Friday Flash Prompt: First Line Provides (Oddly Enough) a Year’s Worth of Required First Lines

The First Line lit­er­ary jour­nal pro­vides quar­ter­ly first lines for sto­ries. As their guide­lines state, “All sto­ries must start with the appro­pri­ate first line, and you can­not change it in any way unless oth­er­wise indi­cat­ed.” Here’s their upcom­ing issue, first line, and dead­line:

Sum­mer

Paul and Miri­am Kauf­man met the old-fash­ioned way.
Due date: May 1, 2010

They also have ones for Fall (due August 1) and Win­ter (due Novem­ber 1). All “first lines” can be found here, along with sub­mis­sion guide­lines.

Can you, uh, “bor­row” their first lines and send them else­where? Here’s what First Line respect­ful­ly asks of writ­ers:
 

We love the fact that writ­ers around the world are inspired by our first lines, and we know that not every sto­ry will be sent to us. How­ev­er, we ask that you do not sub­mit sto­ries start­ing with our first lines to oth­er jour­nals (or post them online on pub­lic sites) until we’ve noti­fied you as to our deci­sion (usu­al­ly two to three weeks after the dead­line). When the entire premise of the pub­li­ca­tion revolves around one sen­tence, we don’t want it to look as if we stole that sen­tence from anoth­er writer. If you have ques­tions, feel free to drop us a line. 

So, get start­ed this Fri­day on one or more of these and send them to The First Line. As they remind us, “It all starts the same, but.…” Sub­scrip­tions and sin­gle issues, includ­ing a Best of Anthol­o­gy avail­able here.

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