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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several years ago, I was rummaging through a thrift store when I came across an odd sight: large bags filled with photo album pages. I stooped down to take a closer look. Each bag was priced at $1.99 and contained several pages, and there had to be at least twenty bags. I pulled a few out to take a look, and was stunned.

“Grandma’s funeral, 1951.” Weakly-colored pictures showed the old woman in the casket.

“Homestead.” A man and woman stood beside a shanty, rolling grasslands surrounding them.

Then the one that really sucker-punched me in the gut: the color picture of a dough boy in full gear. Handsome, young, ready to head off to France and battle the Bosch. A picture postcard of Paris accompanied the studio image. Did that mean he survived? Did he come home and start a family?

There was no way to tell. The pictures lacked context. No names, no locations, almost no dates. The person who assembled the album knew who Grandma was, but that meant nothing now.

Blinking tears back, I walked away from that corner of the thrift store. How could these pictures end up like this, so lost and anonymous? These people were loved. They had names. One thing was clear to me: I didn’t want my albums to ever suffer from that same fate.

Context. It means everything. Just because I know who someone is, that doesn’t mean the rest of my family does. Photo albums, scrapbooks, and fiction writing have major elements in common – they need setting. They need characters. I can look at pictures of Grandma in her casket and feel remote sadness, but I don’t know who she is or where she came from. She’s a strange dead woman. Nameless.

But what if her name was Ingrid? What if she was the firstborn daughter of Swedish immigrants and worked a homestead in the nothingness near Boise? She taught in a one-room schoolhouse, and patiently wrote letters and prayed for her sweetheart to return safely from war. She raised a family of six kids, had an infectious laugh and sparkling blue eyes. One of her sons landed on Normandy and he never left the beach. Ingrid remained deeply in love with her husband James until he died at 68 from a sudden aneurysm, and even after his death she still set a place for him at the table every night, simply because it was what she had always done.

Somewhere along the line, her true story was lost. After she died, her things fell to some son or grandchild or third cousin, and they didn’t know who all these strange people were. The sad thing is, she bears much of that responsibility. She took for granted that because she knew these people, others would know them, too.

As a writer, it’s easy to fall into that trap. We can’t. The stakes are too high. It doesn’t matter what I am writing now, whether it’s a novel, short story, or in one of my son’s many scrapbook albums. I think, “Where were we? What day was this? What are the full names of these people? Why does it matter?” My audience – whether they are readers online or my son at some future age – need to know. These stories aren’t just for me. If I want someone to care about the people and characters I love, they need to understand the context behind the snapshots.

(Reprinted from Catch A Star As It Falls: a writer’s blog)

Beth Cato’s work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine, Crossed Genres, and Six Sentences. A full list of her publications can be found at BethCato.com.

Consider lightning.  This phenomenon cracks open the sky, takes our breath away, but we might miss it if not for the warning of thunder.  We hear the deep rumble, we look up, tension sparking the air, and wait for the flash.  Thunder grabs our attention and lightning dazzles our eyes, and together they stir our hearts. 

Flash Fiction is fast, a 1000 words or less, every sentence written with purpose, not a word to waste.  And if this statement is true, it’s even truer for the first few words.   

In a story, especially a short story, the opening sentence, like thunder, arrests our attention, charms us, makes us curious.  If it doesn’t, we’ll turn our heads, move on, and miss the show. 

Consider the following examples from Every Day Fiction’s Top Ten List. 

We were children, not lovers, but as we lay on the grass looking at stars, talking of angels, she took my hand and said that a moment can change everything.  One Bright Moment, by Joel Willans.

“You are my heart and muscle, Yardi,” Napier would say. “There is no criminal in all of Marseilles who can stand against us.” Without Napier, by Michael Ehart.

Do they create tension?  Do they conjure up an image? How much do they tell the reader about character, plot, and setting?  What do they promise the reader?  Do they have a rhythm that seduces? In other words, do they rumble? 

Although not every first sentence can fulfill every purpose, a well-crafted one will announce, at the very least, something is about to happen.

