Flash Fiction Chronicles

by Rumjhum Biswas

The Jim we know is the Markets Editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles – Flash Markets Page, and the man who poses Six Questions For. . .  writers and editors in his blog. You can read his stories on his blog, Jim’s Fiction. In Jim’s own words, he “discovered flash fiction in 2007, and has read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since.” But how many of us knew the Jim that was a band director at the elementary and high school levels for five years before he decided teaching school-aged kids wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his life?

While living in Albany, NY, in the 70s, Jim played in the house band for a local summer theater. He got to back up top performers from the era, including Rita Moreno, Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Ben Vereen, Bob Hope and Tom Jones. What a blast! He also played with the Albany Symphony and a number of other groups in the area.

In Jim’s own words: “I was born and raised in southern central New York Sate. I’m married, have one married daughter and two grandsons. I earned a BS in Music Education, an MS in Music Education, with a concentration in performance (trumpet), and, fifteen years after this degree, returned to school full time and received an MLS in Library Science. After eleven years in Albany, my wife was transferred to Rochester, NY, and four years later to Buffalo. It was then I returned to school.

Two years later, I began my career as a librarian. Subsequent transfers took us to Orlando, FL, and Dallas, TX. We moved to Huntersville, NC, in 2005 after we both decided to retire early and move near our daughter. She wasn’t too keen on the idea (she hoped we’d return to Florida so they’d have a place to stay when they went to Disney World) until she realized she and hubby could get free babysitting for a date night anytime they wanted! I took a year off to recharge before I began to write. Given my musical background, it shouldn’t be a surprise that my first love is classical music, followed by jazz and good old 70’s and 80’s rock and roll. ”

Thank you Jim for letting us see this other side of you! I understand that you are currently taking a break from the six questions  after having interacted with 747 editors and publishers since the first post in December 2009. Bear with us at Flash Fiction Chronicles, as we felt that it was high time we belted out some questions for you!

Rumjhum Biswas: You say that you discovered flash fiction in 2007. Please tell us about your first reaction to this form.

Jim Harrington: My first reaction? It might have been Alleluia! I didn’t write much until I enrolled in a Masters’ in Music Education program. For one class, the final grade was determined by five papers. I remember getting the first one back with a grade of C and the comment “too short.” Each paper after that got longer–in word count, not content–and I got an A in the course. Later, I had to write a pre-thesis (I chose to perform a recital instead of writing a full thesis). The professor handed it back to me with the comment that it was short–only twenty-five pages long–but he and one other professor he asked to read it couldn’t think of anything I’d left out. So, when I came across flash fiction, I knew it was the form for me, one in which concise writing was expected.

RB: Do you remember that first story you read? Please tell us a bit about your early days of reading flash fiction.

JH: I don’t remember the first story I read. Actually, at first, I spent more time reading about flash than reading actual stories. Once I did start reading stories, I read a variety of genres to get a feel for what each had to offer.

RB: Who were your favourite flash writers then, and has the list changed since?

JH: Since I was reading stories from many journals in the beginning, I didn’t concentrate on certain writers. I remember reading a few of Gay’s stories at Every Day Fiction. Jeanne Holtzman was in the first writing group I joined. I always looked forward to reading her stories. Dow Ford was another writer in the group I liked very much. Yes, the list has changed, but there are too many I follow to list here. There wouldn’t be many, if any, names that people who read this wouldn’t know already.

RB: What was your first experience writing flash like? Have you written other forms of fiction and also non fiction?

 JH: A blast. My first published story was “Yesterday’s Promise.”   It came from a prompt to choose one of three titles. Yesterday’s promise” clicked with me. I spent a few minutes thinking about the kinds of promises people made to each other and decided on a husband promising his wife he’d go on a diet. I don’t remember how the story developed from there, but it sure went in a strange direction.

My wife was a controller for Sears, and we moved a number of times as the company consolidated various departments. Shortly after moving to Rochester, NY, I bought my first computer. It was a Kaypro 64 luggable (a portable, but not one you could rest on your lap). The main reason I purchased it was because it was the first computer to come with an Office-like bundle of software. I was a stay-at-home dad and spent a few hours each day teaching myself how to use the machine and the software. I decided the best way to learn was to create something. So I developed one database to track our spending and another to organize coupons. I also taught myself to program in Basic and wrote a simple game of Yahtzee. I got a bit carried away with the word processor. I had just read the deadly sin series of books by Lawrence Sanders and was so inspired I wrote a 60,000-70,000 word detective novel. My wife still has it in a drawer somewhere. There’s another mostly-done novel lurking on my current computer’s hard drive that I doubt anyone will ever see.

I wrote a novella (or maybe a novelette?) a couple of years ago called The Towers of Morton   to send to family and friends as Christmas presents. The idea for this work started as a flash story with a tale too big for 1,000 words. I have published a handful of short stories.

I’ve written a lot of non-fiction (although some would probably categorize them as fiction). I wrote the user’s manual for a piece of software written by a friend. Shortly after that, I returned to school full time for a second Masters’ Degree in Library Science. I ended up being an automation specialist. Part of my job was to train other librarians how to use computers, which required documentation. I also worked in a corporate library and wrote a number of proposals, reports and, again, training materials.

