Flash Fiction Chronicles

Does anyone get rejections that say, “Some strong writing here, but this isn’t a story; there’s no arc” or “I like your character but where’s the conflict?”  Have you thought, “This editor is nuts!  A guy’s chasing her.  She has a gun.  She shoots him.  Isn’t that enough conflict?”

No actually it isn’t.  What that is is action which is different from conflict.  Action is movement.  Conflict is choice followed by movement.  What???  What I’m talking about here is structure, what Randall Brown pointed out in a recent post at Flash Fiction Chronicles,  “Who Cares?”: The Nuts & Bolts of Making Narrative Matter:

Something happens (precipitating incident) to create a desire, and that desire creates a need for action that is thwarted by this and that and this and that until, finally, there’s resolution.

Movies are a great way to learn structure and what exactly a story arc is.  One of my favorite movies to illustrate structure in that old reliable action flick ( I know, I didn’t say “structure flick”), Die Hard, made back in 1988 when Bruce Willis was moving from Moonlighting on TV to the Big Screen.

Get the Die Hard DVD and watch it with a pen and paper and the timer on your DVD player.  Number the lines on your paper from 1 to maybe 120 or so.  Maybe skip lines to make sure you can write big if you get excited.  Record what happens every minute or so all the way through. This may seem like a tedious exercise,  but it’s amazing to just how carefully the story is constructed. For the hot-shot movie critics out there who love those ponderous three-hour think pieces, Die Hard is too “on the nose,” but for learning about structure and character development, it is one of the best.

What you’ll be looking for is based on Aristotle’s Poetics–the basic 3-act play structure.  There are many good books out there (Robert McKee’s Story which is based on The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives by Lajos Egri and for a quick understanding there’s always Syd Field’s Sreenplay) help a writer learn all the ins and outs–as well as the disagreements about rules, formulae, and art–but I’ll lay out the minimum here. 

Act 1 starts with a character in his regular life, something happens to turn his life on its head, and by the beginning of Act 2 (approximately 30 minutes in), the character’s life is 180 degrees different from what it once was and the character sets out to either change his or her life back or to figure out how to make the best of things.  He’s not trying all that hard because frankly, he can’t really believe things could go this wrong.  Then something else goes wrong. 

About a quarter way through Act 2 (around 45 pages in) the character has some kind of epiphany that he’s going to have to work a helluva lot hard than he thought.   The simple solution isn’t working.  He needs a better plan.

About half way through (60 minutes) he realizes who the enemy is (himself, his best friend, the woman with the man hands) and at the same time, there is a coming together between the character and his/her main relationship usually washing wounds or sex). 

In the second half of Act 2 some new effort is launched, but it doesn’t work and leads to a dark moment around 75 minutes in.  The character gives up the game as hopeless. 

But by 90 minutes, the beginning of Act 3, the character has come up with new energy, a new plan, a new assault on his problem and works through his conflict until he either wins or loses. 

Notice as you are jotting down what is happening on your lined paper, about when these things happen in Die Hard.  The timing won’t be perfect, but you’ll be shocked to see how close it is.

Look for: Set-ups and pay-offs: On the plane McClane talks with the other passenger about being afraid of flying. The passenger offers a suggestion. Watch for this to pay-off when he is in the bathroom of the Nakatomi building, and then later when he’s in the elevator and later when he’s being chased.  This suggestion from the passenger pays off about 6 times in this move. THAT’s good structure.

Look for how exposition is handled: On the plane, in the taxi, between McClane’s wife and her boss, when McClane gets to the Nakatomi building and looks his wife up on the list of employees. Then think about set-up and pay-offs again.  How is information given to the viewer?

Look for character development: The characters in this piece are so well-defined and consistent in their traits. We get them quickly and their motivation and subsequent behavior holds the structure together when the twists are thrown in. There is suspense without confusion.

Setting: Think about the airplane, the limo, and the high rise Century City building. Then think about how this movement evolves and what happens in the building and how each of these places have their own twists and turns. 

