Between the Lines: A Fifty Word Story

in #fiction5 years ago


Emma's eyes kept returning to the heavy leather volume on the shelf. She handled the cracked binding carefully. The Guide to Færie.

The charity shop got its 50 pence.

Days later, Emma's mother fainted beside the empty bed. A creepy old book lay open to one side. Emma was missing.


This is my fifty word story in response to @Jayna's prompt for the week--book. I missed last week's because I wrote 359 words of story and still wasn't finished. So that prompt set off a larger piece I'm still working on.

Between the Lines is a somewhat experimental story for me.  So instead of telling you a lot about my writing process, beyond the fact that it involved my usual peer review with the folks on @ink-ubator's Discord server, I'd like you to tell me how the story impacted you and what you got out of it. Then I can perhaps figure out if the experiment worked as intended.

My extra thanks to Anike Kirsten and Andrew J. Savage for titling help. I really had trouble finding something that worked for me this week. Titles are a weakness of mine. I often struggle to find something I think is effective and matches the story.





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SteemPress : http://bex-dk.com/2018/11/03/between-the-lines-a-fifty-word-story/

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This is like a snippet from a movie and one I'd love to watch. Great scene and suspense conjured up in so few words. Bravo!

Greetings, @bex.dk
It was creepy. Books are supposed to be good, and yet, there are so many mysteries surrounding some books and their efect of those who read them.
This one strikes the cord of the supernatural, the invocation of magical creatures who dupe the weaklings and steal body and/or soul.

But do we know it isn't good? Maybe Emma is happier now than she ever was in her real life. Sure, it's possible something bad has happened--I left that open--but she might have been depressed and felt out of place in her world.

Of course, that is always a possibility. That's the problem with 50-word stories. Little room to tell/suggest more. I got the negative idea of her disappearance from fainting of the mother, the labeling of the book as creepy, the described emptiness (all inidcations that she was either loved or missed).

Yup. The mother's perspective definitely does that. But how often do we hide our struggles from our parents? Clearly her disappearance is traumatic for her mother, but you have to decide for yourself if you see it as a negative for her. Part of what I wanted was for the reader to create her story between the lines of this one.

I love it. Emma is off to new adventures. As with all of your stories, I could see this one growing into a much longer work!

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