Flash Fiction Chronicles

Any “how-to” list about writing seems bound to be subjective, with the advice—”Write as I do!”—coming as no surprise. My entry here about flash is no exception.

First, here’s my bare bones narrative structure for the short story: 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. Vonnegut’s oft-quoted advice to begin as close to the conclusion as possible works well for flash. Guided by that suggestion, a flash writer might begin with “Finally, there’s resolution.” The writer might find a way to imply the rest—that inciting incident, that series of actions. Or maybe a writer might want it all, the all of the short story structure, and write a compressed version with all the parts in place.

Flash narrative, in my world, doesn’t want to be a diminished version of the short story; it doesn’t desire what already exists. Flash fiction possesses a restlessness, an unsettled nature. If something’s been done, flash wants something else; no part of it wants to be a diminutive form of the short story. How a writer rises to meet the challenge of compressed narrative determines (for me) the success of a flash narrative. As a flash writer, I’m constantly looking for ways to take advantage of the opportunities presented by compression, and once one strategy seems to work, I’m off to find the next. By looking at what’s behind the traditional narrative—what it is that each section delivers for the reader—flash writers might be able to discover their own ways to make (very) short narrative pieces flash.

Perhaps the key to compressed narrative is “the inciting incident”; in short, it is the something that happens at the outset of a story. The inciting incident answers, for the reader,  the question, “Why now?” If one thinks of a character’s life as a timeline, then the story, especially a flash story, becomes the tiniest moments upon that line. Why, of all the moments, is this the one that makes the moment story worthy? The inciting incident answers that question as such: “Because something happened.” Okay. But characters experience a bunch of things each day, so there’s things writers might add to increase that “story-worthy” quotient of a moment. Having something happen may not be be enough to give a story a sense of purposeful existence. That “something that happens” might need other qualities. These include the following:

The something that happens is different for the character. It isn’t something that happens every day. If it is something that happens regularly, then there’s at least something different about this time.

The something that happens is odd, not only for the character, but for the reader.

The something that happens is the very thing that the character needs to figure out. For example, Eliot in E.T. could’ve been given anything, but he gets the very thing he needs to guide him on his quest. At the movie’s beginning, Eliot’s brother yells at him about his insensitivity toward others, asking Eliot when he’s going to think about what others feel. Thus, Eliot gets E.T., whose supernatural ability allows Eliot to feel what E.T. feels, the very thing Eliot needs.  Thus, the more meaningful the “something that happens” is to a character—the more it arises as the guide toward solving the character’s inner & outer problems—the less “so what?” feeling a story might have.

The something that happens gives the character a specific goal. Antigone begins with Creon’s edict that no one, not even Antigone, may bury her brother. This “something that happens” gives Antigone her goal: bury the brother. In Joyce’s “Araby,” the boy’s encounter with Mangan’s sister and the arrival of Araby into town gives him a goal (even though Mangan’s sister seems unaware of it): Bring her back something from Araby. That singular, concrete goal created by the initial “happening” gives the story the same thing it gives the character: a sense of purpose.

There’s a gain and commensurate loss attached to that initial incident (referred to in the fiction world as stakes). Stakes in movies often get artificially raised, so that finishing fifth grade has attached to it huge wealth (and usually, eventually, love), and enemies that arrive (be they aliens, terrorists, viruses) often put the very existence of the world at stake. There’s not much place, perhaps, for life and death stakes in flash, so the stakes often are attached to the character’s desire. The more a character wants something, the more to be gained and loss; the more important to the character’s life that goal becomes, the more to be gained and loss. So, I guess, in short, make the goal something the character really wants, make it so that something concrete will be gained and something equally concrete/important might be lost, and see how close you can get to having a character go all in to get it. That’s when the game gets interesting, methinks. That also helps with that idea of purpose. Why now? This is the moment when the character was forced to go all in to get his or her desire.

Of course there’s more to it than this, much more, but it’s a start. So the question becomes, what’s a flash writer to do, given the demands of compression and the desire to be something other than a short short story, to make the flash matter to a reader? One of my former teachers, Xu Xi, called this aspect of story “the dramatic imperative,” the reason for a story’s existence, the why of its being, of this moment’s being chosen over all the others.

