There’s a Story Here Somewhere: Inspirational Images from Flickr

*Looking for the Summer (June – August) Writing Challenge – Every Picture Has a Story? See below for details.*

Flickr is my favorite site to scout for images to use on my blog. There’s a wealth of Creative Commons licensed images and it’s easy to search for them. The images vary widely in quality and artistic value but I’ve rarely failed to find just the right one for a post.

And, of course, it’s all free…which might be the most important factor to a blogger who isn’t making money off her blog.

My Favorites stream over there is already jammed with more images than I can use in a couple of years but I just keep adding more. So many of the images I’ve encountered have captured my imagination, inspiring blog posts, stories and stories-to-be. Here are some that have really stuck with me even though they have no story…yet:

April-May Writing Challenge: First Impressions and Famous Last Words

Great opening lines draw us in, making it impossible for us to turn away and great last lines linger long, long after we’ve read the end. Two of my favorite first and last lines come from Stephen King’s work.

“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”  The Gunslinger (1982). Ooh…I know I want to follow them both. Don’t you?

“lady fingers they taste like lady fingers.” Survivor Type (1982). That one even makes my husband shiver and he’s never read the story.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write either the opening or closing lines of a story. Start us off with a bang or leave us begging for more. As usual, any genre will do and the word count limit is 100.

Here’s how it all works:

• Prompt: Create the first or last line of a story.
• Genre: Anything goes. Mystery, Western, romance, historical fiction, alternate history, steam punk, science fiction, horror, fantasy, slip-stream, or whatever.
• Word count: 100 words.
• How to share: You can put it up on your blog and link here or (if you don’t have a blog) you can email (sonia DOT m DOT writes AT gmail DOT com) it to me and I’ll put it in a post for you.
• Time limit: From now until the next challenge is posted in June.
• Prizes: No…no prizes. Just the reward of a story well written.

There were some fabulous stories for the March Writing Challenge. I’ll be updating this post with links to them all shortly. In the mean time, cruise on over and read them here (in the comments).

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I’ll posting over at the Life List Club tomorrow. Come on by and say hello.

Image Attribution (In Order of Appearance):
keyboard ~ blur by striatic, on Flickr CC BY 2.0