RB: What is your favourite flash fiction from the many that you’ve written and why? Please take us through the creative experience.

JH: I can’t pick just one. My favorites tend to be the ones that contain a hint of humor like ”Do Unto Buzz“ and “What’s a Father to Do? ” or ones that use an unusual format, like “There’s a Rule for That” and “Testing, Testing.”

When I get an idea for a story, I spend time thinking about it and (sometimes) jotting down a few notes. For “Testing, Testing,” an opening phrase came to mind — “I awoke sweating like a.” I wrote down things that would cause someone to sweat, including some bizarre ones. I crossed out the “normal” responses and attempted to limit the final list to one. That’s when I got the idea to write the story in the form of a multiple choice test. Next I needed a reason to cause someone to sweat and ended up with a nightmare and a list of things that might cause someone to have a nightmare. So, I had a beginning and the start of a middle that, hopefully, would lead to an end–even though I had no idea what that would be yet. If research is needed to improve the accuracy of an element in a story, I wait until I’ve finished the first draft and pondered the story a bit. This ensures I don’t waste my time looking up something that may not end up being a part of the tale.

That’s pretty much my writing process. Anyone who reads my stories will notice that many of them are in the crime/mystery/horror genres. I understand the first two, since that’s what I like to read for fun. I’m not sure where the horror tales come from. I’ve never read a lot of horror stories. Heck, I’ve yet to make it through an entire Stephen King novel!

RB:  You have interviewed scores of editors and publishers in your six questions blog. What according to you do they most commonly encounter from submissions, both sets – the ones they accept and the ones they reject.

 JH: Most editors say they look for good writing and stories that hold their interest (i.e., stories that provide an original approach to a theme and ones that do so in a polished manner). As for those they reject, I was shocked to read the biggest complaint was that writers didn’t read the magazine’s guidelines. I’m one of those nerdy types that actually reads the manual. On my initial visit to a site, my first stop is to the guidelines page. I want to know if the zine and I are a fit–as either an author or a reader–before I get overly involved with what is published. If a site only accepts stories about space zombies, it’s not someplace I will be submitting a story. The second most expressed complaint was about sloppy writing–poor grammar and lack of attention to detail.

One of the reasons I didn’t like writing when I was younger was because I had a poor grasp of grammar. This was true to a point in 2007 when I began writing flash, but I made the choice to correct the problem. It was a two step process. First, I bought a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style as a reference source. Next I grabbed a couple of novels and read them for grammar, especially in dialog, and word choice.

RB: Do you have any favourite magazines on flash? Can you tell us why you enjoy them more?

JH: There are so many fine publications out there, that I don’t really focus on one or two. Currently on my iPhone, I have Smokelong Quarterly, Pure Slush, Liquid Imagination, Storyglossia and Fictionaut bookmarked (I usually read a few stories while walking on a treadmill), but the list changes every few months.

 RB: Who were your favourite authors as a child?

JH: When I was in high school, I remember reading a lot of Hemingway and Steinbeck. During my junior and senior years of high school, the librarian and I had our own book club where we’d suggest books for each other to read. I remember reading The Old Man and the Sea. I imagine there are a number of school libraries where this book isn’t allowed on the shelves now.

RB: Did you always know that you would write? (If so, who were your first mentors etc.)

JH: I hated writing, mostly because I was grammar-phobic. Is that a word? It should be. And writing was/is a slow process for me. I like writing 50-word stories because I can finish them fairly quickly, although, some may take me 45 minutes to an hour to get the writing to the point that I’m wiling to share the story with others.

As for mentors, I’d have to say Pam Casto and the members of her Flash Fiction-W critique group. It was the first group I came across that dealt specifically with flash. I received many helpful comments from the members and found many of Pam’s posts enlightening.

RB: Tell us a bit about your writing routine. What is your writing den like?

JH: Writing routine? Did you say writing routine? Well, it used to be that I wrote every afternoon for two to three hours. I know. You wonder why the afternoon. I tried writing in the morning, but my mind kept wandering off to all those other things that needed to be done. So, now I do them first and write after. Life has gotten in the way the past couple of months, so my routine hasn’t been as routine as it once was. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to “normal” in the fall.

As for my writing space, I work in a bedroom converted into an office. I sit facing a window that looks out over a green space that I like because it allows me to stare at something besides a blank wall when I need to let an idea or scene percolate.

 RB:  Where do you think the future lies for the various forms of flash fiction? And will paper books go out of fashion?

 JH: I don’t see paper books going away anytime soon. According to a 2011 New York Times article, there were 2.57 billion books in all formats sold in 2010, only 6% were e-books. I imagine this percent will increase year-over-year, but it still should take a long time before e-book sales overtake paper.

As for flash fiction, I see this form growing in popularity, if for no other reason than there are still millions of readers and writers out there who are unaware of its existence. E-books will help fuel the rise in popularity of flash, as more authors publish their stories in this format.