Pacing??? Remarkably fast, but with the right amount of time spent on reflection so the movie has meaning. And it does. It’s about loyalty, determination, married love, brotherhood, evil….

Okay enough. Now if you decide to do the jot down what’s happening thing, here’s what to look for. By the first three or so minutes you know who McClane is, what his problem is, and how he thinks he’s going to solve it. Notice he HAS a problem. A personal goal to find out what the hell is going on between him and his wife. That isn’t the PLOT of the movie, it’s a subplot, but it’s what gives the movie some universal meaning.

About thirty minutes in you might notice that everything has changed 180 degrees from the beginning of the movie (this is about where ACT 1 ends). The building is taken over and the story problem isn’t just about McClane and his wife, but it’s about surviving the “terrorist” attack.

Act 2 come next from around 30 or so minutes to about 90 minutes in. In that time it is McClane fighting the bad guys.

The first part of act 2 is all about getting the police’s attention and he assumes of course that the police will solve the problem. He has to just survive and create enough chaos to keep the bad guys busy until the cops save the day.

But in the middle of the movie around 60 minutes in we see that McClane isn’t going to get any help. As a matter of fact he’s now perceived as one of the bad guys. The stakes are ramped up. There is no help coming. He’s got to do it himself.  However, if I’m remembering correctly this is about the time John McClane’s wife begins to feel more kindly toward her estranged husband.

And then at about 90 minutes when Act three begins, John McClane makes his final assault to save his wife and everyone else who has survived. And he manages to do that in true action hero form.

The end? The enemy is defeated and he regains his wife.

Okay. Formula. Over the top. Right? Yeah but it’s a learning tool too. Knowing why this movie works has helped me to have answers to story problems whenever I get stuck. What does the formula say at this point??? Do I want to do that? If yes, may it a unique with details. If I dn’t, make sure that what does happen has the same kind of emotional effect.

I didn’t make this up. If this idea of studying movies to help understand structure appeals to you you might consider reading one of the books I mentioned earlier.

I can’t remember all the movies I did this with, but it is amazing to see how close movies THAT WORK stick to this. 

Movies I logged

Overboard
Witness
Terminator
Suspicion (wrong ending really but I still love it)
Outrageous Fortune
Trading Places
Charade

 That’s all I can remember off the top of my head!  Happy movie watching!

Gay Degani writes surrounded by the frantic chortles of parrots.  She has published in journals and anthologies including The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and TWO (2009).  Her stories online can be read at The Battered Suitcase, Night Train, 10 Flash, 3 A.M. Magazine, as well as other publications.  Pomegranate Stories is a collection of eight stories by Gay. She is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles.  

I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing new pieces from the word-crumbs for writer-pigeons, and a few days ago I decided to give it another go – get back in the habit, as it were. As I reached the end of the exercise, I thought the process might make a decent entry here. So I’m going to give you a walkthrough.

First came the prompts. I copy and paste them, and then add the quote – and I stare at them until I get a thought. (if one doesn’t come, I play Bejeweled until one does.) I add thoughts or definitions or phrases about the words beside them – it looks like this when I’m done:

- TIN ROOF (rusted, cat on a hot)
- AVON LADY (avon calling)
- REFINEMENT (improvement)
- MOP CLOSET (narrow)
- LEAK (drip, pass through)
- AFFECTED (influenced)
- PULCHRITUDE (beauty)
- MACARONI (elbow pasta)
- LAME BRAINED (foolish)
- CURVY (rounded)

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. –Henry Louis Mencken

 quote thoughts: Immorality. Sin. the roaring 20s. regular hausfrau dreaming of better times, better romance, etc.
her life – leak, mop closet, ornaments out of macaroni, avon lady, tin roof …
dream life – refinement, affected, pulchritude, curvy
Margaret – sensible name, sensible husband – Michael, sensible house. dreams of more, reads romance novels – the historic kind, where men have accents and write notes extolling their lady-love’s pulchritude. She’d had to look that one up, but wasn’t it a nice way to say a girl was pretty?
she is much older, kids are grown, it’s just her and Michael now. He still works, wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t, still won’t let her – she took in mending, once, when times were tough and the babies were little, but as soon as things were better she had to stop – hurt his pride, he’d say, having a wife he couldn’t support.

