BSB News
It was a busy week for our writing prompts last week! Two poems, and two flash fiction stories were posted this past weekend. If you missed them, check them out at the links below!
Prompted Poetry: Dream Desk & Waning of the Green
Prompted Prose: The Fortune & All in the Cards
Want to join the fun next week? Scroll down, grab a prompt and write a story or poem to submit!
Topic of the Week: Multi-Media Ebooks
Recently I had the opportunity to beta “read” a different kind of book by author J.A. Konrath. It was a mystery of sorts, wherein the author imparted puzzles from the antagonist and beseeched his readers to help him solve the mystery by solving the puzzles, entering the answers into a web site, and recieving more pieces to the main puzzle with each one they reported correctly.
Yes, he did say we could talk about it, or I wouldn’t…uh…be talking about it.
The puzzles could be solved however the reader required, so I used google, and pen/paper, and my husband. Aside from the puzzles which required a lot of time away from the book, I enjoyed the back and forth. The bigger puzzles I had to wait until I had time to find several answers at once, so I couldn’t just solve the puzzle and move on during a break at work or whatever, I had to wait until I had time, which was kind of annoying. Luckily there were only a couple of those though.
I used to really like Choose Your Own Adventure stories too, which are not the same at all, but still employ the concept of making the reader stop and take action in some way before they can continue the story. It’s kind of an abrupt way to read, with the starting/stopping, but both formats work when done well (I think this is the first time the puzzle/riddle concept has been done in book form, but I could be wrong), and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Konrath’s mystery series when I can.
What do you think of that kind of book? Definitely something more interactive than your normal reading experience. Is it something that catches your interest, or would you choose to stick with the more immersive “normal” reading experience?
Wanna write? Pick a prompt!
Prose Writing Prompt of the Week: Let’s solve a mystery. While walking down the street, your character finds: a scrap of fabric stuck in a rose bush, a torn shirt in the gutter ten yards away, and a shirtless man lying on a lawn several houses down the block. What happened?
Poetry Prompt of the Week: Write a rhyming riddle that when solved, tells the reader where to find a secret hiding spot.
Write a 500 – 1000 word story based on the prose prompt and/or a poem using the theme of the poetry prompt, and email it/them to brazensnake@brazensnakebooks.com. Poems will be posted on Saturdays, Prose on Sundays. Happy writing!