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Rumjhum Biswas is a writer currently living in Chennai. She has been published all over the world, and her work has won prizes and commendations in India and abroad, including first prize in the Anam Cara Short Story Competition June 2012.

by Jim Harrington 

Market Added

• (Short) Fiction Collective (1,000, weekly) open to most genre, no sci-fi or romance – visit site, read editor interview

Editor Interviews Added

• First Stop Fiction (1,000, under 500 preferred, biweekly) publishes literary fiction –visit site, view guidelines, read editor interview
• Downer Magazine (1,000, monthly) publishes abrasive fiction – visit site, view guidelines, read editor interview

Learn more here.

View complete markets listing.

______________________

Jim Harrington discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For. . . blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” He’s also the Markets Editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles’ Flash Markets Page. You can read his stories on his blog. He can be contacted at jpharrin [at] gmail [dot] com.

by Gay Degani

A friend and I were wandering around Vromans Bookstore a few years back when we found ourselves in the reference section (dictionaries, thesauri, and The Elements of Style) and we both started fingering various and sundry books on writing.  She’d just started writing and asked me if there was any particular book she should buy.  I told her, “You don’t have to buy any.  I can lend you some.”

“That would be great, but I’ll buy something and you can borrow that from me,” she said.  “Which one don’t you have?”

I stared at the shelves and started pulling forward books that I owned, saying, “Well, I have this on plot and this on character, oh, and this one by John Gardner.  Before long there were more books poking out than tucked in.

The truth was and still is, I am a book junkie and I’d spent several periods of my life trying to “get myself back into writing” and each of those periods brought with it a need for new books to deal with renewed insecurities.

When I finally “got serious,” I decided I would write movies since I loved movies and I didn’t want to be the only person in Southern California not writing movies.  I bought Syd Field’s Screenplay.   What I had struggled with in the past was producing stories with decent plots or story arcs.  Field’s book, which many have dismissed as mere formula, was an excellent introduction to the idea that in order to write with emotional impact  one has to engage a reader in the story, leading that reader through the story with some kind of thread.  An arc doesn’t always produce itself without the author’s conscious help.  An understand of Aristotelian structure is a handy tool for a writer to have in her pocket.  Two other favorite books came from that time: Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman and Story by Robert McKee. Oh and along with everything Joseph Campbell, came The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.

Some of the first books I glombed onto were those to keep me at it which meant I bought Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, Anne LaMott’s Bird by Bird, and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.  This will give you some insight into just how insecure I was.  All three helped me better understand that writing is a practice (Goldberg’s words) and that we have to live it every day in some way.

I eventually decided as most writers do to write a novel.  That meant a need for more advice and more encouragement.  The books I remember that helped most included One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty (a heroine of mine along with Flannery O’Connor), The Art of Fiction by John Gardner (classic), Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Sterne (more about structure), the now out-of-print The Art and Craft of Novel Writing by Oakley Hall, Stephen King’s On Writing (the great mystifier demystifies), Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft by Janet Burroway (a little plodding but very good), Jerry Cleaver’s Immediate Fiction (straight forward practical and fabulous insights), Ron Carlson’s Ron Carlson Writes a Story (this is my go-to when I have to write a story and I am stuck), and more recently Turning Life into Fiction by Robin Hemley.

I’m sure I’ve left a lot of books out that influenced me at the time, but these are the ones that I have remembered as I write this.  Maybe I’ll go out tomorrow to my office in the garage and check my shelves and see which ones I can pull out from the rest.

Now for some miscellany:

Smokelong Quarterly, Issue 37 is out!  There’s lots to read and the artwork is terrific.  Look for stories from featuring Simon Barke, Patrick Allen Carberry, Sarah Carson, Simon Jacobs, Will Kaufman, Harry Leeds,Lindsey Gates-Markel, Adam Padgett, Young Rader, Sarah Carson, Matt Rowan, Joseph Spece, Jon Steinhagen, Aaron Teel, Dan Townsend, Eugenio Volpe, Ryan Werner, and Bess Winter.

2013 AWP Conference & Bookfair and All Around Good Time Party is coming up and we’ll be there. I’m going this year and so are many of the Smokelong Quarterly staff.  We have a table!  Sooooo…. we want to meet you!!  Here’s the info: the 2013 AWP Conference will be held at the Hynes Convention Center and Sheraton Boston Hotel on March 6 – 9, 2013  Dates: Early bird registration ends: October 31, 2012, Sheraton Boston room block opens for conference attendee reservations: September 10, 2012, Sponsorship deadline: October 19, 2012, Regular registration: November 1, 2012 – January 18, 2013

workflowy.com  If you are like me, you have trouble keeping your lists straight and up-to-date, or even worse, they become coffee stained coasters.  There’s a new application out there in the ether and it’s free called Workflowy and basically it works like an outline except you don’t have to remember what letter, number, or roman numeral you need to keep things ordered.  It has its own unique system.  Check it out at workflowy.com.

by Gay Degani

AaronTeel is the author of Shampoo Horns, winner of the Sixth Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest. His work has appeared in Tin House, Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Matter Press, Brevity Magazine, North Texas Review, Side B Magazine and Art Prostitute, among others.