From there I generally have a picture of the story, or at least a start. I begin writing, working in the phrases with the prompt words. I add. I delete. I learn more about the character and change things. This is the “finished” product:

Margaret wiped the sweat from her forehead with the same rag she had been using to wipe down the leaky pipe under the sink so she could see where to fix it. Lady Wintercourt wouldn’t have had to fix a pipe, she thought to herself, beginning the complicated process of hauling herself to her feet. Winter’s Heat lay on the side table in the living room, next to her cigarettes and Pepsi, and if she was lucky she’d get to the end of this chapter before Michael was home expecting dinner.

She put the mop in the empty bucket and put the bucket back in the mop closet, then leaned on the counter until she caught her breath. Age was nipping at her heels, and the face in the mirror was no longer the fresh beauty that had graduated at the top of her refinement classes. Margaret imagined Lady Wintercourt in all of her curvy glory, gasping for breath, and how Lord Darien would be entranced by her heaving bosoms …

“Cor,” she scolded herself. “Such nonsense.” She smiled at her own foolishness, and went back to her reclining chair. Oh, for a time when her own bosoms would heave fetchingly, and some Lord would send her a handwritten note about how he was so affected by her pulchritude that he could scarcely sleep. She’d had to look pulchritude up in her son’s dictionary, but wasn’t it a fancy way to say a woman was pretty? Michael hadn’t called her naught but lovely since she was a new bride, and he called her pot roast lovely.

Oh, Michael loved her, she knew. He provided for her, refusing to let her work when he could support her. She had done a brief tour as an Avon Lady, back when times were tight and the babies were small, but he had asked her to stop just as soon as they were back on their feet. It hurt his pride, he said, people thinking he couldn’t take care of his own. Margaret had liked getting out and talking to the ladies, but she quit because he asked her to.

So now she stayed home, keeping things tidy and reading her romance novels and showing Michael that returned his love by making sure there was a hot meal on the table when he got home from work. Sometimes she rang her sister just to chat, but she didn’t want to be a bother – Martha’s girls were still at home, and such a handful. Her own boys called every Sunday. They were working over in the States now, and she couldn’t be prouder.

Margaret lifted up her readers from the beaded chain around her neck, and tucked into Winter’s Heat again. Her own adventures, sensible as they were, were over – but there were at least three more Wintercourt novels at the public library waiting for her.

Now, the important thing about this exercise is not the fact that I hate the piece (which I do). It’s crap, and we all know it. Say it with me, kids. LESSON NUMBER ONE: The First Draft of Anything Is Crap.

No – the important thing about the exercise is what I can take away from it, and even more importantly, what I SHOULD take away from it.

I could clean this up. I could contrive a “real” plot, or at least a believable one, and squish the words like PlayDoh until they fit the mold I had made.

Or, I could identify what would make it possible for the story to be reworked, and just save that piece.

Margaret is what works for me. I like her, I can see her so clearly, I know her whole life. (and while she reminds me a bit of Shirley Valentine, she is still her own person.) I get her husband, too, what motivates him and how much he loves his wife and how little he knows how to show it. These people, this relationship – this is what clicks.

As I have said before, people are what work for me. Characters. I collect them in my memory, I have mental boxes full of habits and traits and situations and experiences and sometimes complete people. Every now and then, one of them will move to the forefront, and that’s when the archaeology dig begins – I catch the tip of something larger out of the corner of my eye, and slowly brush away the bits that aren’t relevant until all that remains is the story. But 90% of the time, it starts with the character.

And characters are born of exercises like this – even exercises that are wildly, irredeemably terrible. So I have tucked Margaret and Michael (and even Lady Wintercourt and her heaving bosoms) away, and when they’re ready to tell their story, I’ll be ready to write it down.

In the mean time, I’ll work on today’s prompts – you never know what might come of it.

