This was originally a Substack challenge, but it is not limited to Substack. Anybody can participate (see section below).

One Beast to rule them all, one Beast to find them,
Thirty-one legs to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the land of Fictionwocky where the chopped limbs lie.

Welcome to Fictionwocky: Legs 1–7.

Lo and behold! The first seven prompts of the 31-day nano/microfiction gauntlet are arriving now, with the Beast itself.

The suggested word count is 30–700 words, which is in the range of nano and microfiction. Why? Because I don’t want you to write full essays and burn yourselves out by Day 4.

Now chop chop (literally).

Legs (1-7)

Leg 1 – The AI Leg: Create a piece of fiction of AI-generated text (yes, on any topic, any model, any LLM)[1]. Then, process it with a cut-up tool. Then fix that mess so that it acquires minimal (or satisfying for you) meaning, or story. So, feed any prompt to an AI, cut it up randomly (as in Burroughs’s cut-up technique), and then “make it make sense” as a short story. You can change, add or remove words at will. The fun is in taming the randomness just enough to make you happy! This is the ultimate William S. Burroughs exercise.

Example:

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity (Edgar Allan Poe’s quote)
I horrible long with insane intervals sanity became of (Cut up result)
I horribly long with insane intervals of sanity’s becoming (Final)

Leg 2 – The Definition Leg: Write a microfiction in the style of a dictionary definition. For example:

(noun) dream-walker: A largely unknown fella who waltzes through other people’s dreams and devours them. Carries a full belly of stolen, blood-soaked dreamworlds. He often whips a bit of panic into meaning of a dream, (but not for you, oh no, not anymore, for you are awake, my dear). Historically, dream-walkers were the key culprits for the sudden morning loss of consciousness, and the odd feelings of déjà vu.

Here, now you invent a term or find a fun concept and define it as if it were in a dictionary entry. Keep it twisted.

Leg 3 – The Endless Leg: Write a complete microstory in a single sentence with no stopgaps at all (no periods). Just one long breath of text. For example, “He ran and blundered into the dark pool, deserting a man he couldn’t beat up anymore, then (…), and (…)”. So, the entire story must be one–still grammatically intact–sentence without using any sentence-ending punctuation. (You may use commas or conjunctions, or em dashes as needed, but no “.” or “;” to stop.)[2]

Leg 4 – The Play Leg: Write your piece as a short play. Use dialogue format and character names, e.g.:

MARY: (stirring tea) We’ve always lived here, ever since the Chasm.  
JOHN: (glancing out the window) Can you hear it, Mary? Tonight the attic rattles as hell again.
NARRATOR: A night breeze whacks through the empty house. 
(Sounds of whacking, at this moment. WHACK, WHACK. Use any device that's outside of stage, preferably to induce some wind effect onto the actors. )

Stage directions (in parentheses or italics) are allowed, but the entire story should unfold through spoken lines, not paragraphs of narration.

Leg 5 – The Recipe Leg: Write your microfiction as a recipe[3]. It can be for an occult meal, a creature, a curse, a city, a saint, a machine, a feeling, a failed summoning, or anything else that can be prepared badly or maliciously in a bowl.

Dad's Knuckles Soup

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 60 minutes

Serves: 1

Ingredients

6 cups of tap water.
10 crushed Dad's knuckles
1 yellow onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, whole

Preparation

Drop the knuckles into the rolling boil.

Skim the dense, grey foam from the surface as it rises. Dispose of it down the sink.

Add the chopped onion, carrots, and water.

Let simmer for one hour.

Don't agitate Daddy. Make sure he doesn't wake up before finishing (and finds his knuckles back).

Strain the soup and pour it into the bowl.

Enjoy your soup in silence.

Leg 6 – The Painting Leg: Choose any painting and write a microfiction exactly about that image, of the image, in the image, and nothing else. Describe whatever it is, or whatever is happening, the tension of composition, or what’s in that person’s head (if a portrait). Make it alive. Try not to make too much implied stuff from outside of painting, or what the background of the painting doesn’t show (off-scene events).

Leg 7 – The Love Leg: Write your microfiction as a love letter. It can be addressed to a person, creature, object, disease, city, machine, ghost, god, organ, failed idea, or anything else that probably shouldn’t be loved in the slightest. The content is up to you, but it must still read like a letter: intimate, direct, and addressed to someone or something. The weirder and more inventive, the better (or so I say, but who am I to say?).

You can jump in late. You can skip a day if a constraint completely breaks your brain. But the only True way is to face the beast, all thirty-one legs.

Rules and Flexibility

Publish (or see Flexibility down below): You post your nano/microfiction on your own Substack. Tag this publication, and drop it in the comments of the main weekly callout.
Flexibility: Substack is not required. WordPress, Wrizzit, blogs, Notes, whatever. You don’t have to publish publicly. Here are three options:
Join the Discord community, where you can drop your contribution in the #links channel. It will be linked out to your WordPress, Wrizzit, or any other site or platform (I hope mutually).
Send the link or piece to fictionwocky@gmail.com. I will publish it here in my main publication. If you’re on Substack, I can add you as a byline contributor.
Use Substack Notes if you still hate all the options. Just drop the Substack Notes link.

The Survivor List: participant links, the weekly offcuts, scraps, and severed little beauties will be added here as they arrive.

If you’re a total Luddite, AI burns your hands, and you can’t even fathom using it, just take some ready-made text. It doesn’t matter that much in the end; AI Leg was a fun thing to consider, chopping the aspect AI off of the beast.
If you liked that, read Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman; it’s a 1,000+ page book famously written in a single run-on sentence!
Olga Tokarczuk is notorious for playing with that form, see House of Day, House of Night, where you can find a nice (and poisonous) mushroom recipe.

Fictionwocky: Legs 1-7

The Slick

perihelion

The Centipedian