Learn about Fiction
A Fiction Seed tells an invented story. It uses characters, events, settings, conflict, and imagination to explore something that did not necessarily happen but might reveal something meaningful, entertaining, frightening, funny, beautiful, or unexpected.
Fiction Seeds can include short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, novel chapters, serialized fiction, scenes, vignettes, monologues, experimental fiction, scripts, and other forms of narrative storytelling. They can be complete works or portions of larger works, provided the Seed gives visitors enough context to experience and respond to what has been shared.
The story can belong to virtually any genre: science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, thriller, horror, historical fiction, literary fiction, comedy, adventure, drama, speculative fiction, or combinations that don’t fit neatly into a category. Fiction can take place yesterday, today, thousands of years from now, in a recognizable world, or somewhere that has never existed.
A Fiction Seed does not have to make a philosophical statement or tackle an important issue. It simply needs to tell a story. A quiet conversation between two characters can qualify just as easily as an epic journey across another galaxy.
Fiction Seeds can be Original Seeds or inspired Child Seeds. A writer might create a story from a What If question, reinterpret a photograph, continue an idea raised in an essay, build characters around a piece of music, or take another Fiction Seed in an entirely unexpected direction.
And the story does not have to end with the writer. A character might inspire someone’s portrait. A single scene could become a short film. Another writer might explore an overlooked character, while a musician could create something based entirely on the story’s mood.
The purpose of a Fiction Seed is first to tell a compelling story, but on The Inspiration Tree that story can also become the beginning of something the original writer never imagined.