Previously published at Blogging in the Dark

TL.Schofield lives in central GA with a white dog and a black cat – one of which she is allergic to. Her second published piece is currently posted at AlienSkin Magazine.  She is getting back into the swing of things after a holiday hiatus, and blogs about the writing process  at Blogging in the Dark.

When we think of portraits, we usually think of paintings, family trips to Sears, maybe even Henry James. But portraiture isn’t quite as simple as that.

Late last year, I was interviewed by Rebecca Givens Rolland, a grad student writing a portrait of Grub Street, a local writing center in Boston, MA. According to Rebecca, portraiture is a method developed by sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot 
to create a complex, vivid picture of a person or organization.”

The experience made me realize that portraiture can be useful in crafting a story, too. Portraiture, in this sense, is less about minute physical detail–the dust on a windowsill, the drooping dendrobium orchid losing blooms in a corner–and more about creating the essence of a person or place. Writers such as Hemingway (“A Clean  Well-Lighted Place”) and Steinbeck (“Cannery Row”) create this sort of portrait, this atmosphere, seamlessly. While we plebs might not quite be up to Hemingway’s snuff, sketching portraits of characters and places might help start us on our way.

How does creating a portrait work? During our interview, Rebecca asked me about my experience with Grub Street, starting with the big stuff.

• What was your first impression of Grub Street?
• Did you feel welcome?
• Was it your first time at a writing center?
• What did you expect?
• Would you go back?

Once we’d settled in, she moved to more detailed questions. While it may seem detailed questions would include drooping dendrobium style minutiae, it was more focused on the day-to-day workings of my classes there and things I took away from the experience.

• What were the classes like?
• Did you get on with the people? The instructor?
• How were the classes set up?
• Was anything particularly useful?
• Are you still in touch with anyone from your class?
• How do you think Grub Street affected you? Your writing?

Start out small
While getting your Steinbeck on may seem like an excellent idea, start with just one portrait. The more time you spend working out the details, the better your story will be. Don’t feel compelled to do a portrait of every character or place in your story–it might result in cluttering things up with too much detail. Weigh the work of creating the portrait against the importance of the person/place in the story, too. Don’t waste time creating a portrait of the guy who serves your main character cake at her best friend’s wedding if he’s only on-page for a few seconds.

1. Take a mental snapshot. Picture your subject (a kitchen, your main character’s ferret) and write down your first impressions. Is the kitchen homey? Are you scared of the ferret’s big bitey teeth? If it helps, collect actual pictures and tack them up near your workspace.
2. Move beyond the Polaroid. Many writers rely on visuals to convey information. Although this can work well, it often ends in what I call the Polaroid effect–the reader is drenched in useless detail (the magazine was bound with PVA, a glue commonly used in print bindings). Instead of describing the snapshot itself, describe the memories it conjures. Use scents, textures, and sounds to put your reader inside the Polaroid.

Delve deeper
Now you’ve got the easy part sorted, it’s time to dig a little deeper. Part of what makes portraiture so fascinating is its use of people–instead of recording only their impressions, a skilled portraitist uses the impressions of others to paint a more complex picture. In real life, this is a matter of interviewing and research. In fiction, it’s pretty much the same thing, except that you have to make up your interviewees.

Consider all the people who interact with your subject. Does Virginia get coffee at Bean Scene everyday? Does the coffee shop have a barista she talks to? Write down a list of everyone involved.

1. Write out a list of questions (try starting with the lists above).
2. Answer the questions. Writing in character isn’t necessary (though go right ahead if it helps)–the point is to find how your characters feel about a certain place/person and why. Does Virginia go to Bean Scene because it gets her out of the house and away from a screaming baby, because she likes the coffee, or because everybody knows her name? Why is it important everybody knows her name?
3. When all’s said and done, put everything aside for a while. Come back to it in a few days, when you’re fresh, and your mind is clear of any preconceptions.
4. Go over your notes. Look for patterns in the text, jot down common ideas and phrases. Use these to paint the broader strokes of your portrait, and go from there.