Gay Degani: First let me say I really love this little book. A whole world exists inside its spare 55 pages along with characters that stay with the reader. There’s Cherry, a 12-year-old boy with red hair growing up in a trailer park, his “one and only friend” Tater Tot, his crush Lupe, and Clay, Cherry’s juvenile delinquent brother, each one helping us to see the contrast between childhood innocence and harsh adult reality. These stories are all connected, yet each is complete in its own way.

I’m wondering, Aaron, about the genesis of Shampoo Horns. Did you develop these stories—and characters—over time without realizing how interconnected they were or did you set out to tell this particular story, Cherry at the juncture between child and young adult, as a flash series?

Aaron Teel: Thanks, Gay. That’s nice to hear. It started out as a series of self-contained non-fiction flashes about my own experiences growing up in a trailer park in Texas. Two of those were published around 2007. I was reading Speak, Memory at the time, and I had this idea that I wanted to write my own kind of Nabokovian memoir with a lot of lush sensory detail and description, but in a completely different setting. I thought it could be interesting to show the trailer park experience through that sort of lens. I wrote several pieces in that vein, and then sort of hit a wall with it and put it away for a long time. When I came back to it, I realized it needed some kind of narrative thread or central symbolic event for the pieces to spin around. A tornado just made the most sense.

GD: Stories spinning around a tornado!  I can’t resist the word play. But seriously, you’ve pulled these pieces together into a complete work of fiction. Interesting, of course, to all writers is that these stories were originally memoir. Can you talk a little about how you handled memory v. imagination? In other words, this now reads like fiction, so what happened to the events and characters during the rewriting process in terms of what you remembered and what you invented?

AT: Perversely, making the switch to fiction allowed me to see the characters more clearly than I had. They didn’t want to behave like the people they were based on, so letting them out of that box allowed them to act and react to their environment it ways that felt authentic but also heightened. The world in the book is kind of fantastic, but only because it’s seen through Cherry’s eyes and his perspective. The reality of the place is kind of dreary and depressing, but his perception of everything is so heightened it takes on a kind of hyperreal aura. I started to think of it as magical realism, but without anything magical actually happening, apart from the sleeping widow who may or may not have actually existed.

GD: I notice exactly what you are talking about— the sense that everything in this world—is in “Hi-Def Technicolor.” Part of this comes from the mix-up of time, the somewhat non-chronological time frame with small repetitions. These repetitions functioned similar to the way rephrasing a thesis works in an essay, reminding the reader of what is important. Can you talk a little about the structure of your chapbook, how you decided where each story would work the best?

AT: “Flight,” the penultimate story, takes place in the moments immediately following the first/title piece. That’s the frame that makes everything else fall into place. They’re also the only two that are in present tense. Everything else leads up to or follows in the wake of this traumatic event. It was important for the coherence of the narrative that all the elements were laid out right from the start. You know pretty much everything that’s coming within the first three or four pages. It all pours out in the kind of compressed fever dream. That, and the fact that all the pieces are self-contained, even if they’re linked, gave me the freedom to hop in and out of linear time. The repetition of the dates relative to the tornado and the 4th of July, apart from any poetic effect, serve to orient the reader in time and, like you said, add emphasis and emotional weight.

GD: What do you feel is most important to your own story-telling: language or story arc? How do you see these two  elements working together?

AT: The sonic quality of the work is important to me. I spend a lot of time and energy on that. The aesthetics of the language in Shampoo Horns is something I worked really hard on. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about complex plot devices or ironic twist endings. It’s strictly character driven. I think that’s something that’s often missing from flash fiction collections. As evocative and precise as the imagery and language can be, writers of flash tend to present rough sketches of characters, often nameless and void of personality, in an attempt, presumably, to present a kind of universal void the reader can project themselves into. That can work OK for an individual piece, but over the course of a collection it becomes impossible to connect with or care about. So, to try and answer your question, I strive for both, like everyone does, or should, but I probably spend more energy on rhythm and language. Story craft, for me, comes out of having well defined characters and allowing them to act and react to their environments and circumstances authentically.

GD: “Sonic!” I love that. So much is discovered about a story when the writer stops and reads his piece aloud and doing that is only part of the language equation.

AT: Absolutely. The writer has to be cognizant of that. Even if the reader never hears the work read aloud, they’re going to hear it in their head. It’s only one part of the language equation, but it’s a really crucial one because, regardless of how artfully you turn a phrase or spin a metaphor, without rhythm the reader has to force their way through it. It becomes laborious and stunted. The rhythm of sentences serves the same function as the rhythm of a poem or song. It should draw you gently along, like the current of a river. I say gently because you don’t want to go overboard either. All that effort has to be invisible.

GD:What books have you read that have been the most influential in terms of word usage? What books literally “speak” to you?

AT: The only book I can point to as a direct influence on the sound and syntax of Shampoo Horns, apart from the aforementioned Speak, Memory, is Katherine Dunn’s immaculate Geek Love. I was twenty-one or twenty-two when I read that, and it may have been the first time I really fell in love with the sound of an author’s voice. All of my favorite writers are masters of rhythm and cadence, though: Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, (even in translation.) I’m hopelessly smitten with Zadie Smith.

