomatic event.
- A store display cell phone stolen and plugged into computer via USB connector.
- Freight elevator guy with stool and newspaper: “If you don’t know where you’re going, get out.”
- A 3D monster that can only be seen with 3D glasses from the movies.
- Friends travel into country to see meteor shower on hill that forms the backside of the county dump.
- A little boy witness the police storming a nearby apartment at night.
- End of world with bear, sheep, supernatural cloud formation, computer geeks and Unix end of time (2038).
- Gay slurs painted on bicycle seat of bike parked in back of restaurant kitchen.
- After meeting each other, getting married and buying house, husband leaves as if everything was a one-night stand.
- Roman soldiers fighting off giant squid.
- Parking lot stall has cigarette butts, dental floss, jello containers and a condom wrapper.
- Aliens intercept Voyager spacecraft and visit Earth with Richard Nixon masks.
- A bus shuttle to train station stops being routine with motorcycle gangs, witches, vampires and other monsters.
- Two boys dress up as a 1950’s couple, with boy dressed as a bobby sox girl with balloon boobs.
- A human tries to help an alien escape Mars after the Alien Sedition Act passed.
- An unemployed person makes money in the virtual economy while growing poorer in the real world.
- Teenagers stumble upon a secret military base underneath a shopping mall.
- Man wakes up every morning with a different healed wound without knowing why.
- Broken window in attendant booth at gas station.
- Muscle man dressed as Conan the Barbarian in front of costume shop.
- House explodes after thieves try to steal antique stove without first disconnecting the gas line.
- Old man dies with $200 in the bank and $7 million USD in hidden gold inside house
- A food truck serving food to homeless pets.
- Kill what you can eat or be killed by what can eat you.
- Angry husband confront’s wife lover in lover’s garage and shot dead (castle defense).
- Police kills mountain lion at retirement community.
- Young girl’s dead body found in recycling dumpster.
- Surfer killed by shark off the Southern California coast.
- Invasive grass cultivated for bio-fuel program.
- Firefighters find dead woman in burning house.
- Murder-suicide at retirement community.
- Thieves arrested by police for tailing van with valuable silicon chips.
- Strip club claims tax exemption for “performing arts” by dancers.
- Scientists convicted in court for bad earthquake forecast.
- Dying man votes from his deathbed.
- City park gets large donation.
- Bodega (Spanish neighborhood store) sells something else besides soda and candy.
- Bayonet and horses.
- Big Bird.
- Binders full of women.
- Teacher fired for running porn website from school laptop.
- Dead guy kept on dry ice in shed.
- Couple eat cockroaches for world series tickets.
- Parents confiscate their teenager’s cell phone to post bizarre pictures of themselves on Facebook.
- A presumed dead man shows up for his own funeral.
- Coworker shows up via telepresence device (i.e., robotic or hologram).
- Man standing at urinal tries to high-five as world series run announced over PA system and 75 men stare back at him.
- A leopard shark falls on golf course after bird flies five miles inland from ocean.
- Cop accused of planning to kidnap, rape, torture and cook woman.
- Algebra teacher arrested for idling car in high school parking lot with pot and cash in the glove box.
- Mother comes home to find children dead in bathtub.
- A “frankenstorm” barrels down on the coast.
- Homeless man named Elvis Presley killed in accident.
- White teacher calls black student a slave.
- Black cat at animal shelter.
- Female karate student kicks intruder out of apartment.
- Political signs stolen by politician’s husband.
- Lynched zombie hanging from fraternity house window.
- A coffin-shaped outhouse leaves people dying from embarrassment.
- Thief steals 80,000 pounds of walnuts.
- Drunk woman tries to save ducks from storm.
- Man loses leg as cross falls on top of him.
- Thugs vandalizing a bus after sports game turn on people recording them.
- Trick-or-treaters were given cocaine instead of candy.
- Fairy costumed woman arrested in Halloween heist.
- Thief steals takeout food vehicle and delivers orders.
- Woman found “shot” in her car was a drunk woman wearing zombie makeup.
- Hacker changes freeway signs to something less informative.
- Goat chases the paper boy into a tree.
- Woman drives on sidewalk to avoid school bus unloading children.
- Man refuses to come off top of bus.
- Deers go window shopping through automatic doors.
- Man flashes woman, woman flashes gun.
- Santa Claus hangs from ceiling by his beard.
- Parents and little brother lost trying to save dog from surf as daughter calls 911.
- Photojournalist takes the picture of a man getting run over by train.
- Dead pet turned into diamond ring becomes curse for owner.
- A fish caught and return two times and kept the third time was pregnant (a father-daughter fishing story).
- Loss Swiss Army knife while fishing at pier.
- Twenty human heads found in steel drum at airport.
- Wife killed her husband for a second time (misleading headline).