Flash Fiction Chronicles

We are on POSTING hiatus until January 6th at FFC  except for announcements, etc.  And of course, Daily Prompts will continue.

However, please consider submitting a blog post at any time for the January calendar.  

If you have a story coming out at EDF or anywhere else next month, then it’s a good month to write a blog post about that experience or any other writing experience you’ve had.  Remember the blog was established to give you all another platform to market your work.  

Although we don’t pay, we do offer you the chance to put links to your blog, your website, and your online publications.  Go here to find out more about how to do this: http://www.everydayfiction.com/flashfictionblog/submit-an-article/

String-of-10 TWO Contest is coming in February.

For most of us, writing is a somewhat solitary pursuit - after all, it’s hard to actually work on a story if you’re chatting to your Mom, IM’ing your best friend, or grabbing lunch with hubby. But there comes a time in every writer’s life when a certain kind of company becomes necessary.

A certain kind of company? I know, it sounds very Eliot Spitzer-ish. But choosing who to talk to about your baby novel is a fraught process. Will they like it? Will they hate it? Will they think it’s-actually-very-funny-or-realize-I-stole-all-my-jokes-from-ten-year-old-Leno-shows?

The best way to get talking about your novel is to start with strangers (Eliot Spitzer, I know) who write. And the best place to find them? Writing classes.

Writing classes are excellent for writers at any stage in their career. They’re a safe place to talk shop, learn tips, tricks, and techniques, and commiserate over dialogue that falls flat and characters who refuse to behave.

And, of course, it’s easy to pick apart someone else’s work. But writing classes are all about tit-for-tat, I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours. So what do you do when it’s your turn to put something up for a critique?

Before you submit:

1. Polish. Spend some time ensuring your work is as polished as you can make it. This isn’t for the critiquers’ benefit–it’s for yours. If your classmates aren’t wasting time with line edits, they’re more likely to pick up plot and character issues.
2. Make a list of things you’d like your critiquers to think about. It doesn’t have to be long and detailed–even one or two points is fine. If you can, write your list on the workshop copies, or add a page about it. If you know certain people in your group have a skill set you could use, it’s okay to ask them to pay greater attention to the relevant sections (such as getting a cardiologist to help out with the details of a heart attack).

The day of:

Years after my first workshop, I still tremble when it’s my turn to get feedback. A lot of my writer friends say the same thing. What I’ve learned, though, is that the trick to getting the most out of your first workshop is two-fold:

1. Understand that you’re human, and that nobody gets everything right the first time around.
2. Understand that your classmates are human, and that nobody gets everything right the first time around.

Critiquing is an art form. There’s a fine balance to helping a writer improve their work, and tearing down everything you don’t like. It’s also a very personal thing. I may love this description:

Cathy was the sort of the person who didn’t like to slow down, who didn’t like to wait. Cathy was the sort of the person who’d skip a visit to the doctor’s even when her neck would no longer fit through the door.

Our classmate, Kathy with a K, may hate it. And that’s okay.

The point is, both Kathy with a K and I have spent time thinking about your work. Your job is to take our feedback and run with it. How? By being true to you.

When I was first writing, I’d change my manuscript at the drop of a hat. Don’t like my main character’s name? No problem, I’ll give him a new one. Think the mother is too harsh? Well, she doesn’t need to be in there anyway. And while this made my critiquers feel useful, it ruined my work. Yes, ruined–because the story was no longer mine.  Nowadays, I work by the rule of three, i.e.

1. Just one opinion? Probably no big deal.
2. Two opinions? Flag it as something to think about.
3. Three opinions? It’s a problem, and I have to make a change.

Writing classes, daunting as they are, are definitely worth the time and effort. But when all’s said and done, remember that your work is your work. Even if you, Kathy with a K, and I are all working on stories about dogs learning to fly an airplane (and who doesn’t love dog-acting-as-human tales?), they’ll never be the same. Why? Our experiences, our voices are different. And that’s just the way it should be.

Peta Jinnath Andersen is a freelance writer and editor in Cambridge, MA. Her flash fiction story, The Jar, will be appearing in an upcoming issue of  Kaleidotrope . She’s currently working on her first novel.

