From the Bookshelf

April 2026

Dear Writers,

Welcome to the April installment of my series From the Bookshelf, in which I create a prompt based on an excerpt of a book I pull from my shelves. The excerpt is presented without context intentionally. The monthly prompts may be for flash fiction or nonfiction, and they may be inspired by all kinds of books: a travel guide, a book of essays, poems, or fiction, a dictionary, a biography . . .

These prompts are free for anyone and everyone. Enjoy.

This Month’s Prompt
“The Child of Death,” in Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines from Folktales around the World, ed. Kathleen Ragan (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998)

I grabbed this collection of tales from my son’s bookcase, where it was collecting dust. I think it will go back to mine now. I opened up to a folktale from Vietnam, which begins:

Just a month before she was to have become a mother, a young peasant woman was carried away by a sudden illness to the Land of the Dead.

I like how time is working in this line: It could have read “Eight months pregnant, a young peasant woman was carried away by a sudden illness to the Land of the Dead.” But no, we are in a present moment imagining a future one that, we learn, will never occur. It’s a lot to do in one sentence, especially the opening one. How wonderful, too, that we’re reminded about who she was “about” to become: a mother. Somehow that word connects better to new life than “pregnant.” It heightens the contrast to the “Land of the Dead.”

Now your turn. Write an opening line for a flash with a similar construction: “Just a [span of time] before [she/he/it] was to become a [noun], a[character] was [verb] by a [noun ] to [place ].”

This is wide open. It does not have to be a folktale. Go in any direction you like.

Have fun with this one,

Cheryl