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I picked up a book called How To Write Short-Short Stories by Stella Whitelaw (1996) at the library yesterday. I am fewer than 20 pages in, but it has already been inspiring.

In a section on inspiration, Whitelaw suggests what is both an obvious and innovative method of developing a piece of flash fiction:

Create five stacks of cards:
1. characters
2. settings
3. objects
4. events
5. twists

Draw one card from each pile and get writing! What a great way to get out of a writing funk!

So... I would like all members of FlashFictionLives to participate in the following:

In a comment to this journal, give me an item for each of the five cards. Please only comment with one set at a time. You can comment more than once with a new set of "cards", just keep them in separate comments.

Comment until June 28th! I'd really love to see everyone participate in this!

Just a note - There is no actual mention of flash fiction in this book in what I have read so far or in the index. According to this book, the ideal length of a short short story is 1200 words. Just like everything else, our need for faster consumption has even affected fiction! The going definition as I understand it now for flash fiction is fewer than 1000 words, with different subcategories within that (6 word stories, 55s).