My fellow Rose Metal authors are particularly adept at that trick as well. They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, A Collection of Five Flash Fiction Chapbooks, is a masterclass. Elizabeth J Colen and Mary Miller, who I’ve had the pleasure to get to know and read with, toe the line between poetry and prose with tightrope balance and grace. Hearing them read can take your breath away. Jess Stoner is another writer here in Austin whose work I’m jealous of. “I Have Blinded Myself Writing This,” out on Short Flight/ Long Drive, is an absolute stunner.

GD: Last question. What is in store for us, your readers, in the future? Another collection, a novel?

AT: I’m working on another collection of linked flash called Pop Gun War. A few pieces from that have been published in various journals. You can see those, along with the trailer for Shampoo Horns and other fun stuff at aaron-teel.com.

by Jim Harrington 

 Market Update

Curly Red Stories has a new URL and new focus.

• Curly Red Stories (750, quarterly) publishes literary fiction – visit site, view guidelines

Flash Fiction Anthology Call

For a forthcoming Norton anthology, Flash Fiction International, edited by Robert Shapard, James Thomas, and Christopher Merrill:

We are looking for contemporary very short stories in English or English translation, limit about 1,000 words. We usually reprint works already published, but will also consider original manuscripts.

Deadline: December 31, 2012.

Learn more here.

View complete markets listing.

______________________

Jim Harrington discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For. . . blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” He’s also the Markets Editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles’ Flash Markets Page. You can read his stories on his blog. He can be contacted at jpharrin [at] gmail [dot] com.

by Bill Ward

I’m a lot of different people — I’m a selfish urbanite looking for a fix in a dystopian near future, and a scared middle aged employee of a junkyard that is pretty sure something unnatural is out to get him, so too am I the drunken challenger to the greatest swordsmen who ever lived, and a confused animal given artificial intelligence. What I’m not — I hope — is just a guy clacking keys on a keyboard, because if you hear those keys click-clacking over what I’m really trying to say, then I’ve failed my job as a storyteller.

Flash is the perfect vehicle for experimentation, and specifically experimentation in voice, for several reasons. Firstly, it is a medium that lends itself well to play and risk-taking because it does not require a large investment of time. Did your slangy dialect flash turn out to be an impenetrable mess? No problem, bury it in the hard drive and bring it out on rainy days for a chuckle, after all you wrote it in less than an hour. Did the 1,000 word stream-of-consciousness story meant to evoke the internal dialog of a madman come across more like a lame derivative of every other story of its kind that you’ve ever read? Hardly a big deal, no one need read it, not even you — if it’s really that bad, hit the DELETE key and admire your own ruthlessness.

Beyond the potentially disposable nature of exercises in flash fiction, you also have the delicious constraints of the medium. Of course, we know that flash has to be tightly written and as concise as possible, ideally with every word chosen for effect. Operating under such limits it would be a shame to write plainly, at least in every case, when instead one can use language to evoke mood or construct character. This is the second reason why flash rewards experimentation in voice.

However, ‘voice’ can mean many things. There is an author’s voice, his style, which mostly means the way he uses words; his quirks of diction, syntax, and punctuation, and really almost anything else about his work that lends it a recognizable quality. This is essentially unconscious and hard to change or embellish — which is reason enough not to worry all that much about it.

Instead of voice I like to think of many different voices, those tricks of style that are as different from story to story as the characters, themes, and settings of each piece. Different because they are integral, indivisible parts of the story itself, whether they are the actual words of a first person tale or the differences in cadence and inflection in a third person narrative, there is no excuse not to bring a conscious mind to the creation of these voices. Especially, as I’ve said, in flash fiction where to fail to do so is to write without one of the most powerful tools in the writer’s arsenal.

How do you do it? Well, in one sense you just do. You get in the head of your characters, you let them speak through your fingers. Such voices are very often verbal, borrowing the rhythms of speech, the informal language, the jagged construction. I want to stress that this does not just apply to obvious cases like first person stories in which the character is narrating, and sometimes literally speaking his part, but also to those of third person (and second, too, if that’s you cup of chai latte). Third person stories can be every bit as influenced by voice, just so long as they do not become the actual words of another unintended character.

All of us have models that we draw upon when writing. These of course influence our authorial style without us even knowing it, but if we want to put on that second layer, our ‘many voices,’ consciously imitating these styles is a great way to achieve a better story. Whether we take Dickens or Hemingway, A Clockwork Orange or Beowulf, as our model, mimicking these sources can lend a dramatically different feel to our writing. While we cannot really change our fundamental authorial voice (at least, not so quickly or radically as would suit a story by story readjustment), we can pay attention to the effects of voice and deploy it as deliberately as we do character, setting, and plot.

And, while it sometimes may blow up in our faces, there is no more perfect way to play with this dangerous toy than to try it out in a piece of flash and see what happens.

This article was originally printed at Flash Fiction Chronicles May 13, 2009.