The call for Submission is open for the new year.  However, from December 18, Friday, to Wednesday, January 6, Flash Fiction Chronicles, is on temporary hiatus.  Please continuee to send in your post submission for the new year and I will put them into the queue.

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” –Anton Chekhov

Too often a piece of writing is well-done in terms of character and language, but doesn’t feel complete.  It offers no ah-hah moment.  A writer can create ah-hah moments by  foreshadowing what is to come.   This is not plotting,  but something more subtle in a story:  the careful placement of  events, character traits, propsthat hint or suggest the ending.  Anton Chekhov, the Russian master of fiction,  believed foreshadowing was essential to the structure of stories.    Today this is often referred to as “setting-ups and paying-offs.”

For a story to have impact–and there are those who disagree– there has to be an element of suspense, a question regarding the outcome of the story.  I want to anticipate an ending, but not know the ending.  A story that throws an out-of-nowhere twist at the reader doesn’t work nor does one that telegraphs the ending.   These “techniques” steal away suspense and ultimately, satisfaction of the reader. 

Set-ups and pay-offs are what give the reader that ah-ha feeling at end of a story, and if done well, throughout a story.  Did you ever see Die Hard, the first one?  In that movie, in the very first scene, we know that Bruce Willis is afraid of flying.  He’s on a plane, he looks nervous, and the man next to him notices.  The audience notices too. 

Bruce Willis is a fraidy cat.  What kind of hero is he?  What kind of man?  How will he manage if things in this story get rough?  This gives us a little doubt about him, right?  And the outcome of the movie.  We know he’s Bruce Willis, the action star, but we recognize too that he is human–like us.  This revelation give us characterization, empathy (I’m afraid of flying too!) and tension, but it also does something else.  It sets up the possibility that even though we know Bruce can’t fail, John McClane, his character, just might. 

Back on the plane, the man next to Bruce/John tells him to think about taking his shoes off and squeezing the earth with his toes.  This makes Mr. Fraid of Flying feel better and makes us smile.  Like I said, this is a set up.

Later in the movie, after Bruce/John is safely on the ground again and changing his clothes at his wife’s office, he actually takes off his shoes and squeezes the rug and repeats what the man on the plane said.  Something about sand in the toes, I think.  We smile with the character.  We may even squeeze our own toes.  This is the first pay-off. 

Then the shooting starts.  Bruce/John is still in the bathroom changing.  He peeks out the door when he hears gunfire and sees all bloody hell has broken loose.  Grabs his gun, runs out.  Remember he’s taken off his shoes.  He is unprepared, but he’s a cop and he goes into cop-mode.  Although he may be afraid to be 35,000 feet up in an airplane, he’s not afraid to jump into the fray on 30th floor of Nakatomi Plaza.  Pay off #2.

There’s more.  When Bruce/John is pursued and hides in a glass office, the bad guys notice his bare feet and shoot the glass. He has to race through shards to get away.  His feet are cut and bloodied.  He leaves a trail.  He’s injured and his ability to succeed and survive comes into doubt.  Third pay-off. 

If I remember correctly, there are a couple more pay-offs to this bare-foot business, and that’s why this is a good example of how to a writer can take one idea and use it to create a setup-payoff thread.  The reader or audience can remember back to through the story to the beginning and say, “Ahhhh.”  And it builds with each pay-off until the end.  Many stories will have many setup-payoff threads to create suspense and Chekhov’s-gun-on-the-wall logic.  In Die Hard,  although it is Bruce Willis playing the main character, we are not positive he’s going to win because he is outnumbered, outweaponed, and yes, has bloody feet.   We have doubt.  Which translates to tension.  Which in turn creates suspense.   This is why we go to movies and read books, to be on that edge.   

Die Hard is a not-particularly-subtle action movie which makes it a perfect movie to learn about structure.  Watch for set-ups and pay-offs in other movies too, movies that give you that “ah-hah” experience.  

 Much of this, I learned from Robert McKee’s Story.  His book offers a terrific course on how structure works.  Oh, and of course, from Chekov.

Gay Degani is the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles.  Her fiction is recently published or forthcoming in Every Day Fiction, The Battered Suitcase, Paradigm, and 10Flash.