While it may not work for every story, portraiture is a useful technique for creating atmosphere and giving characters depth. Would you try a portrait? Have you interviewed your characters? How do you create atmosphere in your work? Post examples in the comments!

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.

I’ve read a lot of online discussion lately that suggests flash fiction stories are quick, easy pieces that you can dash off in a morning. That’s not my experience at all. The only reason I can afford to write flash is that I have a day job.

As an example, I thought I’d describe the process I used to write “Home to Perfect,” a flash piece published in the Best of Every Day Fiction Two anthology. This story took me a solid 15 hours to write. I’ll try to break down how those hours were spent. (The description below assumes you’ve read the story).

I got the idea for the story when I was poking around the Internet one day and found a clip on YouTube of a kid playing “Through the Fire and Flames” perfectly in expert mode on the video game Guitar Hero. At the end of the clip, the kid is visibly trembling, cursing in disbelief, and totally overwhelmed. I found myself thinking over the next several days about the kid’s awe and how he shared it with an audience on YouTube. I wondered if his parents had any idea what that moment meant to him.

I spent about 3 hours over the next several days developing the idea. I asked myself who Vic (my main character) was, why he cared about playing through the song perfectly, and what else was going on in his life. I wrote extensive notes on him, his mom, his dad, and his brother Kurt. This was the point at which I realized that I was writing about domestic violence. I could tell you a lot of details about all of these characters that never made it into the story. I believe a story should be an iceberg–what’s visible should be only a small amount of the material that’s in the author’s possession.

In a flash piece, I look for the iceberg effect even more. In very few words, I have to make the reader aware of significant emotions and history that bear on the scene I chose to show.

At that point, I wrote my first draft, spending about 2 hours on it. (My first draft rate for longer pieces is much faster, but my speed of writing seems to be inversely related to the length of the piece).

I put my first draft down for about a week. When I picked it up again, something was wrong with it, and I couldn’t figure out what. After much rereading and consideration (which I’m not counting towards the total time spent on the work), I figured out that “Through the Fire and Flames” was the problem. I had no emotional connection to the song, and I hadn’t spent much time playing Guitar Hero. I had, on the other hand, pulled many all-nighters playing Rock Band. There’s a song on Rock Band called “Green Grass and High Tides” that I love deeply and find wickedly difficult. I changed the story so that Vic is playing Rock Band, and spent about 5 hours writing a new draft. While I wrote this draft, I listened repeatedly to “Green Grass and High Tides” and periodically took breaks to watch videos on YouTube of people playing this song on Rock Band.

At that point, I thought I’d finished the story, so I let my husband read it. As always happens, he made me realize that I had a lot of work left to do, pointing out several problems with how it was structured. I spent about 3 hours restructuring and fixing those problems. Then, I spent 2 hours doing a final polish and preparing the story for submission. For me, this consists of reading the whole thing out loud several times, fixing anything that trips me up, and fiddling with things until I’m sure I really want to send the story out into the world. I run spellcheck. I obsessively study the guidelines for the market to which I’m sending the story.

And that’s a wrap. I’ve wished that I could write faster, but I’m proud of the piece and am glad I took my time.

The original version of this post appeared as Best of Every Day Fiction on Words, Words, Words.

Erica Naone writes by day about topics related to the Internet and computer software. Her fiction has appeared in On The Premises, Storyglossia, Every Day Fiction and Flashquake. She recently received an honourable mention in the 32nd annual International 3-Day Novel Contest. She lives with her husband in Allston, MA. You can read her blog or follow her on Twitter.

On January 26th, I sat down and wrote 1,000 words for the first time in something like two months. (There has been a staggering lack of writing at my house lately.) It was a first person narrative that began with:

“I’m no hero, all right? Let’s get that straight up front.”

As of today, 15 days later, I have an entirely outlined and characterized novel plan. This is how I did it.

