Vermilion's Flash Issues are open to submission from anyone, not just members of the university community. Check this page frequently for new prompts and pieces!
Submissions are only available for the live prompt, but we highly encourage you to explore all of the ideas on this page.
Submit a piece about an experience while traveling in 500 words or less.
(Photograph by Thomas Howlett)
Submit a piece that describes how a specific food dish has made you the person you are in five hundred words or less.
Write a family drama from two or more perspectives.
Write a paragraph horror story.
Write a piece about an object you would put in your own personal time capsule.
(Digital Art by Carolina Beretta)
Write a piece from the perspective of an unreliable narrator.
(Digital Art by Carolina Beretta)
Invent a new word and write how you would define it (defining it could mean creating a dictionary definition, telling a story that encapsulates it, writing a poem about it, etc.).
(Photo by icon0.com)
Write a poem without any "being" verbs (ex: is, am, was were, are, etc.)
(Photo by Flora Westbrook)
Read the poem "The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats. Write a short story or other response piece from the perspective of the child after it has left the fairies behind
OR
Write a piece structured around a broken object
(Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels)
Write a poem about a color without using the name or the name of a shade of that color
(Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash)
Flash Issue 1:
Pick a book. Using the first and last lines, create your own story based on the context of just those two lines.
No winners