Flash fiction seed: Audition Day, Misalignment and Reversal
The hallway smells like old dust and citrus disinfectant, a thin lemon veil over the musk of fear. Fluorescent lights buzz with the faintest tinnitus, turning the waiting room into a terrarium of hopeful faces, all breathing fog onto a single shared window. You, wearing a thrifted navy coat with one glossy button missing, thumb through the sides. The paper is warm where other palms have pressed it. The lines are wrong. They’re yours.
A stage direction you never wrote: The actor stares at the X on the floor, a tape scar, and decides it is a door.
When you step inside, the camera is already rolling, red light a quietly bleeding pupil. Behind the long table sit three strangers with the weary poise of jurors; their pens make insect scratches. “Slate, please,” says the center one, and you give your name. On page two, the casting director’s dialogue has your mother’s apology timed to the minute. On page three, a note in the margin that reads: Try it without pretending. The ceiling hums like a beehive. The AC exhales on your neck. You deliver your first line and the room shivers—just slightly—as if a train has passed beneath the building.
The second take is not yours. You recognize the text in the reader’s mouth: your everyday rhythm, your coffee-shop shrug, the joke you use when your hands shake. You hear it from across the room, echoed back: a perfect impersonation of your life, staged under cruel lights. The misalignment is a hinge. The table, the camera, the X—they pivot. There is a chair behind the table that has always been waiting for you. Someone nods toward it with the slow kindness of a priest. “Take this one,” they say.
You sit. The red light stares. The sides are blank. Actors file in, each clutching a fragment of the person you were going to be.
Visual motifs to reinforce in images
- Tape X as threshold/door; scuffed floor as map of past auditions
- Lemon-yellow fluorescent cast vs. warm tungsten spill from a practical lamp: two worlds at war
- Red tally light as a predator’s eye; camera as oracle
- Mirrors and glass: doubled, ghosted reflections; names reversed
- Paper sides with lived-in creases, marginalia/coffee ring halo
- The missing button on a navy coat: small asymmetry that anchors identity
Midjourney prompt pack (v6), designed for a consistent visual storyworld
Tip: Keep recurring anchors identical across prompts to preserve continuity (e.g., “late-20s East Asian non-binary actor, ink-stained fingertips, thrifted navy coat missing one glossy button”).
1) Key art / Poster
A dim audition room turned liminal stage, late-20s East Asian non-binary actor stands on a tape X that glows faintly like a door, thrifted navy coat missing one glossy button, ink-stained fingertips holding creased sides with coffee ring, red camera tally light floating like a watchful eye, lemon-green fluorescent wash clashing with a warm tungsten practical in the corner, dust motes in a shallow sunbeam, cinematic chiaroscuro, 35mm look, shallow depth of field, nervous breath visible, mood of tender dread and metamorphosis, high detail, no text, no watermark --ar 2:3 --v 6 --stylize 250 --chaos 8 --no words, logo
2) Waiting room mise-en-scène
A narrow casting waiting room with a row of mismatched chairs, hopeful actors reflected and misaligned in a smudged window, fluorescent lights buzzing, a bulletin board with overlapping call sheets and a single missing pushpin, thrifted navy coat draped over an arm, hands fidgeting with sides, lemon disinfectant bottle on the floor, color palette of fatigued greens and stale beige interrupted by a hot red tally glow from a distant camera, film grain, ambient anxiety, observational realism --ar 16:9 --v 6 --stylize 200 --chaos 5 --no text, watermark
3) The mirror reversal
Close-up of a vanity mirror showing two versions of the same actor: one in the frame reading lines, the other seated behind a casting table in the reflection, a clean hard split made of light not glass, lipstick ghost prints on the rim of an old cup, pencil shavings, pages of sides doubled and reversed, red tally light reflected like a twin sun, condensation halo where breath fogs then fades, moody selective focus, surreal but grounded --ar 3:2 --v 6 --stylize 300 --chaos 18 --no text, watermark
4) The pivot: taking the chair behind the table
The actor now seated behind a long casting table, facing a shadowed stage; in front: a tidy row of pens, a muted timer, a stack of blank sides, a single navy button lays like a coin, tungsten pool of light warms their face while the room remains fluorescent-cold, composition frames the table as altar, camera red light at eye level, solemn, elevated yet intimate --ar 21:9 --v 6 --stylize 220 --chaos 10 --no text, watermark
5) Symbolic prop macro
Macro shot of scuffed tape X on a wooden floor, edges lifting like curled leaves, tiny glitter of ground-in rosin and dust, a faint boot-print crosses it at a defiant angle, hairline crack in the wood runs from the X like a timeline, color splits between raw tungsten amber and sour fluorescent green, tactile, sensory, hyper-detailed --ar 4:5 --v 6 --stylize 150 --chaos 6 --seed 777 --no text, watermark
6) The echo: someone else reading you
An actor under unforgiving overheads reads from sides that contain marginal notes in your exact handwriting, their mouth shapes your private joke, eyes bright with borrowed familiarity, the camera’s red eye fixed on them while your silhouette watches from behind the table, shallow split-focus keeps both reader and silhouette sharp, emotional tension, ethical vertigo --ar 16:9 --v 6 --stylize 260 --chaos 12 --no text, watermark
7) Closing image / Reversal complete
A blank page of sides on the casting table, pen poised above it, the red tally light now sits beside the pen like a drop of heart, behind: the door marked only by a glowing tape X, no people, just the hum of lights and a soft chair’s imprint, melancholy-hopeful, minimal, reverent --ar 2:3 --v 6 --stylize 180 --chaos 4 --no text, watermark
Prompting strategy notes
- Anchor identity: Repeat exact descriptors for your protagonist to maintain cross-image continuity.
- Contrast light temperatures: “lemon-green fluorescent” vs “warm tungsten” to signal misalignment; keep both present to frame the reversal.
- Object storytelling: Feature the tape X, red tally light, missing button, and coffee-ringed sides in multiple prompts so the motifs “carry” the plot.
- Control surrealism with --chaos: 5–12 for subtle oddity; climb to 18–35 if you want the mirror scene to bend space more aggressively.
- Keep the world clean: Use --no text, watermark, logo to avoid clutter; add --no lens flare, --no extra hands if needed.
Optional scaffold template for your own variants
Subject + action, recurring identity anchors, core motifs (tape X, red tally, missing button), lighting misalignment (fluorescent vs tungsten), lens/DOF, mood adjective pair (tender/dread), cleanliness
Example: A stark casting corridor where [protagonist descriptor] pauses at a glowing tape X as if it were a door, red tally light watching from the dark, lemon-green fluorescents battling a small tungsten lamp, paper sides breathing in their hands, 35mm shallow focus, dust and breath visible, intimate and uncanny, no text --ar 3:2 --v 6 --stylize 240 --chaos 9
Use these images as a visual storyboard to fuel the flash fiction: begin with the door disguised as a mark, let the room turn the camera on you, and end with a blank page that invites the reader to choose who is auditioning whom.