A story I’ve been working on forever has this as the story. A son who has a life-threatening allergy to milk has gotten sick twice before when he’s with his father. The father swears he hasn’t given him milk and/or checked the ingredients of everything his son has eaten. After the third time, after the rush to the hospital and his wife’s giving him some kind of ultimatum, he decides to recreate the situation of his son’s having an anaphylactic reaction by hiding in the closet. From that vantage point, he sees his son go the refrigerator to get milk. At that point, the father comes out and confronts the son, who is maybe six to eight years old. And so on.

The problem with me, among other things, is that I don’t know what’s going to happen until I write the story. In other words, it’s in writing the story that I discover what the father will discover, the why of his son’s purposefully drinking milk. I think it has something to do with the son’s wanting to see that urgent love in his father, a love that only the milk brings out. But I’m not sure if that’s it. But if that’s it, if that’s the thing the father must confront, his son’s need for a father’s love made visible, then story gets transformed into plot and narrative by thinking of those aforementioned questions centering around making the moment feel like a plotted narrative, rather than as something else, something that might lead a reader to say “So what?”

Boy, that was convoluted, yes? In short, I need to make the reader think there’s a reason for this narrative to exist. And, if it’s flash, I need to figure out how to meet the demands of compression so that the story doesn’t feel like a shortened form of the short story, so that it feels like something else, like a flash. So here’s a quick, drafty look at my first draft opening, with comments.

Got It

Through the crack of the pantry, Jake watched Samuel eating the turkey sandwich at the kitchen table, the green island of countertop and burners between them, keeping Jake hidden from Samuel’s sight. Samuel twisted in circles, looked for Jake, then back to the milk glass Jake had left next to Samuel, around again for Jake, back to the glass as Jake’s weight shifted forward.

Three times, Jake had to blare through stop signs—Ben’s mouth in the rearview mirror, like a beached carp. This last time, Jake had read the ingredients for the water ice twice, had asked three times if they ever had used the ice cream scoop for the water ice. And still milk had found its way to Ben’s blood, puffing him up, taking breaths, only this time Jake had overheard the doctor’s crummy accusations about what he’d been doing to his seven-year-old. Here’s a common thing that happens in my flashes, something I’ve been working to eliminate: the interrupting exposition that comes after the in medias res opening. I’ve noticed it more & more in flashes, and for me at least, it’s a result of the desire to begin in the middle of things but get the needed information to the reader also.

“Maybe the father wants him sick. That’s the only explanation. Four times, now. All with him and no one else.” Part of that interrupting exposition. One solution might be to find a way either to parcel it in throughout in smaller chunks or find a way to imply all of it through a title. Imagine that.

But the truth that Jake now suspected—what else could it be?—might be even more terrible. And then Samuel did it—reached for the milk, held it in both hands, and raised it toward his mouth, his lips cracking open, wider and willing. Jake sprang into the kitchen, cracked his hip on the corner of the granite island.

“F*ck!”

The glass and milk slipped out of Samuel’s hand, hit the edge of the table, bounced harmlessly away to shatter on the ground.

Samuel grinned. “Dad. You’re here.” I kind of like the son’s reaction here. It feels a bit understated, a bit unexpected. Maybe it’s a keeper. It forces upon the dad further questioning, further action. It’s not an answer yet. It’s more of that Matrix-like splinter in the mind.

“That’s it? Dad, you’re here.”

“That’s it. Let’s throw the baseball, okay?” Samuel walked gingerly around the puddle of milk, toward the front door and outside. Somewhere, Jake thought, Samuel had learned that milk brought Daddy and that desperate love rush toward him. Daddy’s love, for Samuel, became worth the sacrifice of breath. Samuel wanted to be suffocated with it. Only Daddy didn’t have that kind of love. No one did. I’m not sure if this is a keeper, these thoughts of the Dad. Really, they’re my figuring out what the story’s about, but they might be okay to keep. I like these moments of “figuring out,” for it reminds me of the story’s purpose, of desire for an answer (finally) put into some kind of action.