What is “about to happen” in “One Bright Moment?”

Two children are star-gazing, talking of angels, and one says “a moment can change everything.”  The reader might be thinking, “what kind of moment?”  A good one?  Bad one?

Is there tension? 

The two main characters, a boy and a girl, are talking about angels.  This might suggest to a reader that death is lurking down the page or perhaps an illness.  The reader knows the peaceful first moment is brief. 

Is there an image? 

Children on their backs in the grass close enough to each other to join hands. 

What does the first line promise? 

This boy and girl are “not lovers,” but the reader might wonder, will they be lovers, and is this what this story is about?  Or will it be about what stands in their way, what will change in a moment?

What is “about to happen” in “Without Napier,” the second example.

Two men work as an “invincible” team against the criminal element, but the reader senses that one of the partners is no longer around through the words, “Napier would say…”  This perception is reinforced by the title of the story. 

Is there tension? 

Each of the two characters, Napier and Yardi, has his own skill set.  The reader understands that if Yardi is the heart and muscle, then Napier must be the brains. If one of the partners is gone and the other must fight alone, will he survive?

Is there an image? 

An implied image of two men working together on the side of right because they work against the criminal element, but with the designation of the setting, “Marseilles,” the whole of a reader’s knowledge of France, sea ports, and a few French words comes into play.  

What does the first line promise? 

The partner who is left behind will probably have to fight against the criminal element.  Without the “brains” of the operation, he will be the underdog.  Will he be smart enough to succeed?

 In the examples above, much is given to the reader as soon as he or she begins to read.

• The general nature of the characters, children, not old enough to be lovers, in one; male colleagues in the other. 
• A sense that whatever the situation has been, that situation will change in the story, thus creating tension.
• The setting is also suggested by the language used, a grassy place at night in “Moment” and a French seaport in “Napier.” 
• Characters set down in a specific place and time create an image for the reader.
• Each first line offers a question to be answered by the end of the piece: what will change for the two children in a moment and will Yardi survive without Napier?
• Each line has a rhythm that suggests the tone of the story.

Sometimes a perfect first sentence comes into a writer’s mind and inspires a particular story.  The words grow from those beginnings for the writer just as they grow for the reader.

However, frequently the language a writer uses to get himself started will not survive the rigors of writing and rewriting .  What the writer thought he was going to write changes.  In that case, it is the responsibility of the writer to craft openings that will entice readers and authentically enhance the story that follows. 

I’m not saying that a strong first line can make or break a story, but if a reader isn’t caught up in the first few sentences, he may not read far enough into the story to find out how good it is.

Here are some examples of openings.  Which entice you enough to click the link?  Do they have rhythm? Do they rumble?

“H… hello, Mr. Sterne.”

Water drips from icicles outside the kitchen window.

It was over 80 degrees in our Hollywood bungalow when my mother opened the door to our O’Keefe and Merritt oven, turned on the gas, and stuck in her head.

 He was D44 and Linda was D45, and, not being the earliest to take their seats, they did the sideways shuffle, coats in hand with smiling apologies.

 Aye aye, lad. You made it then. You cut it so fine I was beginning to think you might not be coming.

Tires crunched driveway stone and a black sedan appeared at the gate.

A toothpick hung from Lester’s mouth.

Three cookies arrived with our check from Pappa Chow’s Chinese Buffet.

I pulled out my old copy of  What If? (1990) by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter last week after reading  Ms. Painter’s essay “You and the Piano Bench” in Rose Metal’s Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara L. Masih. 

Running through the table of contents of What If? was like being plopped down at a Ritz-Carlton Sunday Brunch of Butt-Kicking Advice.   The “table” is piled with tasty dishes: “Beginnings” and “Notebooks” offer ways to get started. The main entrees of “Characterization,” “Point of View,” and “Plot” come next, followed by just desserts, “Resolution and Meaning.”   Garnishes such as “Dialogue” and “Games” crowd in between. 