_____________

The initial narrative took several days to get out of my system, so I went with it, following the narrator right into the middle of his current situation. I would revise the beginning to reflect things I was learning as I wrote the continuation. I shoved “show don’t tell” under my chair and let him tell me about each of his companions, until I felt like I knew them all. (I did all of the preliminary writing in a simple text-edit program so I could easily bounce back and forth between Bianca (my main computer) and Cheese (my baby hackbook).) I took the file with me everywhere for a few days, and worked on it in all of my spare time.

For several days after that, I characterized. (Maker bless the StoryMill for giving me one place to keep track of everything) I made an entry for each character, then jotted ideas and asked questions and bounced from one character to the others as I learned how they all interacted with each other, and why. The characters told me their stories, and I took notes.

Then came the outline, which was a relatively simple matter of piecing together all the quilt-square-stories my characters had told me into one ‘big picture’ of a story. The only challenge this time was puzzling out the right order in which to tell four separate stories until they could unite into one.

With the piecing came more learning, and some of the stories shifted or grew or became less important. I made notes along the way in each of the character’s records … going so far as to use strikethrough text for older ideas instead of deleting them outright, so I could see what I had scrapped in case I needed it again. I determined how many key events occurred during the scope of the tale.

At this point came the numbers – I need the numbers, they act as a boundaries to keep me from going on and on and on like some reincarnation of a famously verbose author (who shall remain nameless even though the fact that he is still being published after his demise is something of an annoyance to me, being that one printing run of his book could theoretically wipe out an entire rainforest in Bolivia.)

Anyway. I picked 65,000 as a starting point for my first draft (not too short, but with room to grow later when things require more explanation and detail.) I determined that the story could best be told in 10 chapters. Behold, each chapter now has a temporary goal of 6,500 words.

I created the 10 chapters, and named them to give myself a reminder of what happens in each one. From the chapter overviews, I determined the scenes – what events occur in what order to convey the story of the bigger picture? Sometimes there were two scenes, sometimes there were four. I entered them into the program as well, giving them names that helped me remember what happens within them, and assigning them to the appropriate chapter. I applied the numbers again, to give myself a framework for how many words each scene in each chapter should have.

At this point, I took an afternoon and made scene notes … one scene at a time, I made the notation: “In which …” and described the action that would be taking place in that scene when I wrote it. This is my map, the road marker I look back on when I am tempted to tangent in a wonderfully written side-story which is completely irrelevant and that I would only have to cut later.

Yesterday I was back to characterizing, since a few of them had come forward while I was making scene notes and requested some changes, or suggested some motivational aids. That was when I got to the nitty-gritty – the physical appearance, the life goal/motivation, the internal agendas, etc.

I also started the list of the things I need — as I encounter something in my descriptions that is incomplete, I make a note of it and keep going, so as not to slow myself down on the details that don’t really matter and can be dealt with later. Currently this list is begging for a world map, names for towns and countries and Inns, and a real name for a guy I am referring to as “Nameless Guy” in every section of notes – before “Nameless Guy” sticks and I have to name him that – keep an eye out for a guy named Inconnu or some form thereof. It’s french for “nameless”. (Thank you Babel Fish!)

I should be starting the actual writing today or tomorrow.

And that’s how it happened.

The problem I am having, however, is the guilt. I have this terrible feeling that working on a long piece, a novel-length work, is nothing but selfish indulgence. Only short pieces are going to make it out into the world and keep my name in the pond … so how can I justify taking the time to write something no one will ever read because the publishing world is a dank, scary place and I don’t have a map or a sherpa? *sigh*

(previously published at Blogging in the Dark)

BY NIK PERRING

reprinted with permission from Nik’s Blog, January 26, 2010

I am not an expert on short stories. I’m not an expert on anything to be honest. But I am a short story writer, one who’s been published in some fairly spiffing places, and one who teaches writing every so often.

It occurred to me earlier that I don’t really give any advice here, so this post should change that. It’s not comprehensive. Lots will disagree with me, I’m sure. But this is what I think. I hope it helps. And if anyone’s got any of their own I’d love to see them – so do leave a comment.

Here are my tips for anyone wanting to write a good short story or piece of flash fiction.

