I wrote a flash fiction piece about a laundromat and it got picked up by a small lit mag last week

I had this idea after sitting in the Spin Cycle on 5th Street for an hour watching people fold clothes. The prompt was "write a story that takes place entirely between the wash and dry cycles" and I just ran with it. I got a $25 payment for it which felt huge. How do you guys usually translate real life observations into prompts without making it too literal?

2 comments

2 Comments

tara3455d ago

Oh come on, it's not that deep. You saw something cool and wrote about it, that's the whole trick. @garcia.miles is over here acting like you need some secret decoder ring to turn a laundromat into fiction when really you just had a good idea and ran with it. The prompt gave you a frame and you filled it in, that's all there is to it.

garcia.miles5d ago

$25 for one story is pretty good, most of these places pay in contributor copies. The wash and dry cycles thing is funny because that's such a narrow window but laundromats have that weird in-between feeling where nobody really talks to each other. My question is how did you actually get the idea from watching people fold clothes without just writing exactly what you saw? Like is there a trick to making it feel like fiction and not just a description of someone folding their underwear?