A Sharp Exchange of Words
Fifties by the Fire
Fifties by the Fire — a fifty-word, prompt-based writing exercise. Feel free to share your response below, or read and comment to join the fun.
Prompt: Write a fifty-word story (fiction, poetry, or CNF) using the accompanying photo.
Here are the other guidelines:
Make sure your piece is exactly fifty words. Feel free to use Word Counter or the word processor you use.
Write a title with the genre in the first line. (Example: The End and The Beginning, Fiction)
The title does not factor into the word count.
Good luck and have fun. Happy writing!
Special thanks to John Lightle for providing “A Sharp Exchange of Words” for our writing prompt.
(Instead of using the photo, I used the idea of "a sharp exchange of words" for my story this time around. Look at me...breaking my own guidelines. Ha!)
House of Cards, fiction
A boy stacked a house of cards on the kitchen table. His older brother walked by and knocked it down.
“What was that for?”
“For being an ugly little shit,” the brother said. “What are you going to do about it?”
The boy bit his tongue and started to rebuild.
Showtime/Fiction
A family spat can be many things. Simmering. Explosive. Painful. Cathartic. Inevitable. Necessary. Hard words like wild zoo animals escaped, rarely re-penned without damage done.
When it spills from private grievance to the public square, moving from pitiable to performative, it can take on a poisonous new dimension: spectator sport.