Between the pets, work, voluteering at the animal shelter, quiet time with wife, I still want more time to write. Finding time in an ever-shortening day! It isn’t easy. 

DJ Barber writes stories, flash, poems, and novels. He was born in the northeast and lives in the northwest. When not writing he has a wife and two dogs that keep him busy.  He has been published online at Every Day Fiction, Moon Drenched Fables, Tales From the Moonlit Path, Big Pulp, Every Day Poets, and Everyday Weirdness.

In Print. DJ has been published by Darker Intentions Press, Odyssey Magazine, has a short story in the anthology, Damned in Dixie, and has a flash in the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008.

DJ would like to remind everyone that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  He blogs at Canyons of Gray.

One of the important things a writer needs to understand is how people react to varying situations.

The best way to do this, most of the time, is to sit by quietly and watch. But once in awhile, it’s fun to jump in and participate. If you’ve never done this, as an experiment, try it.

Find an elevator system that gets lots of use. Wait for a car full of people, get in and then stand in the front of the car, with your back to the doors.

Watch how nervous the other passengers get. Most of them won’t even realize why they are upset, but I guarantee you will see the symptoms. Lots of eye movement. Shoulder and arm twitches. Foot shuffling.

Now turn it up a notch. Stare at someone. Better yet, look from person to person, studying them. You might get a verbal reaction on this one, from a polite “May I help you?” to an aggressive “What are you looking at?”

Ramp it up some more. Spout nonsense. Don’t talk directly to anyone, just talk. Loudly. People will be jumping off the elevator at the next opportunity, even if it isn’t their floor.

You are violating elevator etiquette. Move to the back. Face forward. Don’t look at anyone else. Don’t talk, unless it’s to someone you know, and then speak in hushed tones.

Unless you have never been on an elevator in your life, you know the rules as well as I do, but consider this. When did you learn them? Who taught them to you? Only the Shadow knows for sure, but there is a science devoted to the study of such things.

It’s called Proxemics and it examines how people perceive and use space, alone or in groups, particularly tight spaces such as an elevator.

It may not be polite to break those unwritten rules, but it is fun. And examining the way people react to such situations, filing their antics away for later use, can make you a better writer.

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K.C. Ball lives in Seattle, a stone’s throw from Puget Sound. She is an night writer, who works through the wee hours because there are so few interruptions and because that is when all the good ideas pop up.

One of her SF stories, Flotsam, was recently purchased by Analog. Other short fiction has appeared in various online and print publications, including Flash Fiction Online, Every Day Fiction, Boston Literary Magazine, Big Pulp, A Thousand Faces and Murky Depths.

K.C.’s flash fiction stories have been included in the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and the Best of Every Day Fiction Two anthologies and her story, Coward’s Steel, won third place in the 1st Quarter 2009 Writers of the Future competition. It will appear in the Writers of the Future XXVI anthology in August 2010.

K.C. is editor of 10Flash Quarterly, an online magazine featuring genre flash fiction, and she blogs about writing at A Moving Line.

Editor’s note: Today is Kevin Shamel’s birthday.  Happy Birthday, Kev!

Flash fiction made me a better novelist. Novella-ist? Well, anyway…

I found flash while wandering the shadowy paths of publishing short stories. It was like stumbling out of an enchanted forest and into neat rows of juicy little fruit trees. I knew I could grow some tasty stories like that. By the time I’d had my fifth or sixth flash fiction story published, I was an amateur orchard-grower. I spent a year writing lots of flash. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. Soon enough, I was producing juice. (I later fermented it all and got everyone drunk, but that’s another story entirely.)

A majority of the writers I know—and I know more writers than I know other kinds of people—have never attempted flash fiction. Most of them haven’t thought much about it. Of the people I casually speak to about writing flash that have not done so, most really don’t think much of the art. It’s because they’ve not explored it.