I’ll stop here, by showing the revised version of the title & first paragraph, the second draft, still quite drafty, but maybe a bit more helpful in showing what I’m trying to say here about compressed flash narrative.

Only This Time

This title feels stronger, implying an inciting incident, the “different” thing that enters the character’s life to give him a story. It also feels as if it makes good  use of compression and creates that flash-sense of the story bursting into existence, right from the outset.

Jake had overheard the doctor’s crummy accusations about what he’d been doing to his seven-year-old: “Maybe the father wants him sick. That’s the only explanation. Four times, now. All with him and no one else.” So now, through the crack of the pantry, Jake watched Samuel eating the turkey sandwich at the kitchen table, the green island of countertop and burners between them, keeping Jake hidden from Samuel’s sight. Samuel twisted in circles, looked for Jake, then back to the milk glass Jake had left next to Samuel, around again for Jake, back to the glass as Jake’s weight shifted forward.  This opening maybe creates a bit more tension, a bit more urgency without that interrupting exposition. In terms of compressed narrative, the character arrives into the flash already in the midst of the action created by the inciting incident; he’s already committed himself to finding answers, and the answer seems to have something at stake, something important to him, something that will matter should he discover its truth.

And so on. With each revision, I find more opportunities to compress, more chaff, get closer to the essential thing that this flash might be about. That singular focus is something I love about flash, that way it goes for it, like a Saints coach at the beginning of a second half, as if it were the only chance one got in life. Flash says, to me, “This is it! Don’t blink. Don’t breathe. This is the moment and you won’t have to wait for it.” It begins with the title. It’s action created by the desire to know no matter what the consequence. This flash, the one about the father and son and the milk, isn’t there yet. But one day it might be. One day it might flash, filling the tiniest of spaces with something brilliant. Boom. Pow. Shazam.

Randall Brown teaches at and directs Rosemont College’s MFA in Creative Writing and Graduate English programs. He is the author of the award-winning (very) short fiction collection Mad To Live and his essay appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. He recently served as the Lead Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. His work has been published widely, both on line and in print. He can be reached at http://randalldouglasbrown.blogspot.com/.

For the week of February 7 through February 14, Flash Fiction Chronicles is  having its second String-of-10 Contest—String of 10 TWO—for the best 250-word story written from a specific prompt: a series of ten words given to you on February 7, 2010. For the seven days between February 7 and February 14  instead of a new prompt each day from Daily Prompts, we are having a contest for the best 250-word story written from the  String-of-10 ( words and phrase) posted below.

PROMPT

STRING OF TEN

SURVIVAL-SKIMMILK*-LOLLYGAG-CRYPTIC-ONLOOKER-LEAK-RAW-FORBIDDEN-RADIO-VERDIGRIS

QUOTATION

 A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. –Thomas Carlyle.

*Note of clarification: “skim-milk” is a hypenated word in the editor’s dictionary.  The hyphen was left out in the first string to clarify that skim and milk belong together.  Here is an alternate way to see the string:

*SURVIVAL/SKIM-MILK/ LOLLYGAG/CRYPTIC/ONLOOKER/

LEAK/RAW/FORBIDDEN/RADIO/VERDIGRIS

GUIDELINES

1. Read the contest’s String of 10 Writing Prompt which will be available at 12:01 on February 7, 2010 here as well as on the FFC Daily Prompt Page and at Gay Degani’s Author Thread at Every Day Fiction. 
2. The contest is open to stories of  up to 250 words. Entries over the word limitation will be disregarded.
3. Submit via email addressed to flashfictionblog@everydayfiction.com.   All entries must be copy and pasted into the body of the email. No attachments will be opened.
4. There is no entry fee.
5. You may enter as many 3 separate and different stories up to 250-words each. 
6. All stories must contain at least four words from the String of 10.  Any stories without at least four words from the string of 10 will be disregarded.  The prompt words may be slightly modified such as tense, number, etc.  (Example: walk can be amended to walks, walked, even walker or walkers)
7. The aphorism that is given doesn’t not need to be found in the story, but rather to be used as an additional source of inspiration.  No story will be judged on its use.  Note may be taken if a story uses the aphorism in an inspired way.
8. What matters most is your story, not the prompt words or quotation.  Seamless integration of any four of the prompt words is the goal. 
9. All entries must be in English, original, unpublished, and not submitted or accepted elsewhere at the time of submission. Flash Fiction Chronicles/Every Day Fiction/Every Day Publishing reserves one-time publication rights to the 1st- through-3rd winning entries to be published at Every Day Fiction and Flash Fiction Chronicles.
10. Entries must be received via email by 11:59 PDT Sunday, February 14.
11. Winners will be notified by March 20.  Publication will follow in April. 
12. The preliminary decision the judges of the top 10 and the final decision by guest judge, Joel Willans, of the top three stories are final.

 Stories from the first String-of-10 Contest can be read at these links.

 1^st Place: The Haircut by Sharon E. Trotter

2^nd Place: The Forever Summer by Mary J. Daley

3^rd Place: Choices Made by Jim O’Loughlin

PRIZES

1st Place: Winner will have his or her story published at Every Day Fiction in April 1010 and be paid the standard payment of $3.00 per story.   A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles  will also be awarded as well as an “I Write Every Day” t-shirt.

2nd and 3rd Place: Winners will have their stories published at Flash Fiction Chronicles in April.  (NOTE:There is no payment for publication at Flash Fiction Chronicles.)  A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles  will also be awarded to both 2nd and 3rd place winners.

However at least four words from the prompt must  be used. 

TIPS

1. Do not dash off the first thing that comes to mind and email five minutes later.  READ IT, REWRITE IT, and PROOFREAD IT.

2. Start with a strong first sentence.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the first sentence you write, but rather the best sentence you write after you have a feeling for what the story is about.  Engage the reader with detail and conflict.

3. Words need to be carefully chosen in short fiction.  Your rough draft may use vague imprecise language, but your final draft should shine with specific detail, active verbs, and vivid language.

4. An exact definition of what constitutes a story is not possible because “story” means different things to different readers.  In this case, a story might be best served if it can draw some kind of emotion from the reader with characters who are caught in a moment of internal or external conflict,  the outcome of which can be good or bad or obscure.  If in doubt, send it on.

 That’s it.  Good Luck!

About Joel Willans

Originally from Suffolk in the UK, Joel Willans has lived in Canada, Finland and Peru. A copywriter and travel blogger, he now gallivants between East Anglia, Helsinki and Spain. Joel’s stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and published in more than a dozen anthologies and many magazines. In 2008, he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and won the Yeovil Prize and Global Short Story Award. “By ma biscuit or kiss ma fish”, his short story collection, is currently shortlisted for the Scott Prize, while his flash fiction can be found at places like Prick-of-the Spindle, Pank, Word Riot and Boston Literary Magazine. His story “One Bright Moment” is Every Day Fiction’s most popular story of all time.

Remember when Lars Ulrich of Metallica went “crazy train” over Napster? Now most musicians purposefully give away mp3s of their music. Funny how times change.

I don’t mind giving away some of my stories. (Flash Fiction Fridays, duh.)

But I won’t self-publish a novel. Not yet. And I’m glad I didn’t start handing out short stories on my blog when I started writing.

When you self publish (be it POD or traditional or what-ever), you eliminate competition. Yes, competition sucks sometimes. Yes, the system has inherent “unfairness”. Yes, there is a bit of nepotism out there. And name? Man, once you have one, you can write your ticket. Have you ever read an anthology and felt the strongest stories came from “unknowns” while the best-sellers punted? It happens. Too much, in my opinion.

But competition breeds a better story. It makes writing better. It’s made me work harder; I know that much. And yes, competition brings rejection (or losses, however you want to frame it). Yesterday, it brought three to me: one from a long-time short list, another from a pro market, and a third from a market that just decided to close, bang. I hated “writing” for a couple of hours yesterday, but I’ll keep writing. It’s what I do. And “unfairness” is just another excuse.