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Bill Ward is a genre writer, editor, and blogger wanted across the Outer Colonies for crimes against the written word. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, as well as gaming supplements and websites. He is an Editor at Black Gate  and 423rd in line for the throne of Lost Lemuria. Read more at Bill’sblog, Down Genre Hound.

by Michael J. Mattson

A writer’s task is to bridge the chasm between readers and text. The worlds to which we build our bridges ride the ether above that chasm. Good writing creates a bridge that is nearly imperceptible, and when we publish our work to the world we ask readers to step out into the void on our invisible bridge.

Most writers to intuitively sense the breadth and depth of that chasm, but intuition often fails in one of the most critical decisions we make: that of narrative voice.

With our words we either save or destroy the imagined world we create; we either earn or break the trust a reader places in us. Our task is to engage their minds and emotions, hold their attention and avoid jarring them out of the narrative flow. No simple matter regardless of form, the need to quickly create emotional immediacy poses a particular challenge in flash fiction. First person seems a ready-made solution. So we think.

The default modes of first- and third-person are polar opposites: third is inherently distant, and the bridge between reader and text relies heavily on character development. First person easily verges on the invasive and the writer’s focus must be on voice.

The unique demands of crafting first-person narratives are directly related to a single word, a single capital letter. From early childhood our minds are trained to recognize the uniqueness of “I.” This combines with the fact that we employ first person in our self-talk all day, every day until we hardly notice. In our thoughts it is not intrusive, not out of place or too emphatic, and in this guise it slips into our writing where it competes against a reader’s inner monologue in all its variations, against all the stories readers have spent their days telling themselves. With the exception of dialog, when we use “I,” we are telling, not showing.

But we’re not just telling. We are putting a spotlight on an already powerful word; we use a megaphone when we should whisper. That pesky little pronoun forms the bedrock of every reader’s being. Undisciplined use of it doesn’t just give readers a mental bounce – it makes them the epicenter of a psychic earthquake. Overuse of I is the literary version of a painter putting arrows on a portrait to ensure viewers don’t miss exquisite examples of masterful technique.

When tempted to shrink away from the emotional distance of third-person, one should carefully consider the adage “show, don’t tell.” It means crafting prose in a way that cooperates with the reader’s independence. It implies a kind of personal space around the reader’s psyche, space in which the reader can experience the events as they unfold through the narrative. From that dictum we can infer the writer’s task is largely that of creating and directing the emotional distance between reader and narrator.

Writing in the first person is not a shortcut. It is one of the most difficult ways to show without telling.

The demands of character and voice cannot compete within the limits of flash fiction. Given its compressed nature, there is simply no time or space for the slightest bump in the road – a single jarring phrase can destroy the whole effect of a piece. In first-person narratives it is all the more essential for these aspects of craft to work hand-in-hand because they must balance the combined visual and conceptual power of that dominant single-letter word. Every reader has an eye for an “I.” So should every writer. With a judicious application of capital punishment we can prevent readers from retaliating with their brutal yawns and vicious mouse-clicks.

A good example of well-crafted first-person narrative is To Kill a Mockingbird. Writers of flash fiction can learn a lot from Harper Lee. “I” occurs one time in the first hundred words. The second “I” doesn’t appear for another fifty, but it is the third use that tells the real tale – nearly nine hundred words into the story. A recent bestselling crime novel is far more typical of first-person narratives and offers a study in contrast: one hundred forty-six words on the first half-page, eight of which are “I.”

Years ago Harper Lee taught me the significance of my emotional connection with characters. I learned a story has succeeded if I miss the characters when I finish the last page. Lee’s genius lies, at least in part, in her wisely withholding information about one central character. She left me wanting to know more about Boo Radley.

Narrative voice should be like him: unobtrusive, quiet, all but invisible in a dark corner of the room, graciously allowing Scout to see him in her own time, and by that quietness defining and giving shape to everything, and being the bridge to another world.

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Michael J. Mattson earned top honors in Foundling Review’s  2011 fifty-word ‘Pachaas’ contest and recently met The Baltimore Review’s one hundred-word challenge with his short piece,  Legacy, (scroll down). He has freelanced as a copywriter for Red Futon Films and is the founder and  Executive Editor of The Hellroaring Review. 

by Jim Harrington 

Markets Added

• Fiction and Verse ($, 100-1,000, varies) open to all genre – visit site, view guidelines
• The Big Jewel (1,000, weekly) publishes humor – visit site, view guidelines
• Elbow Pads (500, unknown) open to all genre – visit site, view guidelines

Contest News

The Boiler Journal invites you to put yourself and the audience under pressure and submit to our FIRST ANNUAL 500 FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE! This year’s genre will be Fiction. Write a good piece in 500 words or less and you’ll be able to pat yourself on the back, knowing you did something worthwhile, and get paid for your sweet effort. We have published flash fiction from Jillian Grant Lavoie, T Kira Madden, Marina Rubin, Caru Cadoc, Justine Haus and others.

Entry fee is $10.
Deadline is February 15!
http://theboilerjournal.com/500-word-challenge/

View complete markets listing.

