Hi, I’ve done a lot this month so I thought I should do an update on that. From June 5 to June 11 I went to the Humanities Tennessee Creative Writing Camp. I went to the camp virtually in 2020 as well, but this time it was in person, which was fun. We stayed at East Tennessee University for a week, and learned about different writing styles and techniques. I learned how to do Spoken Word poetry with Taria (an instructor there) and Flash Fiction with Bradley (also an instructor)! At first, I was kind of skeptical about spoken word poetry and poetry in general, I didn’t think it was for me. I also thought Flash Fiction was too short for there to be really any substance. But once I really started working with it, I began to appreciate the styles. Especially flash fiction- Bradley showed us how to make fun twists at the end of the stories and revise them so we don’t have a bunch of unnecessary details. Here’s the Flash Fiction story that I wrote at camp. It’s called “Ghost Hunters”:
“Ghost Hunters” by Sanjana/Dia Manoj (436 words)
Two boys, no older than 12, sat on the pavement and licked their cherry popsicles, completely synchronized. They choreographed each taste. This was all a conceited effort in trying to seem like twins to passerbys. They had always thought that the idea of identical twins was eery. And being eery seemed to be their ultimate goal in life. They often stayed up at deadly hours of the night, hunting ghosts and watching horror films.
Suddenly, while they were trying to figure out how to blink at the same time, they heard a loud CLANG! from far away. They paused, and continued talking, before they were interrupted again by a BANG! They decided to investigate, walking down the street. Their parents had never let them go that far from home before alone, but they were much too intrigued to notice or care. Finally, in front of them stood a little house. It was gray, with moss climbing up the walls. The broken windows were shut off, with some glass shards scattered on the ground. The roof caved in, and the long chips in the paint looked as if someone scratched it off. It seemed isolated, yet they could still hear ominous sounds coming from within. The door was slightly open, which lured them in even more.
They stepped up to the front door, but before they could step inside, one of them said
“Don’t worry, I’ll go in first to check if the coast is clear.”
The other frowned, “No, it’s okay, I got this.”
“C’mon let me do this, I know you get scared sometimes with this stuff.” he chuckled.
“Hey! What do you mean by that?” the other retorted.
“I mean that you’re a big chicken.”
Soon, the two boys were bickering over who would go inside first and who was the bigger wuss.
“You couldn’t even watch The Conjuring!” one boy laughed cruelly.
“Yeah, well you’re scared of damn clowns! What are you, 5?” the other screamed.
“How dare you bring that up, you know their noses freak me out!”
Their fight escalated until finally one of the boys had a fit, and pushed the other into the door,
“Fine, go first then idiot!” he yelled as the other fell backward into the house. Inside, an elder man kneeled in front of an air conditioner, banging on it with some sort of tool. The boys looked at each other in confusion.
“Are you a ghost?” the boy tilted his head.
The man rolled his eyes, and turned back to the air conditioner,
“This house is up for renovation. It’s a closed off space, boys.”
And that’s the story. I wanted to find a way to do a plot twist like the flash fiction he read to us at camp. I don’t know if I did the twist well, but I do like how the story came out. Also, before you tell me that I needed to give more background info on the characters (like their names)- no I don’t. It’s flash fiction you don’t need to do that, I think. Or at least that’s what Bradley said. Okay, that’s it for now, bye.