The chapter I dove into is called “From Situation to Plot,” and that’s where I found the delicious quotation from Heraclitus:  “Character is destiny.”  Wow, I thought, I gotta share this.  Great advice for short fiction writers!

In their writing handbook, authors Bernays and Painter reference another book  Technique in Fiction  by Robie Macauley and George Lanning, stating that this “observation ‘character is destiny’ should be ‘written on the wall of every novelist’s study.’ ”

Why? Because it contains the two basic ingredients for any story, long or short.  

CHARACTER and PLOT: A particular character with specific strengths, flaws, and desires is put into a particular situation where he or she must take action and eventually resolve that situation either happily or tragically. 

Who that character is  (strengths and weaknesses) determines the action taken in the given situation, and  therefore also determines the results of that action.  This revelation of character under duress is why we read, listen to, and watch stories.

“Character is destiny.”  This aphorism from a Greek philosopher from Ephesus offers the some of the best advice I’ve seen for the writing of flash fiction.  It’s short!  No words are wasted.  Each word is essential. A character creates his own life by the actions he or she takes in any given situation.  Perfect. 

So for the writer of flash, I offer two bits advice.

1) Character: create a specific character who has  flaws; however, in the brief space of 500 or 1000 words, focus on one flaw, one weakness, something that creates doubt in the reader: how will this character come through this specific situation because, oh my gosh, he might not!  This helps instill empathy and emotion in the reader.

2) Situation: create a specific situation that challenges the very flaw a character has and don’t make it easy.  The choices available to the character depend on genre, but most choices work best when they aren’t between obvious good and obvious evil, but two evils.  Maybe between two goods also, but the point is that the choices be difficult, that the choices must call up in the character all his strength to choose right if the story is to end well…or choose wrong if the story is to end in tragedy.

In this way, the character creates his own destiny by his choices.  It is evitable and therefore, rings true.

So. 

“Character is destiny.”  

Write it out. 

Tape it to your computer.

Now get to work.

My favorite part of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers is his theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert.  I feel validation for one of my long-held beliefs: writing–good writing–is all about the seat of the pants in the seat of the chair. Mrs. Hawkins, my creative writing teacher in high school, insisted this simple act was the golden ticket to quality. I believed her then; I believe her now.   I just didn’t manage to do it for a long, long time. 

Ron Carlson’s book, Ron Carlson Writes a Story, offers another piece of the puzzle: how process, the act of “ just doing,” eventually leads to product. Carlson shows us what he means by letting us sit on his shoulder as he puts together his story. He maintains that working through a story one sentence at a time, putting down what you know about the story rather than worrying about what you don’t, is a viable path.

When a friend shared with me that she’s decided the best way for her to work is to sit down and “let it  happen,”  it resonated. This is exactly what Carlson does. He says “process” is the key, finding your own way to get words on the page.   Here’s the way I do it.

I do whatever part of “getting it down” feels right as a first step, whether it’s a full-to-the-end draft, notes, outline, or brainstorm. This varies with the trigger, the dawning of an concept in my brain, what it is: a title, a plot, a character, an incident, a theme.

2. Whatever I end up with, plot, free-writing, or notes, I work from there.

If it’s mostly a plot, I make an informal outline, filling in the blanks, the who-what-when-where-how-why of each scene in the outline. I remind myself that scenes, scene-sequences, chapters, parts, the whole story, should have answers to first five questions somewhere in the text. I try to identify the possible theme, the “why,” but often I have no idea.If, instead of coming up with a loose sequence of events resembling an outline, I’ve sat down, told myself to “go,” and put together a draft based on what pops into my head, I search for what my subconscious is telling me, look for possible scenes-segments-acts, and ask myself what scenes have I missed, what might be the theme given what I have typed out in front of me, what the spine might be etc. I also consider the order I’ve placed these scenes in. Does it make sense?

If I’ve come up with notes and brainstorming, and this is my most common way of proceeding, I write a quick draft. Sometimes I do a little research about the “where” or the “what” before I write that first draft, but often I just go.