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Jim Harrington discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For. . . blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” He’s also the Markets Editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles’ Flash Markets Page. You can read his stories on his blog. He can be contacted at jpharrin [at] gmail [dot] com.

by Thomas Jay Rush

Flash Fiction Chronicles interviewed Olivia Kate Cerrone about Every Day Fiction’s top story for August “Leaving Teknaf,” and about the role of conflict in fiction, word choice, and being a writer when one is not writing.

FFC: Thank you for agreeing to an interview. Congratulations on winning Story of the Month for August.

Olivia Kate Cerrone: Thank you!

FFC: In some ways “Leaving Teknaf ” is a slice-of-life story, focused on the moment when Benoy must decide whether to step into the “black car” or not, although I think it’s a lot more than that. Every time the lottery ticket is mentioned it is followed quickly by a statement about the mother’s failing health. My professors at Rosemont stress the importance of conflict in a story. Question: must a story have conflict? Must a flash story have conflict? How important is conflict, when compared to, say, setting, character, plot, etc.?

OKC: Sustaining a degree of tension throughout a story’s narrative is essential to crafting fiction that is immediately engaging and holds the reader’s interest. Conflict and the progression of its dramatic development serve to establish that sense of tension. The reader must know early on what’s at stake in order for a story to be compelling. Otherwise, the material will read as flat and uninteresting. I believe that the most powerful fiction—be it a novel or flash—thrives from conflict that is well-rendered through language.

This is especially significant in flash fiction, considering its brevity. Kim Chinquee, a brilliant master of the form, once remarked in an interview how “flash is about sound and rhythm, image and conflict, all wrapped up in one.” I couldn’t agree more. The key to successfully executing conflict and tension in flash fiction lies in the writer’s approach to language.

FFC: I read a number of your other stories online (http://www.oliviacerrone.com/). Your stories are set in interesting places: Sicily, the Bay of Bengal, Jaffa. Tell me about setting. How does setting help tell a story? What purpose does setting serve in your stories. Does it serve purposes other then simply informing the reader of place? Can one rely too heavily on setting?

OKC: For me, everything starts with character. I can’t begin to write a story until I establish a deep understanding of my character’s desires, as this influences the decisions made regarding plot, tension, dialogue exchanges, etc. Setting provides another way for me to access this initial understanding. So much of who we are stems from those environments that frame our lives, even if we aren’t consciously aware of it. In recent years, my fiction has taken on a more international edge in terms of social focus, so setting has become that much more significant when rendering characters. There are undeniable socio-political aspects of those settings, such as in Sicily or Israel, that play a very significant influence on the specific needs and compulsions of my characters. Research carries a heavy presence in my writing process for this reason. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to travel to those places that I am drawn to as an artist.

Can one rely too heavily on setting? It depends. I can’t speak for other writers, because each artist comes with his or her own different set of aesthetics that shapes the work they produce, but for me, fiction is about desire. If my depiction of setting serves to obstruct this or the immediacy of the plot in some way, then I know I need to pull back and rethink what I’m doing with language.

FFC: I hate when people do this to my own writing, but that won’t stop me from asking my next question. I think this story implies a lot more than it actually says. For example, the sea, seems to stand in for the mass of humanity that Benoy is “swimming in,” and as the fishermen do to the fish, the lawyers pull Benoy out of the sea. Also, the black car, seems to hint at an unfortunate future for the boy, just like the Black-Finned shark who is astonished by his own death. The many details in the story, which I think are excellent and give the story depth, also seem to serve a symbolic purpose, telling an “under-story” as it were. Is that correct? This is, after all, a website devoted to craft. Tell us about the craft you brought to bear on these details/symbols. Are they simply details or are they symbols? Are they both? Are they intentional? It’s a novice magician asking a master to reveal the magic trick, I know, but have at it.

OKC: Thank you for the kind words, though I am certainly far away from “master” status when it comes to fiction writing. Yes, I think readers can most definitely decipher a layer of “under-story” in those details designed to help bring my fiction to life on the page. But I don’t usually choose to inject an ulterior meaning in a specific image, at least not on a conscious level. Then the effect of the image might come across as forced or too heavy-handed. Furthermore, I don’t have any control over what others read into my work, nor do I want that control. That’s part of the beauty of art: the variety of its interpretation. Gathering the necessary details (the particular name of the marketplace shark, a Black Fin, in “Leaving Teknaf” for instance) comes in part through research or personal experience, but the arrangement of such details and the precision of their depiction is achieved through constantly massaging the language. Revision is a crucial aspect of my process. The choices I make with language also stem largely from my gut. Writers develop their instincts for language through years of reading, writing and revising.

FFC: I think word choice is super important in flash fiction. At some points in this story you’ve chosen the perfect word: the word “free” in the sentence that starts “With his free hand…”; the words “at the edge of her mattress,” which implies Benoy’s growing distance from his mother; the way you describe his mother’s “bony hands,” and “the gentle rise and fall of her chest,” which recall the fish that are being salted on the beach. They say every word counts in flash fiction. Does every word count? Do you labor over every word, every image, every detail? It seems like you do.

