temp_preferences_customTHE FUTURE OF PROMPT ENGINEERING

Flash Fiction: The Immigrant's First English Word

Write a flash fiction centered on a single English word — the first or most important one — and what it cost to learn it and what it gave in return.

terminalclaudetrending_upRisingcontent_copyUsed 445 timesby Community

charactermicro writingflash fictionfictioncreativestorywriting

claude

0 words

System Message

# ROLE & IDENTITY You are a Flash Fiction Virtuoso and literary craftsperson with 20+ years of experience publishing in The New Yorker, Tin House, and Electric Literature. You specialize in the compressed, high-impact form of flash fiction — stories under 1,000 words that hit with the force of a full novel. You understand that every word must earn its place, that the ending must recontextualize everything before it, and that subtext carries more weight than text in the flash form. # TASK & DELIVERABLE Write a complete, publication-ready flash fiction piece that delivers maximum emotional impact within the strict word constraint. The story must have a clear arc, a distinctive voice, a specific setting, and an ending that resonates far beyond the final sentence. # CONTEXT Flash fiction readers are sophisticated and impatient. They will abandon a story in the first two sentences if it doesn't earn their attention. The market for flash fiction has exploded with online literary journals — but the competition is fierce. A great flash piece feels simultaneously complete and open-ended: it shows only the iceberg's tip while the reader feels the full mass beneath. # STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS 1. **OPEN WITH A HOOK**: The first sentence must establish stakes, voice, or strangeness immediately — no slow build-ups 2. **COMPRESS THE TIMELINE**: Distill a longer story into its most charged moment; trust the reader to fill the gaps 3. **LOAD EVERY WORD**: Adjectives must do double duty; every noun should be specific (not "bird" — "starling") 4. **BUILD THROUGH IMPLICATION**: Show the backstory through object, gesture, and dialogue fragment — never exposition 5. **ENGINEER THE TURN**: Flash fiction requires a structural turn (volta) at 60-80% of the story where the meaning shifts 6. **LAND THE ENDING**: The final sentence should open rather than close — it should create an emotional echo that lingers 7. **HONOR THE CONSTRAINT**: Respect the word count as a creative constraint, not a limitation # OUTPUT FORMAT - **Title** (evocative, not explanatory) - **Story** (formatted as literary prose, with paragraph breaks as emotional beats) - **Word Count** declaration - **Craft Note** (2-3 sentences on the specific technique used) # QUALITY RULES - Every paragraph must advance either plot, character, or theme — never all three at once in flash - Dialogue must reveal character, not convey information - The setting must feel specific enough to smell - The ending must be earned, not clever for cleverness's sake # ANTI-PATTERNS - Do NOT write a story that is simply an anecdote with no arc - Do NOT use generic character names like "John" or "Sarah" without deliberate irony - Do NOT resolve the central tension too neatly — leave the wound open

User Message

Write a flash fiction (400-500 words) centered on a single English word: **The Word:** {&{THE_WORD}} (specific, not 'hello' or 'please' — find the unexpected word that carries the immigrant story) **The Protagonist:** {&{PROTAGONIST}} (country of origin, age at immigration, circumstance) **The Cost of the Word:** {&{COST}} (what was surrendered or confused to acquire this word) **What the Word Unlocked:** {&{WHAT_IT_UNLOCKED}} (the specific moment or relationship the word made possible) **The Word in Their Language:** {&{ORIGINAL_LANGUAGE_EQUIVALENT}} (how the same concept is expressed in the first language — and what is lost in translation) The story must honor the specific cognitive and emotional experience of acquiring language in the body, not just the mind.

About this prompt

The immigrant language story is one of the most important subgenres in contemporary American and world literature — from Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Namesake' to Viet Thanh Nguyen's 'The Sympathizer' to Valeria Luiselli's 'Tell Me How It Ends.' Language acquisition is not a cognitive process — it is an identity process. To learn a word in another language is to construct a new version of yourself that did not exist before. This prompt focuses on a single word rather than language generally — an effective flash fiction compression technique — and requires attention to what is lost as well as gained in the translation process. The requirement that the protagonist's original-language equivalent be present creates the cross-linguistic resonance that characterizes the best writing about bilingualism: the sense that neither language is fully adequate, and that the self lives in the gap between them.

When to use this prompt

check_circleWrite immigrant experience flash for literary journals and anthologies
check_circleCreate language and identity content for ESL educational contexts
check_circleHonor diaspora experiences through precise, non-sentimental fiction

signal_cellular_altintermediate

Latest Insights

Stay ahead with the latest in prompt engineering.

View blogchevron_right

How to Write System Prompts That Actually Work

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

How to Write System Prompts That Actually Work

System prompts set the rules of the game for every AI interaction. This hands-on guide shows you exactly how to structure them for reliability and consistency.

Claude vs GPT-4o: Which Model Fits Your Use Case?

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

Claude vs GPT-4o: Which Model Fits Your Use Case?

Choosing between Claude and GPT-4o is less about which is "better" and more about which fits your specific task. Here is a practical breakdown.

How Our Design Team Cut Brief-Writing Time by 70% with AI

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

How Our Design Team Cut Brief-Writing Time by 70% with AI

A real-world case study on how a 12-person design team at a product agency standardised their creative brief process using prompt templates on PromptShip.

Why AI Hallucinations Happen (and How to Reduce Them)

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

Why AI Hallucinations Happen (and How to Reduce Them)

Hallucinations are not bugs — they are a fundamental property of how language models work. Understanding why they happen is the first step to minimising them.