3. If the story’s got something compelling about it, all the above converges, in the first, second, or third draft, I find myself with a decent working draft. Then it’s time for me to do some kind of analysis. These are the things I look at:

Character
Are characters clear, defined, and have their own problems and attitudes? Are they in opposition with each other? Do they fulfill a purpose in the story? What is each one’s purpose?

Plot
Does the sequence of events set up an inevitable, yet unexpected ending? Are there set-ups and pay-offs throughout the story? Are the transitions from scene to scene clear? Does the plot support the emerging theme in the best way it can?

Time and place
Is the setting defined or purposefully undefined? Can the reader SEE what’s going on, like it’s up on the big screen? How do time and place contribute to theme?

Theme
Does this story have the ability to resonate with the reader on both a personal and universal level? Is it compelling? Have all the other elements been put into service to enhance and clarify the theme?

Language
Have all the clichés and borrowed images been purged to the best of my ability? Do the sentences act as real sentences? (Tell the reader something specific) Have I said things twice that don’t need to be said? Have I pared away all useless language? Changed most of the general words like “it” to meaningful, concrete nouns that clarify and enhance?

4. I rewrite.

At this point, I look for intelligent, kind, but honest readers to find flaws and re-enforce the story’s strong qualities. I want them to tell me what works and what doesn’t work.

I let the comments of others guide me in decisions, but I’ve learned to trust the little voice in my head. My purpose often trumps someone else’s take on the story.

I read the story aloud, have a friend proof-read it, and proofread it myself.

7. I submit it to, hopefully, the right markets.

8. Then I start a new story.

Whether I’ve become one of Malcolm’s experts is highly debatable, but this I can say for sure: 20+ years of writing practice has enriched my life beyond measure. Striving to be good at something is its own reward.

As an experiment, I am currently writing a story online at my Words in Place Blog.  I started last week, making myself get the seat of my sweatpants into the seat of my chair every day.  Check out my progress beginning with May 27th “Dare Ya!”

Here’s the line up from first draft from one of my writing prompts posted above on EDF’s Flash Fiction blog under “Writing Prompt.”

Dare Ya!

Dare Ya Two!

Second Day, Third Fly-Thru

Second Day, Fourth Look

Third Day, Is this ever going to turn into anything?

Third Day, Another run-What does the structure look like?

About the old guy coming through the door

So I today I’ve got to keep going… I’m working toward my 10,000 hours and don’t have a minute to lose.  Check over there later if you aren’t bored to tears!

Gay Degani has been published in two mystery anthologies, in THEMA Literary Journal, and Women’s Quality Fiction as well as on-line at Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Tattoo Highway, and Salt River Review.  “Spring Melt” was a finalist for The 2nd Annual Micro Fiction Award and was nominated by Every Day Fiction for a Pushcart Prize.  She recently won 1st place in the Women on Writing Winter 2009 Flash Fiction Contest with “Beyond the Curve.”

IT IS GENERALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that writing short fiction requires a different skill set than writing longer pieces like novels. As some of us have found out, writing micro fiction, or flash, requires yet another set. Yes, it is all about telling a story, and the basic mechanics of grammar, word choice, and all the other tricks and tropes learned by hard hours at the word processer all apply, but the actual telling of a story becomes much different when constrained to 1000 words or less.

Fiction, at least the type of fiction that rewards a reader with something more than time killed, requires that the writer have something valuable to say. The story must tell some important truth or revelation about the human condition, else it lacks a heart. With so few words in a flash story, there is almost no way to hide that absence. So, even more than usual, the writer must ask the question, “Why am I writing this?” Without pages of snappy dialog and detailed description, there is not enough camouflage to hide this lack.

As always, the story is the thing. The best flash carries with it all the things that make any other story work, a beginning, middle and end, a protagonist who changes or makes their surrounding change in a meaningful way, strong dialog, vivid description, and some sort of payoff for the reader. It can be difficult to shoe-horn all of these elements into such a small word-count, but good flash fiction stories generally do.

