Hello people! Anyone out there up for stretching themselves and trying something new?!!! Great! As part of my creative writing course, I was recently introduced to Mini-Saga’s. I found it so interesting to write but also quite challenging because of the rules for writing one:
A Mini-Saga is a complete short story that is made up of only 50 words- not 51, 50. And a title of 1- 15 words. I loved trying this out because you had to be totally disciplined and trim the fat, I also liked the fact that it forces you to determine what is essential for your story to make complete sense, without more. It is a lot of fun and there are usually Mini-Saga Competitions organised by different groups yearly, with one of the more popular ones being the Daily Telegraph Mini-Saga competition.
So here is my Mini-Saga
Papa loves the bottle but it doesn’t love him back!
Photo courtesy http://www.wallsave.com
Mama had had enough. It fell on us kids to fetch Papa- again! This night like many others before, we would suffer the cruel taunting of the “Madam” who ran the beer parlour, and the laughter of other patrons as we carried our Papa splayed face-down, from his own vomit.
Ok, that was my attempt. My tutor feedback was “This is a strong story Hajara. We have a strong sense of characters, motivations, and of the difficulty of the situation.” So now its your turn, try your hands at a Mini-Saga, bear in mind that you can use your title to enhance your story but tell it in only 50 words! Write it as a comment to this post, I will pick the best 3 and get people to vote on Facebook for the winning story. Once a winner is announced, I’ll put a link to his/her blog back on Facebook, to help increase traffic to their site- how’s that? So what are you waiting for? Start writing and editing away- even if you are not a “writer” try your hands at this. It will be a lot of fun and you get to engage your imagination in a new way!
Don’t forget to be awesome this weekend and thanks for stopping by!
Title: The beggar boy wore a smile, you should too.
There in the scorching sun he sat, with nothing to shield him, no sense of what tommorrow holds, yet he wore this smile on his face, so striking I still have it etched on my mind.
It’s been two weeks but I still remember the beggar boy and his smile.
Title: The begger boy wore a smile, you should too.
There in the scorching sun he sat, with nothing to shield him, no sense of what tommorrow holds, yet he wore this smile on his face. So striking I still have it etched on my mind.
It’s been two weeks but I still remember the begger boy and his smile.
TITLE: We live on the other side of town.
Today has come again,pregnant with mystery. Shalewa’s daddy is drunk again!I must set out from this hell hole and go to work. Its 4.30am, the ‘Danfo’ drivers are rude and the sits are uncomfortable but I don’t care as long as I get to work in peace.
TITLE: DARE TO DREAM/ NEVER GIVE UP
Poised on the floor she waited. As the music began she moved gracefully, powerfully, bringing to life the pain and the joy of the melody. Last beat of the last bar and not one in the audience was sitting as we witnessed the beautiful amputee achieve her dream to dance.
Papa didn’t fall in love the right one, who would love him unconditionally.
Lol, maybe you have some recommendations for Papa?! Lol! Thanks for stopping by.
No winner announced or did I miss it?
No love, you didn’t, its because everyone won… Really good saga’s by all who wrote. Since you have not started your blog yet and one of the things I was trying to acheive by this was to drive traffic to people’s blogs, what I would do is post the saga’s to my FB page and just put a link to the blogs or blog posts of the authors. Thank you for bringing this up Sunshine!
We are calling all lovers of mini-saga to let you know that we just created a way to create a mobile video version of mini-saga. The 50-word rule becomes the 20-second rule and it’s on an app called Riffiti (riffiti.com). So now we can all challenge ourselves to actually speaking out the mini-saga! How cool is that!
Team Riffiti (yup, a bit of a shameless self-promotion)
LOL your self-promotion is allowed because it does seem like a good idea. Will check out the App. Stay awesome.
Thanks, Hajara, appreciate it :- )
You are welcome!