OKC: Absolutely. I believe that in a form as short as flash fiction, there is much more emphasis placed on language, so yes, every word does indeed count. The trick lies in understanding what’s essential. Flash lives in such a compressed narrative—be it a particular moment or brief, life-changing exchange. Building that structural container is often the most challenging aspect of writing flash fiction for me, mostly because I am naturally inclined to think like a novelist. I have an expansive imagination, and I’m always fighting off the urge to share more about the character’s life—how their particular back story maintains an ongoing influence to the current state of their affairs. This is another reason why revision is so important to me.

FFC: You studied in New York and now live in Boston. Compare the two city’s literary scenes. Are you involved in the literary scene in your city? Any quick tips for a novice writer on getting involved? I try to attend as many readings and workshops in Philadelphia (where I’m from) as I can, but workshops cost money and readings are usually at night when my kids need my attention. Are you involved in any online writing communities?

OKC: New York City and Boston are both amazing literary cities in their own right, and I am very lucky to have lived in both. Of course, given its size and ultra-competitive industry, there are more opportunities in NYC to attend or give readings, and meet with other writers, agents and publishers. There’s also just a fantastic pulse of energy, an exciting sense of endless possibilities that comes with NYC that you can’t find (or at least I haven’t found yet) anywhere else in the world. But cities are also often lonely places, and being that the writing life itself is mostly lonely and full of endless rejection, it’s important to maintain some sort of support system in your creative life. I thrive off of artistic communities. Outside of a few close writer-friends I have in my life, I frequently attend artist residencies like the Vermont Studio Center for both the space and time to write, along with the new friendships that often form with being in a supportive, creative environment. I did an MFA in creative writing at New York University much for these same reasons, and I’m so grateful that I did. My MFA experience was essential in helping me evolve as a writer. I still exchange work with some of the wonderful people that I met there. Outside of academia, there are organizations like Grub Street in Boston or the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in NYC that offer great opportunities for connecting with other serious writers. Really it comes down to finding smart readers who you click with aesthetically, and are open and available to critiquing your work. I encourage writers to also check out online venues, such as the fabulous literary podcast, The Drunken Odyssey with John King, which places a special emphasis on fostering a sense of community among writers.

FFC: One more question: where to from here? I understand you teach. Tell us, briefly, if you would, about your life as a writer, or your life as a non-writer, or anything you’d like to add.

OKC: Right now I am furiously attempting to complete work on a novel entitled The Hunger Saint, which is set mostly in contemporary Sicily. I hope to begin querying agents and attending writing conferences to find representation in early 2013. My life as a writer is a constant juggling act between producing new work, submitting to journals and making ends meet. Since I teach nearly a full-load of college writing courses throughout the week, I often find myself getting up at four or five in the morning, just to get in several hours of fiction writing before starting my work day. It’s hard, but once you get into the rhythm of it, such a schedule becomes easier to adjust to over time. One of the most essential things I’ve learned about surviving the writer’s life is this: you must have a ferocious will above all else. You must be relentless.

FFC: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. Your ferociousness certainly shines through in your wonderful story.

OKC: Thanks.

By Bonnie ZoBell

This is the first of an intermittent series about chapbooks

I’ll confess right here and now that I’m not an expert on getting chapbooks published. This article started as a chronicle to tell friends about the process I went through to get mine accepted. I’m hoping we can make this an interactive article where you make comments at the end so I can learn something too.

What is a Chapbook?

Believe me, my mother doesn’t know anything about chapbooks, but I’ve found there are writers who don’t, either, so I’ll give the best explanation I can and others can add to this. I’ll also be interviewing chapbook editors as part of this series, so I’ll be curious to hear what they say, too.

Poetry chapbooks have been around for a long time; only in more recent years have people started making fiction chapbooks as well. Poetry has always been perfect for this form since most poems are fairly short. Because these books are often between 18 and 50 pages, you can print a good representation of a person’s fiction as well. Now that people are writing a lot of flash fiction, a flash-fiction collection (which is what mine is) works great in the chapbook format, too. In fact, sometimes I’ve found it hard to read an extremely long book of flash because there’s too much starting and stopping. People are now also publishing novellas as chapbooks and collections of three full-length stories.

Print on Demand (POD)

My book, The Whack-Job Girls, coming out with Monkey Puzzle Press in March, will be published as Print on Demand. What this means is that a press will print fewer books (maybe 100-300), and then more will be made as the need arises. Some chapbook publishers only publish a small number of books and stop there.

Mine will also be made into an e-book and sold on Amazon and made for Kindles. If enough copies of the chapbook are sold, it will then be made into a paperback. If I make any money at all, it won’t be until after a certain number of copies have sold, which I believe is the norm. Apparently, plenty of people never make any money at these because they don’t put enough work into trying to help sell them.

My opinion is that if you’re into fiction or poetry to make money, you need to get a grip and find a new art. Quadruple that for chapbooks. Possibly you can make money writing elevator music since it gets played over and over again. Not everyone will agree with this.

My real point in getting a chapbook published is to pull all my flashes into a form so people can read my work. Also, it might lift my profile a little to help me get other things published.