I’ve learned to cherish the challenge that writing brings. I don’t love competition, but I love what it’s done to me. I love chiseling away at a story because I know it isn’t good enough, not yet. I want them all to be that story, the one readers want to share. Wouldn’t have happened without competition. It wouldn’t have happened if I gave up. There would be no thrill, no joy if I self-published from “go”.

So I won’t self-publish a novel. Not yet. But I don’t mind sharing bits and pieces; I know I need to in today’s writing world (remember the Metallica lesson?) Flash fiction = free mp3s, right?

 Reprinted from The Other Aaron which appeared on January 19, 2010.

Aaron Polson currently resides in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, two sons and a tattooed rabbit, enjoying every mood swing in the Midwest weather. His flash fiction has appeared in Every Day Fiction, 10Flash, Northern Haunts, Everyday Weirdness, and on various bathroom walls.  Stop by his blog and read the free Friday flash.

The question I’m most asked is, “What is flash fiction?” It is often, according to Google Insights for Search, one of the top searches associated with flash.

Imagine a reader picking you up, pressing you against a wall, demanding the truth of what you know. Never lose the feel of wall against your spine, the urgency of the demand for something real, the grip of the reader around your neck. Imagine there are only so many words. Imagine there’s but one way to tell it,  a single word fit for each slot.

Imagine the moment you begin, the flash desires its ending; imagine the flash holds you responsible so that the tiniest things matter, so nothing burns without purpose. Imagine that reader slapping you time and time again, saying, “No, that ain’t it.” Imagine trying to tell this reader, the one lifting you up, grasping your breath, pressed against your chest, about something trite. (Notice how wrong trite is for this slot, how it ruins things in the worst of ways, how a different word might make it all rite/right.). Imagine you can’t get away without confrontation, without finding something to satisfy the need for meaning in a world gone ephemeral, out of time, where all its words have lost power to convey the real.

Imagine even the title matters. Imagine it captures the back story, implies the aftermath, hints at subtext, works its way into the flash itself. Imagine, out of nothingness, there’s flash. Imagine a world without its history, without its dreams, its flashbacks. Imagine you tell a story like that,  in that moment, nothing beyond it, except maybe that title, like the truth of Rosebud, something denied the piece itself, given only to its readers.

Imagine that you were born to write flash, to work in the crampest of spaces, to compress narrative the way the universe was once compressed into the tiniest of spots, so much so that time did not exist. Imagine you write not about the explosion itself, but the moment before, the world after. Imagine you write flash because there’s no time left to write anything else but.

What is flash? It is a machine of compression, a mindset—that desire to make the most minute of movements matter. It is fiction that cannot tolerate uncertainty for but a moment, so it rushes to its ending before it loses nerve. It’s fearlessness in the face of insignificance. Your own “Attention must be paid” in a world that no longer holds any. It’s the urge to get it all down and then to move on quickly to something else. That madness of a room covered in scribbled notes, the kind stuck in bottles and floated on oceans.

What is flash? It’s a very tiny thing that doesn’t want to be anything else. It has jammed you into a hall, shoved you against it, demanded you fill the nothing of space with something uncontainable. Micro. Sudden. Flash. Fiction.  Imagine this is what you were made for. And then get to it, before nothing’s left to say.

Randall Brown teaches at and directs Rosemont College’s MFA in Creative Writing and Graduate English programs. He is the author of the award-winning (very) short fiction collection Mad To Live and his essay appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. He recently served as the Lead Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. His work has been published widely, both on line and in print. He can be reached at http://randalldouglasbrown.blogspot.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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or get them all drunk on apple cider.

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

At first I was happy to just get the story down on paper! After a career writing for other people—brochures, radio spots, press releases—early retirement offered the time to indulge in personal writing. Non-fiction was fun, seeing my byline in a magazine or newspaper article was an ego boost, but after that first fiction class, I was hooked.

