One thing I generally find is that I initially want to burst the limits of ficly – to write three or four pages and more. It reminds me that one of the reasons ficly appealed to me was the LIMIT of it. The need for harsh editing. Because I have been told, more than once, that I tend to select words with an unintended favoritism towards the obfuscatory, the loquacious, and the grotesquely ostenta-

OH, SHUT UP!

sigh

So I bring my trait to you, to write it in a good way. Begin your story with the challenge name as a line of dialogue. “You know, you talk too much.” And you cannot use that line (or variance thereof) as an ending. (It can be a sad ending, don’t get me wrong. But it can’t use the line over again.)

If you need a single sequel, go ahead. But I’m rather a purist – it had better be a really necessary sequel. It will need to overwhelm my bias.

And now to the fanciful visualizations and mellifluous syntactical constructions, fellow ficliteers!