More than any other form, the right words become vital. I am not usually one to agonize over finding the perfect way to say something, unless I am writing flash. In that case I have no choice. The least bit of rhetorical flabbiness pokes the reader in the eye. There just isn’t room for “Albrecht found himself staring out of the window, reflecting on the fact that he hadn’t seen the sun light up his garden for nearly a fortnight, and the oppressive and constant drizzle had begun to affect his mood in a way that matched the sodden turf that lined the edge of his prized and now over-watered begonias.” Depending on the amount of room available, that might become “It rained for nearly two weeks, until Albrecht’s mood was as damp as his lawn.” Or even, “Al was tired of the rain.”

Getting there can be as difficult and time consuming as writing a much larger piece. In fact, most of my flash pieces start as a larger first draft, often times as much as three times as long as the finished product. This lets me fit in all of the parts of the story I wish to tell. Then I work on making it shorter, sharper and more succinct. Thoughts and sentences are made shorter, and sometimes combined. Under the constraint of word count, passive voice is easy to lose, as are bloated constructions. Best of all, it lets me pick the best way to say something in mid-context, rather than building the story one agonizing toothpick at a time.

In the end, writing a good flash piece can be as satisfying and frustrating as any other writing endeavor, all to produce something read in the amount of time it takes for the average visit to the water closet. The SpW (Sweat per Word) factor can be astronomically high, and inversely proportionate to the financial rewards. But then, none of us ever expected to get rich and famous writing flash did we?

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.

Bill Ward is, most probably, a figment of his own imagination. His flash has appeared at Every Day Fiction, Murky Depths, and the anthologies Dead Souls and Northern Haunts, as well as The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008. He blogs about all things genre at www.billwardwriter.com.

By its nature, flash fiction often captures brief moments in time, snapshots of a character’s life. These snapshots can cover a profound moment of epiphany or change in the status quo, or simply express the universal mundane. Flash is like a news story – the audience gets a condensed biography and a summary of what could be the defining moment of a human being’s life.

Much like reporters, though, sometimes we fiction writers get scooped. For example, science is particularly good at coming up with advances and scenarios that even the best writers can’t imagine. The realities of cloning, for example, are far different from most of the speculative hyperventilating that predates the technology (or the political hyperventilating that came after).

Science aside, real life is messy and complicated, and there’s little that writers can imagine that hasn’t happened to someone somewhere, and probably in a more ridiculous fashion than anyone could make up. Take recent events in Mexico, for example; a drug war, flu outbreak, and an earthquake all in just a few weeks? Come on now, Mexico. Your readers can only be asked to buy so much. That’s one plot twist too many if you ask me. What’s next week, a zombie outbreak?

Shortly after Every Day Fiction accepted my story “Aftershocks” (go check it out first if you haven’t already, as I don’t want to spoil anything) a tragic news report came out that mirrored the core events of the story. A 12-year-old boy killed a man, stabbed him in the back, in defense of his mother, who was being choked. At first I fretted over the story, worried that perhaps I would look like I’d just imitated the real events. Not that I was the first to ever suggest such a thing could happen, just that the timing was a little too convenient.

The thing that saved me, though? And really the thing that saves all of us fiction writers?

It doesn’t matter.

If we aren’t stealing (accidentally or otherwise) something from the real world, cleaning it up and presenting it with witty dialogue, a genre trope, and a likeable character or two, we aren’t doing our job. Perhaps a new setting puts a different shade of meaning on the events. Maybe making the hero a different gender will cast light on taboo issues. What really makes a story interesting is the spin and package that the author puts on the events. Stories are fun as a result of language and perspective as much as the facts or plot points. In flash fiction, in which there is often very few events, language and perspective may even be significantly more important.

Our art imitates life. And occasionally, if we are lucky, life will imitate our art. Except for the zombie outbreaks. I could do without those.

Alexander Burns lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He writes because he doesn’t have a basement in which build robots or time machines. His work has appeared at Every Day Fiction and A Thousand Faces.