The common misconception about flash fiction is that it’s an easy thing to write. It’s a thousand words or less. I can write that in ten minutes. That is true. In fact, I’ve had stories published that I wrote in ten minutes. (Keep in mind that I also write publishable novellas in under two weeks, and I’m writing one soon that will be written in three days. It’s not the “normal” way of doing it.) It’s not unheard of to whip out an amazing bit of flash in no time at all. However, it’s not uncommon to spend days, weeks, or months getting a flash story just right.

That’s because it’s an art-form. It has to be mastered. When you’ve got it figured out, it’s a skill you can draw upon for the rest of your authoring life.

By learning how to write a complete story with such a small word count, I learned to cut my story to its quick. I learned about what words are really necessary for the story. I learned that a great number of people prefer to read stories that are lean and to the point. I honed my sentences and cut out all the extras that took the story (and the reader) somewhere beyond the point of it all. I learned how to make my stories shoot straight to the heart of the reader. I learned to edit.

My year of writing flash helped me to find my true writing style. One that is fortunately in synch with the world today. I write books that can be read in the time it takes to watch a movie. People like that. In fact, they love that. How many people spend fifteen hours watching a movie? Do you push pause after watching for fifteen minutes and go to work? Are movies two hundred hours long? No. People like the idea of complete, satisfying, lasting stories that they can digest quickly. Stories like flash fiction.

Because of flash, my longer works are leaner and quicker. Because of flash, it’s easier to make a story something that people will read straight through because they don’t have a moment to stray from the story. Because of flash, I had a book published.

In the toppling forest of the publishing industry, there is new growth. I urge anyone growing giant Sequoias of novels to consider spending a year learning the art of pruning flash fiction bonsais. In no time we’ll have acres and acres of shady rows of producing trees. Then we can feed the world our fruits.

Or get them all drunk on apple cider.

Kevin Shamel lives in the Pacific Northwest in a house that was once surrounded by apple orchards. You can find his flash at Every Day Fiction. His first book, Rotten Little Animals, can be read on a long commute or on a flight to Maui (it has been done). Visit ShamelessCreations for art, words, and shameless weirdness.

Wow! It’s December! Can you believe it? I can’t. The year has gone so unbelievably incredibly fast that it’s almost too much to contemplate. The last five days in particular have been made of sheer insanity, what with training new people at work, spending a day making gingerbread houses, engagement parties, birthday parties, bridal showers and so on and so forth.

The good news is it’s all over and everything went well, huzzah

So, back to November and the Ultimate Question: Did I, or did I not, win NaNoWriMo?

A theoretically simple question, with a complicated maybe-maybe not answer. How can it be complicated, you ask? Well, it goes like this.

In November, I wrote 50,894 words. Of that:

* 1528 were on a novella I’m working on;
* 49332 were on HNOT (How Not To Take Over The World), my NaNoWriMo novel; and
* 34 were on a novel I’m trying to edit. Yes, 34. That’s right

Soooo. We can look at this in three ways.

1) The total word count for November is 50k+. Win.

2) The November wordcount for HNOT is less than 50k. Lose.

3) I actually wrote 686 words of HNOT before November; if you include that, the total wordcount for HNOT is 50k+. Win.

Personally, I decided that the extra words in 1) made up for the false addition of words in 3), and entered HNOT for a win I squeaked in with (according to their count) 3 words and 5 minutes to spare, after an insanely busy day wherein I did a whole bunch of stuff plus wrote nearly 4700 words – my biggest day ever!

I do hope you all don’t think too badly of me because of this hehe. To celebrate, I did a wordle of the manuscript so far.

So, what did I learn from the process this time around? Mostly that 1600 words a day is really Not That Bad any more. This time, I mostly didn’t struggle at all to keep up with the wordcount (though having 2 days off per week helps; mind you, I had that in ‘07 as well). The first time I did NaNo the word count nearly killed me; I was writing an average of 175 words a day in 2007, peaking at 391 words/day in May.

This year, I’m averaging 376 words/day, peaking in September with 667/day. In effect I’m writing double what I was two years ago on average – which is actually quite a nice thing to know. Huh. *pleased*

Aside from sheer wordiness, this NaNo has been a really squeeful experience for me in terms of writing progress. For the first time ever, a novel is flowing properly for me, and it’s been absolutely fun to write. I always knew writing a novel was supposed to be fun; but now I know how that feels. Thanks to techniques I learned in How To Think Sideways and learning to really listen to my characters and let them direct the plot rather than forcing them into a mould, the book has been practically devoid of middle-of-the-book blues, and interesting things keep happening. It’s all terribly, terribly exciting!

