Flash Fiction Challenge: Sub-Genre Mash-up Thought Process

This week’s flash fiction challenge consisted of writing a story of 1,000 words or less that combined the theme ‘Love demands Sacrifice’ with two sub-genres randomly chosen from the list provided.Initial Thoughts:Out came the d10. First roll was a ‘9’, second roll a ‘4’.‘9’ – Wuxia… What the…? I had never heard of wuxia. So, on top of a tight writing schedule, I now had to do some research, which will slow everything down. On the upside, I’m going to learn about a new genre, and that was always fun!‘4’ – Urban Fantasy. Hah! I know what that one is… at least, I think I know what that one is. Maybe I should do a little bit of research on it as well, just to make sure. I mean, I used to think I knew what ‘sword-and-sorcery’ was, and when I checked that, I discovered I was only ‘almost’ right. I’d rather not be ‘almost right’.Theme – ‘Love demands sacrifice’. Well, this could turn out to be very depressing. I don’t like depressing; there’s so much that’s depressing in the world already that I really don’t want to add to it. How can I make it not depressing? Since sacrifice is about loss, how can I make it sad but ultimately uplifting? I mean, does anyone really have to die?Research:
Wuxia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia: an overview of wuxia. I could probably have stopped here, but where would the fun have been in that? While reading this site, I had the idea for how I wanted to end the story.http://www.heroic-cinema.com/eric/xia.html: an interesting overview of the genre, but related mostly to film. Served as a good way to verify the information from the Wikipedia site.http://wuxiapedia.com/About/The-Wuxia-genre/What-is-Wuxia: Looks like a one-stop site. Very good for verification and expanding my list of wuxia titles to go searching for.http://wuxiapedia.com/About/The-Wuxia-genre: also to be found on the site above.http://www.shanghai-steam.com/: SO EXCITED TO FIND THIS SITE! You have no idea!
Urban Fantasy:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_fantasy: but, of course.http://www.romanceaustralia.com/articles/urban.htmhttp://allthingsuf.com/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UrbanFantasyhttp://bestfantasybooks.com/fantasy-genre.php
Nope, I’m okay—I *do* have an understanding of what paranormal fantasy is.
Love Demands Sacrifice
No research required, but how to make it interesting and not so tragic.
Guess I’d better get to writing this thing.