 Writing a novel is hard enough, but without an MFA or long list of big name publishing credits, finding an agent to take on a literary novel from a first-time author, in this wobbly publishing market, is even harder. As I polished the manuscript, I focused on getting more short stories published, and started blogging. The goal was to create an online presence, and generate website traffic to read posted stories and excerpts from published work.

 When I accepted the offer to guest post on If You Give A Girl A Pen, I hoped to share a writer’s block process that had worked for me, and in return, increase visibility for my blog and website. Read the post here.

 There was a noticeable response . . . a marked increase of hits on the website, new Twitter followers, (quality contacts worth following back) and a handful of invitations to connect on LinkedIn.

 But, there’s more . . .

 Karina Fabian, a LinkedIn contact and fellow writer, shared ideas on ways to maximize the guest blog exposure. Other LinkedIn writers steered me toward sites they frequent, connecting me to a new batch of writing communities like PerpetualProse &  SheWrites.

 The second post on If You Give A Girl A Pen confirmed the momentum was building, and when an agent requested a synopsis and full copy of my novel, WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW, I was convinced. It’s time to revamp the website home page!

Ginger B. Collins writes short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work appears online and has been published in Freckles to Wrinkles, Silver Boomers, and the newly released Scratch Anthology of Short Fiction. She recently completed her first novel. Read excerpts at www.gingerbcollins.com.  All writers are invited to follow the blog and share experiences. http://coppertopcollins.blogspot.com.

CONGRATULATIONS to Sharon E. Trotter and her story, “The Haircut,” for placing FIRST in the 1st String-of-10 Flash Fiction Contest sponsored by Flash Fiction Chronicles  and Every Day Fiction.   Sharon’s story will be published in October at Every Day Fiction.  Mary and Jim’s stories will be published in October at Flash Fiction Chronicles.  Exact publications dates to follow.

Here are the final results:

 THE WINNERS

 HONORABLE MENTION

 THE FINALISTS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

PRIZES

1st Place Winner will have his or her story published at Every Day Fiction in October and be paid the standard payment of $3.00 per story.   A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction, 2008 will also be awarded to the winner as well as an “I Write Every Day” t-shirt.

2nd and 3rd Place Winners will have their stories published at Flash Fiction Chronicles in October.  There is no payment for publication at Flash Fiction Chronicles.  A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction, 2008 will also be awarded to both 2nd and 3rd place winners.

There seems to be a notion among some writers that flash fiction is just too darned short. Non-writers don’t share this opinion — that is, if they even think about flash fiction at all — to them the shorter the piece, the easier it must have been to write. Writers know better. It becomes pretty obvious to anyone even attempting flash that its hard word-count ceiling creates a different set of challenges than the average short story. Many writers, therefore, give flash fiction a wide berth — it’s just too much of a headache to get everything done in less than a 1,000 words.

Me, I’m relieved that flash has a ceiling. That’s what makes it fun, a snack, something I can have complete control over as a writer.

But there is more to it than that. In imposing sharp limits on a story’s size, flash fiction liberates the writer by forcing certain kinds of behaviors. You cannot write an effective piece of flash that is bloated or rambling — though I believe a good writer could suggest those very things with clever prose. You cannot have sprawling plots, or a large cast of characters, or multiple points of climax. You cannot spend words to no effect.

It’s the difference between the sport of fencing, and an actual sword fight. You’d be liable to see more technique and control in a fencing match precisely because it is limited, because it has rules that govern movement, striking, duration, and so on. Not so a free-form dual with the same weapons, in which a whole host of variables from screaming and spitting and sand-throwing, to hurling one’s blade and hiding up a tree, or, just maybe, to cheating by showing up with a gun, could lead to utter chaos. The second situation is the harder situation to control (and, in my example, clearly the more dangerous), and it is also the situation in which one can cheat.

You cannot cheat with flash — at least, ‘cheating’ in the form of going over the word limit would render one’s flash fiction piece into something else, and would most likely get you rejected from markets specifically looking for flash. But not being able to use words numbered 1,001 to infinity means you never have to worry about them — they don’t exist in the world of flash.

