I have to admit that the hardest part of Fast Fiction is keeping it under 200 words. As seen during last year’s NaNoWriMo challenge, I have no problems writing quickly and a LOT. It’s been quite an experience already to type out the Fiction and then slowly strip away all the “fat” while retaining the “juicy meat” of the story. Maybe from now on I’ll start to keep both versions just for comparison’s sake.
At any rate, here’s today’s FF:
“Come on, Mary! Faster! Type faster! Dammit, I could do better!”
“Then why don’t you, you condescending asshole?” thought Mary as her boss stormed back into his office. “Then maybe you could use your fingers for more than picking your nose and pointing out people’s mistakes.”
Mary held back tears and fought to control her emotions. She didn’t know why she put up with all the abuse. Did she really need money this desperately?
She glanced at her picture frame and this time a tear slipped. The glass was cracked over Peter’s face, mocking her. She closed her eyes and saw Peter pointing, stabbing at her, yelling that it was her fault, and then walking out.
“I just love too much,” she whispered. “I give too much and no one cares.”
She regained control and clicked on Print. A message box appeared claiming her memo wasn’t properly formatted. Her left eye began to twitch.
“Mary!” yelled her boss. “Let’s go!” he clapped at her. She jumped out of her seat, eyes wide with fear, and ran into the office. The door closed and the yelling continued.
When Mary left, she was smiling. Her boss’ hands covered hers like a glove.
Oh yeah. One of the good things about these little FF is that I can easily see myself expanding on so many of the in-between-scenes and building a full-case story (or in most cases chapters) out of them.
Man this little exercise has jump-started my imagination more than any other little trick I’ve had to work with in the past!! Thanks Warren!