People who read this website know I often write stories in response to weekly writing prompts like Madison Woods’ Friday Fictioneers, Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction and the Trifecta Writing Challenge (more accurately, people who read this site are often reading it because they, too, participate in these very same prompts).

Well, in the last couple of weeks, while working on my stories for these prompts, I’ve found myself turning more frequently to a new source of inspiration: Wikipedia. Something about the process of learning something new – call it flash research – gets my creativity going and I end up really enjoying the pieces that come out of it.

My stories Pietro Barbino and Przypadek, and yesterday’s The Battle of Bicocca all had roots in quick Wikipedia research, and this got me thinking – why not use Wikipedia to start a brand new writing prompt?

Are You Up For (Another) Challenge?

So I’d like to propose an idea to you, my readers and fellow writers: how about a new weekly writing challenge where we take the day’s featured Wikipedia article and write a short story off of it?

These sad clowns will be even sadder if you’re not into this idea… just Say Say Saying

I’m going to start doing it anyway, based on whatever article is featured each Wednesday. Today it’s an article on “Say Say Say” – a song written and performed by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson.

There will only be a few rules. First, the stories should be 500 words or fewer. Second, they should be done by the following Wednesday. And third – there is no third!

So what do you think? Will you join me? Do you even have time in your schedule to fit in another writing prompt? It might be slow to build at first, but I think a weekly prompt that involves a little bit of research could be useful (and knowing some of the Fictioneers and FSF-ers, I’m already really interested to see what you might do with this week’s prompt).

Let me know below – I’d love to have you on board!