New To Gibberish? Check out Navigation for Newcomers!
Want to see more prompts? Check out the 2025 Prompt Index!
A Special Welcome to New Subscribers! Yesterday I had a livestream with one of Substack’s Executive Triumvirs, Hamish McKenzie, to talk about “The dawn of media democracy”. If you subscribed because of that livestream, you’ve arrived at Gibberish, my fiction publication. Here I host both my own writing and I offer prompts for the broader community of Substack fiction. If you’re in the market for fiction on Substack, you’ve come to the right place!
I write a lot of variety, if you’d like a taste check out my Start Here page!
You can check out the writers and the stories written for last weeks Flash Fiction Friday prompts below!
The fiction community is as wide as it is deep. Here’s a few of my friends, whom you should also check out:
S.E. Reid hosts Talebones ✨ which includes Talestack News, a biweekly Substack Fiction bulletin board
Shaina Read is part of the team running Macabre Monday as well as her own excellent publication Kindling
Sean Thomas McDonnell has a new horror anthology out (Blood in the Yolk), and J. Curtis recently published a Twilight Zone themed anthology (The Midnight Vault) and both are available for purchase right now, and feature Substack’s own fiction talent! (including John Ward who was featured in Substack Reads for the Substack Zone event!)
💎 Jaime Buckley’s Life of Fiction is now working on a TTRPG with paid subscribers (among many other things) if that’s more your speed!
There’s many, many more! You’re no more than three clicks away from your next favorite author, I guarantee it!
Whether you’re here to stay or you’re just passing through, thank you so much for visiting Gibberish.
It’s Flash Fiction Friday! The game is simple: check out the prompts below, write literally anything based on any, all, or none of the prompts, post a story to your stack before next week, and share your story in the chat thread!
Once you’ve posted your story, make sure to check out the other stories and share your favorites on notes!
Don’t forget to subscribe to get Flash Fiction Friday in your inbox every week!
Enjoy!
Prompts for 16 May 2025
Write about a ship in a storm
churning stillness
“Please, no”
A character who doesn’t believe in mermaids
Flash Fiction Highlights
Every week I will choose some (or all!) of the stories shared in the Chat to highlight in the subsequent weeks issue of Flash Fiction Friday. There might be some new folks poking about here because of the livestream, so I’m going to shout out all of you again! Here are the highlights:
✨Joseph Young - Mer (First timer!!)
Michael S. Atkinson - Unfortunate Soul
Stephanie Loomis - Cost of Coffee Part 11
Scott MacLeod - Tall Tail
Jeannine - Merbaby
B.C. Ray - Honest Work
✨Leanne Shawler - The Silence of the Sea (First timer!!)
✨Kerry Sutherland - Merman (First timer!!)
Thank you all for sharing your wonderful fiction!
Want to be featured? Make sure you share your stories in the Flash Fiction Friday chat!
Thank you for checking out these prompts! Come back next week for another round of prompts!
Interested in seeing my own writing? Check out The Volume for longer-form fiction, or The Writing Gym for writing exercises designed to help me sharpen my craft!
Thank you and God bless!
Thanks for sharing. Hopefully the community continues to grow
Ooh and it’s another mer-ish prompt this week! This one might make a good seed for book 4 …. (Just like last week’s prompt was). Am collecting those seeds everywhere!