To use another example, imagine a situation in which you were hired as a landscaper. You’ve got to create a full-blown paradise behind someone’s house, complete with garden, little ponds, strategically placed trees and hills, maybe a gazebo — you get the idea. So, you’re led to see the vacant field where you’ve got to do the work and it’s big enough to function as a landing strip for a DC-10. Sure, you can do it, it’s a question of time. But, will you end up with a unified garden, or a lot of little patches of paradise all over the place? Will you have to bring in colossal trees and engineer dramatic slopes and defiles to balance the sheer size of the plot, or will just putting a lot more little stuff in there get the job done?

Of course, the same job on a plot one tenth or one one-hundredth the size of our landing strip will be much, much simpler. That is not to say that the work will be easy — indeed, you won’t have as much space and freedom to include everything you like within your tiny yard — but you will gain a sharper focus for knowing you cannot plant or dig beyond the sturdy little fences ringing you in. And, when the two jobs are done, both may turn out to be magnificent, but only in the small garden will the appreciative viewer be able to step back, and take in the entirety of the composition at a glance.

This is not to say that one form is better than the other, only that each offer different challenges and rewards. Flash may seem to some writers who have not really given it a try to be too constricting, too limiting. But it’s these very limits that make it great — flash’s rules encourage the kind of sharp focus and tight control that make writing, and writers themselves, better.

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.

Recently I was invited to submit to a new market, and even given a prompt with which to work, but none of my initial attempts were panning out. Then, random perusing of the Internet gave me this interesting bit of trivia – there is a clock tower in Ireland, in Cork, which has four faces, and each face tells a different time. This inspired the thought: “What if, rather than three of those faces being wrong, all four are right?”  Breakthrough!

Wait, and somebody even wrote a poem about this clock? Get outta here! The story practically wrote itself! Seriously, I’m not sure why I showed up that day.

Research can take a number of different forms, each of which serve different purposes, and all of which are invaluable to honing the craft of writing. Here’s a few:

Reading other stories in the genre is research, as you need to see how it’s been done, learn the conventions of the genre, pick up tips, etc. Don’t put blinders on to what’s going on in your chosen field.

Names are important, so don’t just randomly grab a name from a phone book. Make sure characters have period-appropriate names, and be aware of ethnic implications (of surnames in particular). Look out for historical or pop culture significance that might color a reader’s view of a character. There are plenty of resources to check (my personal favorite is Behindthename.com). Don’t overlook the meanings of names, there’s rich material there for inspiration. I’ve jump-started stories based purely on some interesting meaning of a randomly-generated name.

History matters. It seems silly, but there it is. Even if you’re radically changing the history of a place, it’s important to know what really happened, how the people lived, how they thought. Not just the bare facts of how many people lived in what city, but what their philosophy was, what the issues of the day were, and so forth. What’s the difference between a 20^th century hero and a 16^th century brigand? How did people talk in the 1200s? Or even last year? A single bit of slang can transport the reader to an entirely different decade.

Technical vocabulary can make or break a story for some readers. Tom Clancy has legions of followers who read his work simply because he can, step by step and with all the right technical terms, describe how a nuclear reactor on board a Russian submarine can melt down. Does the gun in your narrator’s hand use shells or bullets? Was the city hit by a meteor or a meteorite? Is this cop a detective or a constable? Does this patient need blood or plasma? Some portion of the audience, maybe even most of the audience, won’t know the difference, but some will and they’ll nitpick themselves out of enjoying the story. Then they’ll post about it somewhere online.

Research is important to creating realistic and believable people and settings, and just as important in flash fiction as in a novel. Be as familiar with the subject matter as possible, because for your flash piece it needs to be summed up in a sentence, or a few words of dialogue. You won’t have the luxury of a whole chapter to explore the ideas.

Most of all, let research inspire your stories. There’s so much available in the real world that’s interesting, it would be a shame not to take advantage of the free ideas. Research is not a chore. And it gives you a good excuse to check out a lot of cool books.

Alexander Burns lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He writes because he doesn’t have a basement in which to build robots or time machines. His work has appeared at Every Day Fiction, A Thousand Faces, 10Flash, and forthcoming from The Future Fire.