Start where the story starts, not before. If I was telling you about a fantastic hotel room I’d stayed in I wouldn’t start by telling you about booking the tickets to get there (unless the story was about booking the tickets and ended in the room).

Take out everything, every word, every sentence, every character that isn’t absolutely necessary.

Similarly, only use the right words. Sometimes people do just ’sit’. Or ‘run’.

Make sure your characters are believable. What they do, or the situations they find themselves in, may be unlikely and fantastical but the way they react to them has to be something that readers will believe.

Be suspicious of anything you think is clever. The story comes first, the story’s what people should notice, not the writer.

Write for you, but spare a thought for the reader too.

Don’t overdo it. Big words are fine if they’re the right ones. Same with descriptions.

Say what you want to say in the simplest, and most effective, way possible. In other words: get to the point.

Aim to be brilliant.

Don’t expect it to be easy. Or quick. Be prepared to work hard.

Don’t be afraid of rewriting. In fact, embrace it; it will make your stories better.

Don’t expect to get it right the first time. You have total control of what can be changed. (I often find also that if a story wants or needs to be changed, then it’ll let you know.)

Trust your instincts. If you suspect something’s not working then it probably isn’t.

Don’t be afraid of putting a story away for a while. Sometimes stories, and your head, need space.

Don’t be afraid of failure. Nothing’s wasted. It’s better to try something new and fail (and perhaps learn something) than to play safe all the time.

Most importantly: BE BRAVE. You have an imagination, use it. Write the story you want to write, write what you think’s good and interesting, even if that means not sticking with the norm. Different, if done well, can be brilliant.

And read the greats. See how they do things. See why they’re the greats.

Nik Perring is a writer and workshop leader from the UK. His short stories have been published widely, in places including Smokelong Quarterly, 3: AM Magazine, Ballista, Word Riot and Metazen. His debut collection of short, short stories will be published by Roast Books in the summer. He’s also the author of a children’s book and occasional non-fiction. Nik blogs here . 

And no, I’m not talking about gossip.

Well, maybe I am if it’s a character in a story spreading gossip and thus dialogue is required.

One of the things I like about flash fiction is that dialogue has to be short and sweet. No room for pointless chatter. None. But even when you stick to only the vital dialogue that moves the story along while also giving the reader some idea of the character’s personality, you can still end up over that 1000 word limit.

So how can you keep the important dialogue in when you’re forced to cut words?

Simple.

Remove as many speaker attributions as you can. Those annoying “he said, she said” things get way overwitten. And besides, unless your character talks like a computer drone, most readers can figure out who is saying what by the dialogue alone–especially when you mix a little action in with the dialogue.

I’ll use an excerpt from my current novel-in-progress as a brief example. These three paragraphs occur immediately after Yavar and Shanak have a philosophical “debate” over the nature of revenge. Naturally, Yavar ends the debate in the manner she’s well known for:

“Enough!” Yavar reached for Shanak’s throat only to grasp air.

The god appeared behind her. Both his hands held her head. A burning energy poured out of Yavar and into him as she gasped. Her legs weakened then buckled under her. As she collapsed to the snowy ground, Shanak said, “If you insist on this road, then so be it. But you will not travel it as a god, but as a mortal. The divinity within you is now no more.” He called his staff back to his hand. “But as long as you wield Onarus, you remain a threat to us all. Unfortunately, you and the sword are bonded together.” He raised his staff for a strike. “Do not be troubled, mortal. You will soon meet your brother again.”

Yavar sneered. “That’s what you think.” She drew Onarus, spun, and ran Shanak through. The god’s eyes widened as a grunt escaped his throat. Energy poured back into Yavar, stronger and more potent than what she had stolen from Calahan. “Didn’t see that road, now did you?” 

Note that quite a bit of action and dialogue both occur in just three paragraphs with a speaker attribution appearing only once. You can tell which dialogue is Shanak’s both by it all being in the same paragraph and simply by the preachy way he talks. Yavar’s dialogue is in the first and third paragraph, but even if it wasn’t, readers would be able to tell it was her simply by it being short and sweet and having the sharp vicious wit Yavar fans know and love. The main reason I have it broken into three paragraphs is for clarity’s sake. I could have broken it into further paragraphs, but doing so would cost the sense of immediacy I was looking for.

