Listen up!

Most of our merry band of BlogMeisters use one or more of the weekly prompt sites. I know many of us subscribe to Sunday Scribblings and the son of Writers Island, Matinee Muse. But do you know what? You are missing out on the best one of the lot! I refer of course to (Fiction) Friday. Trouble is, only about 8 or so of us take part each week.

(Fiction) Friday is totally different. Not just because the first word of the title is in brackets, but because it offers the contributors a scenario rather than a word as its prompt. For instance, today’s subject was ‘Have your character steal something. Now have her rationalize it’. See, different!

In a change from the norm, this week we were also given advance warning of next week’s nudge. The reason is that a little preparation is required. This is how it’s worded;

Step 1. Go to a busy locale—a cafe or coffee shop would be easiest. Sit down with a notebook, and make sure you look busy, so people don’t know you’re listening. Now write down random snips of their conversations. Don’t take whole lines or even sentences—just a few words here and there. Try to get 10 bits.

Step 2. Now use all 10 in a cohesive scene of dialogue.
The normal rules apply ie. write for at least 5 minutes with NO EDITING. Your post has to up on Friday August 29th with a link back to your blog.

Now this is probably why more people don’t take part. The site, or sites you have to visit to find out what’s happening and post your links are just about the most confusing places I’ve ever visited! But basically if you go to http://writeanything.wordpress.com/ you are in the right area! I promise you it’s worth the effort.

While I’ve got your attention I’m going to have a moan about Wordless Wednesday. The principle is fine and the fact that up to 500 folk post a photo there each week is testament to its popularity. Unfortunately too many people seem to ignore the fact that it should be wordless! i.e. NO WORDS! But more irritating than that, just lately it’s turned into a place to display happy snaps of babies, children and pets. Now don’t get me wrong, I love children although I could only eat one, and pets are cuddly and gorgeous. But I really feel that this site should be a gallery of photographic endeavour and artistic creativity rather than a scrapbook of little Jimmy with food on his face and Tibbles laying upside-down waiting for a tickle.

So I think there should be a new site – Textless Tiggerless Totless Tuesday. I rest my case!

.