We were driving from Maine to Brooklyn, playing a game called “Find the NPR Station.” It was a Saturday, after all, and even the smaller markets have Weekend Edition. Somewhere in Massachusetts or Connecticut, we found This American Life and stayed tuned in for as long as we could. New York Times book critic James Wood came on Weekend All Things Considered to announce a fiction writing contest and my ears perked up. I know who this guy is, I thought, I’m reading his book (more on that in a second)! It turned out that this was Round 2 of NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest, to which they invite listeners to submit their own works of flash fiction.
Wood talked about the power of specifics in a first sentence. You know, the hook. He gave some example that he also references in his book about a marquis eating lunch, but I’ve already forgotten. And, oh yeah, I only ended up reading half of the book, so…
So the rule for Round 2 was that all stories should begin with the bland, generic sentence, “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” The trick would be to write a killer second line.
I wrote a little story in the next week or so and sent it off a day early. I’d been checking back at the site every few days to see if I was a contender or not, but alas, today I saw that a winner was chosen, and it was not I.
Here is my entry: “A Fern in the Rose Garden.” Please to enjoy.
A Fern in the Rose Garden by Nick Faber
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