Where to from here? In December I hope to finish HNOT (another 20-30k required) and also pick up the novella again, which I haven’t touched since November 8. I’d really like to finish it this month if I can, and given it only needs another 5k-ish, that should be do-able.

Also, I’m taking Holly Lisle’s How To Revise Your Novel course (publically live January 2), so I plan on working through that with Jesscapades, the novel-in-edits :) Who knows? Maybe this time next year I’ll have not only four complete novel drafts (TBAEO, my first nano; Jesscapades; HNOT; plus a draft for next year), I might have two edited drafts, too – Jess & HNOT! Fingers crossed, and here’s hoping )

So. How was your month? If you entered NaNo, did you win? What was the most exciting thing you learned? And what do you plan to do in December?

I would like to register a complaint. No, it’s not about this parrot what I purchased a half hour ago, he’s obviously just pining for the fjords. My complaint is about a lie.

Writing, according to what I was told growing up, is not a team sport. It requires only imagination, talent, and a willingness to practice and continue learning. I was given visions of an ivory tower somewhere, full of inspiration, where a writer could create masterpiece after masterpiece, uninterrupted by the concerns of “real” life. There would be no tests of strength or speed or agility, no performances, and certainly no public speaking. A writer was as invisible as the idea he/she cajoled out of the ether and set to blossoming on paper, which meant said writer did not need to be pretty or thin or athletic or sociable. A writer was judged on the characters he/she created, and their story – and not on how personable said writer was or wasn’t.

I believed it, with every fiber of my not-pretty not-thin not-athletic not-sociable being. I bought the whole sales pitch, and signed right up. I invested everything I had into that lie. It only took thirty years for me to figure out the painful truth, and don’t I feel dumb for not catching on sooner? A lot of time can be saved by reading the fine print.

The Ivory Tower Committee never said anything about a writer needing to have a “platform.” Not only does the writer have to craft the work and painstakingly shape it into the best representation of his/her vision, he/she must also be a public presence with a carefully cultivated fan base / network to have the best chance at publication. That was NOT in the brochure. No one said anything about Facebook or Twitter or being a teacher or a public speaker.

I am reading things now about needing a “niche,” a “body of expertise,” and an “ongoing relationship with a target audience.” (A Platform Boot Camp, article by Christina Katz, found in Writer’s Digest: Writer’s Yearbook 2010.) What fresh hell is this? I didn’t sign up for that – I would have remembered. (I would also have signed up for something like animal husbandry or forensic handwriting analysis instead of writing.)

I dug through my files, and scrounged up the deed for that Ivory Tower I bought when I was seven. Oh, oh cute, I signed it in crayon. And there is was, down at the very bottom, in letters so tiny they might have been mistaken for a decorative line: *life depicted applies to unpublished writers only.*

Of course. I can have my ivory tower, but I can’t expect anyone to know my name if I never step out the door. I can hide away and write masterpiece after masterpiece, but the stories are just going to sit in the corner and gather dust if I don’t send them into the world – that’s why I became a writer in the first place, because I wanted to share my stories – but without contacts and relationships, where will I send them?

Fair or not, in today’s industry almost no one in the book publishing business is willing to take a chance on a name no one has heard of, the name of some grown-up kid with a deed to an ivory tower and a head full of stories and a heart full of fear. Agents or publishers want much, much more than a story to sell.

So now I must set still more time aside to research and build my presence, to add to my embarrassingly small list of credentials. I’m too invested in the writing to back down now, the only thing I can do is step down out of my Ivory Tower and step up to the challenge of self-marketing and self-promotion. Which I dread.

(Writing in a Vacuum was previously posted at Blogging in the Dark on November 25th, 2009.)

The house is quiet, and smells of my favorite jasmine candle. Outside, Texas is thundering rain on the roof and windows. I can write for hours like this. I like to think maybe today, I will get the chance to do so. The honest truth is this thunderstorm will pass in about twenty minutes, the house will be alive with voices sooner than later, and my candle will burn out. Then it’s back to the perfectly non-ideal writing environment, but you know what? I’ll still write. Nothing can keep me from it.

