Friday, October 24, 2014

"One frame. One million stories"

Lovely readers, I am going to talk about a project that insinuated slowly, but strongly into Twitter world.

To put it into a nutshell the website http://www.oneframestories.com/ uploads every Friday a frame, and people can submit a story in 99 words centered around it.
Once next Friday comes, more than 40 stories are selected and published accordingly, with a top 4 to motivate the competitive devil in each of the writers.

The Frame 8 from today consists of a gorgeous photo of a man, smoking inside a forest (click on the link above and you will understand what I am talking about). Well, I read all the stories, twice...trying to understand why this week I wasn't impressed too much.

It felt as if people couldn't see the heavy past weighing down the man or the incredible mysterious atmosphere. Instead...they focused on "the beedi", which is a thin Indian cigarette. Well, once in a while the beedi brought a nice flavor in the rhythm of the narration, but otherwise...You fill in the gaps.

The top 4 from today was a little bit puzzling for me as well. While definitely different, and well written, they couldn't wake up in me any feelings or after thoughts about what could have happened if...

When I evaluate a story, I usually focus on originality, on the unexpected idea, but which is still subtly linked to the frame, or if none of these is available, then on the classic elements of a really very short story: stasis, trigger, climax.

The next frame is very generous topic wise: a splendid moon and a bat...so go ahead people...submit your stories there and impress me. I am a very generous reader and I want to be put in the position to not know what to choose...and to spend my entire Friday, re-reading small jewels.

Good luck!    

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So if you had to pick the top 4, which ones would you pick? Would like to see you picking your top 4 too. I am sure it would motivate the others :)

Thais said...

For this frame it is quite difficult to pick 4, but I have a favorite and that is Storm Warning by The Oddfather. Explanation: it follows the minimum requirements for a short story. :)