It is also possible that with a minor tweak, even the one “Shanak said” can get removed, but I’ll worry about that when I get to the novel’s editing phase.

So play with dialogue a little, with the focus on ways to use it without speaker attributions. And while you’re at it, have a little fun experimenting in ways to mix it around with action, too. Once you get it handled, it can be a lot of fun to play with.

Scott M. Sandridge learned how to write through hard work, trial-and-error, and the occasional writers’ workshops. His fiction has appeared in Mindflights, Ray Gun Revival, Silver Blade,  Distant Passages, Volume I, The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, and Chimeraworld #6: New World Disorder.  His story, “Sleep Paralysis,” was a top ten finisher in the 2008 Preditors & Editors Readers Poll for the category of Short Story – Horror. He also writes reviews for Withersin, and is the Managing Editor of Fear and Trembling. More information can be found at http://smsand.wordpress.com.

I’m a relative newcomer to the writing scene, and it was my discovery of the online flash-fiction world that really prodded me into action.  I found one litmag, and then another, and so on until it all spiralled out of control and I was spending countless hours reading these hundreds of short-short stories, trying to figure out how the writers had managed to do so much in such a tiny space.  It was both gob-smacking and inspiring. 

The concision and the immediacy of flash fiction seemed to me to be something attainable and manageable, unlike the weave and sprawl of a novel, and so I decided to try my hand at it.  I’ve had a certain amount of success,  but, of course,  it’s a hell of a lot trickier than it looks, which only adds to my admiration for the writers who get it right.  Although I’ve a long way to go, the learning curve has been satisfyingly and exhaustingly steep, and each rejection slip teaches me something.

So that’s the short of it, but I wasn’t happy to leave it there: this September I enrolled upon an MA in creative writing, with the intention of hammering out a draft of a novel, or as much of one as I can manage in a year.  From the micro to the macro, then, in one demented leap. 

Novels were my first love as a reader, and it’s an enduring passion; so as much as I enjoy reading and writing flashes, I also want to make one of those bigger, fatter, monolithic chunks of prose, and the MA seemed like a good place to start.

The initial feedback on my workshopped pieces were much as you’d expect; coming from the get-to-the-point precision of flash fiction, all I was getting on my sample chapters was ‘Flesh it out!  Give me exposition!  Show us more setting!’  Next time round this turned to ‘You’re just rambling!  What’s the point of this?  Get to the action!’ 

So I’ve had to sit down and examine my approach, and the trick, as far as I can see right now (one semester in, three months wiser!) is to take everything you’ve learned from writing flashes, and apply it at a deeper level.  That sounds a little crazy, and it’s possible I’ve overdosed on mulled wine (it is the festive season, after all), but in flash fiction – as we know – every word has to work extremely hard and pack in a world’s worth of meaning, and so it seems more permissible and tempting, somehow, in a longer piece, to slack off when you know you’ve got the wiggle-room to elaborate and wander around the topic.  But of course that’s not so – the reader is a critical beast, and you’ve got to maintain their interest over a much greater span than, say, five hundred words.

What I think is needed, then, is to write everything in more close detail than you might in a flash – describe the room, detail the childhood, fill in the backstory, or whatever – but do this with every bit of precision and concision that you can pull from your flash fiction bag of tricks.  Flesh it out, give the reader the wealth of detail that makes a novel such a sumptuous treat, but always treat every single paragraph, every line of dialogue, as though it has to be accountable for itself, as though it has to be read aloud and examined as an entity onto itself.  It may not stand alone, plot-wise, but its language and structure and resonance should be as strong as any five hundred or two hundred word flash fiction piece that you’d ever consider subbing to a competition or a journal.

Now let’s see if I can practice what I preach, eh?

Valerie O’Riordan is an Irish writer based in Manchester, England, currently studying creative writing at the University of Manchester.  She blogs at Not Exactly True.

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.

“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.