2025 Writing Battle Flash Fiction
Another couple of months, another Writing Battle — seven days to write a 1,000 words — and my prompts weren’t so bad.
I ran into a bit of writer’s block with this one. I came up with an idea I couldn’t shake, so I wrote the story and labored on it for days. Honestly, I didn’t expect much from it. It’s what I had.
Major Mason Rourke, my protagonist — a military officer in the near future — is shackled, chained to a bed, and undergoing an interrogation. His agency is naturally curtailed. The action is muted. The language is so tropey it makes me queasy. Leaning into sensory description to make up for the difference (like I’m somehow apologizing to the reader — please, enjoy the descriptions, forgive me for everything else), rereading the story, it sounds melodramatic and excessive. Ugh, it makes me gag. The pacing is weird. The villain is a cliche. Without time for much buildup, my hero’s catharsis feels forced, as if he doesn’t earn his ending. Blech.
But it’s got good bones. The interiority work feels right (the protagonist is strong but worried and nostalgic, informing the stakes). The flashback scenes with metal locusts flying over a Taiwanese city sound like my kind of military science fiction. The central conflict is straightforward and easy to digest. The twist is good. I feel the last line is fantastic.
It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Yet, all said, the results of the preliminary judging are in, and the story will move on to the finals after winning 6 of 6 rounds.
Huh! Okay, go figure.
My story, Cheaper Than Silicon, isn’t my favorite, I don’t feel it is my best, and I don’t think it’s even a story worthy of winning a Writing Battle competition.
Still, it is a story with a pulse.
With it, I’m experimenting with tighter psychological tension through the lens of a morally complex protagonist forced to confront the collapse of his certainty. For all its flaws and constraints, I feel it proves I can write with momentum and atmosphere, and that I’m willing to take risks.
The final results are due this weekend. Well … (shrug), fingers crossed. You never know. Let’s see what happens!
R