My inner self drives me to write, not my outside circumstances. The voices in my heart gather from experiences, and drive my fingers to pick up that pen and paper and scribble like a mad woman. Various emotions, thoughts, memories, take on a personality and demand a life of their own. I let my muse write whatever it wants. This is where magic and power lies. If I handcuff my muse to a turkey platter and demand it write turkeys, it will write turkeys, but the turkeys, unlike Edward, won’t sparkle. Powerful writing is dependent upon you giving boundless freedom to your muse to roam and develop.

Life. So much simple life eats up our time, just the normal things you need to do to get through a week, a month– jobs, commuting, dating, spouses, children, family members, family issues, friends, neighbors, college, illness, loved one’s deaths, car accidents, doctor appointments /dentist / hair appointments, church, holidays, yard work, paying bills, getting a second job to pay the bills, and oh yeah, having fun –that when you have a spare second, that moment in the evening when the world is quiet, dark, and you are left with your own thoughts, a glass of wine on your desk, and a blank computer screen, it’s so easy to let the negative voice come out.

It discourages you because: another reject, there are those ‘other writers’ that are better than you, you don’t get grammar, what the heck is a ‘sympathetic character’? Or is it ‘pathetic character’? Are you supposed to be outlining plots or do you go all willy nilly all over the place- omg, does your writing suck? You feel like it sucks. Is this just a pipe dream? Your spouse/ girlfriend/ boyfriend/mother/preacher/brother/best friend/ co-worker thinks your writing is lame and childish – who reads anyway? What if the preacher finds out your character said the F word, and he thinks you are the one really saying the F word, but you really honestly don’t say the fucking F word, but he might think you do…

On and on and on these thoughts go until your glass of wine is gone, and you wonder what the preacher would think if he knew you just drank a glass of wine, and then you remember you have to take your grandmother to chemo tomorrow. You feel tired, drained, discouraged.

What happens next is what separates the people who succeed from the people who don’t. It’s not about genes, money, health, good looks, or ‘natural talent’. It’s what happens with that very next breath and decision you make. You either:

1) Stand up, drop your glass in the sink, brush your teeth, flop in bed exhausted – another day done and gone. You will rise tomorrow, none the closer to anything. In fact, you are falling backwards from your dream because you lack the motivation to move forward.

Or

2) You tell all your doubts to go hell heck. You sit down and force those thousand or five hundred words. If you are writing a novel and the muse wants to write it – write it. If you are worried about grandma’s chemo because the nurse can never find her frickin’ vein and you know its going to hurt when the nurse inserts the needle, fishes around, draws it out, stabs it in again – you write a story about that anger, that fear. You just write it. And then, if you are writing flashes or shorts, you submit it – even if you think it sucks and it probably does. Doesn’t matter. You do it anyway. Someone will publish it. You keep writing, day after day. Night after night. And when you are done writing, you read.  You read because you need to keep that creative tank filled with how the pros do it. You do it and you keep on doing it. You’re more exhausted than you would have been without writing and reading, but it’s okay, because you are working your dream, what you want.  No one can take that from you. No one.

And this is what I’ve been doing.

I hope this speaks to you. I hope this causes you to ditch those doubts, fears, fatigue, and just go for it. Magic beans, golden pens, or supportive friends aren’t going to fulfill your dreams as a writer. Only you can do that, butt in chair, writing away when the whole world is sleeping or falling apart around you.

Decide not to let outside circumstances be a barrier to your muse. Let your inner voice speak, and write it – no matter what. Trust you to be you. This is your life, your dream. The only way to make it as a writer is to jump in heart and soul. That sounds so cliché’, huh? Sometimes the truths in life are cliché’. Deal with it.

My muse wants cheesecake. So far, the ingredients can be difficult to come by, but it tastes great, and it just keeps getting better.

Jodi MacArthur serves imagination raw on an open flame. Bring your fork to www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com. Published online and in print, she is working on her first novel, Devil’s Eye.