Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014
Creating flash fiction
Short and sweet flash fiction
Short-form genres
In this chapter
· A quick look at flash fiction
· Writing flash fiction well
· Flash fiction authors
· Venues for your work
· What to write about
What’s flash fiction? It might best be thought of as very short stories of 500 to 2,000 words. You might also see or hear this genre called blasters, postcard fiction, micro-fiction, sudden fiction, or short shorts. Whatever the name, the essence of the genre is the same: the writer quickly gets into the story and plot and establishes scene and summary. The critical backstory is filled in (often through flashback), and the author speeds toward the climax quickly in terms of prosody.
Almost every instructional writing text stresses the importance of learning to write concisely. Experts advise paring down adjectives and adverbs and shortening lengthy prose by finding the best descriptive words.
As a writer, you hone your skills like a trained athlete, but instead of setting physical tasks for yourself, you exercise daily by writing in your journal. Through these writing exercises, you flesh out characters, try out themes, explore point of view and voice, and sometimes create story drafts—often in just one sitting.
In flash fiction, you create a publishable story in a similar short duration of time. This is ideal for people who want to write during their commutes or lunch breaks or those who face the challenge of frequent interruptions by children.
Excellent writing prompts can trigger ideas for flash fiction in exercises that span as little as 5 minutes. These prompts—such as writing about a will, a death in the family, or a disaster—are terrific journal exercises that can spark your creative juices. What’s more, they often lead to publishable works of flash fiction or even longer works such as short stories or novels.
Creating flash fiction
To illustrate the process involved in creating a work of flash fiction, let’s look at one of my published flash stories, “Reserved Parking,” as a guide. Then, we work through the creation steps, from the glimmer of an idea to the plot’s resolution through the use of prosody.
Story and plot
I have the fortune—good or bad, depending on one’s point of view—to reside in the rural county in which I was raised and profess English at a small college in an unremarkable city some twenty miles to the west. My wife and I both have family in the area, and many a Sunday afternoon, I doze in the wake of a generous meal as the idle sounds of gossip or a televised sporting event curl about my lazy ears.
As noted earlier, the first sentences of any piece of writing are critical. I open this flash story with the speaker relating the nature of his life. Like many readers, he lives where he grew up and relates the arrangement as “good or bad” because some readers will embrace this state of affairs whereas others will have endured negative experiences in their lives. The important fact is that the speaker’s situation is highly relatable and, thus, helps draw the reader into the story.
The conveyed sleepy quality of everyday life also functions as a form of foreshadowing: even as the reader relates to the speaker’s uneventful routine, the reader’s subconscious process wonders what’s going to come along to interrupt it. In moving the story along, I establish what’s referred to as an indirect hook.
DEFINITION
Whereas a narrative hook is an inciting incident in which the action of a story literally begins, an indirect hook arouses the reader’s interest through surface inaction that focuses on everyday, highly relatable details.
Remember that whereas a story consists of related chronological events, a plot arranges happenings to accentuate their dramatic effect. The use of an indirect hook in relating the everyday occurrences of a setting suggests plot rather than story. This prompts many readers to wonder why the story is introduced this way—and especially makes them want to know what comes next.
Scene and summary
Of course, nothing prepared anyone for the house-sized book that appeared one hazy August morning in the parking lot behind the county public library. It was initially reported by a man walking his dog at first light, the otherwise benign creature’s hackles rising and a low growl emerging from its throat as its owner, a retired airline pilot, guided them toward the dim, hulking object. Unable to make out the thing in the graying light and suspecting the shape something deposited by the county during the overnight hours, the former airman resolved to pilot his dog in another direction. Civic-minded fellow that he was, though, he did see fit to inform county law enforcement of the indistinct mass he observed.
When my phone rang later that morning it was Ronnie, a county deputy I’d graduated with from high school.
“A book?” I repeated when Ronnie related the appearance of the massive object. “How did it get there?”
“No one knows,” he said. “At first we thought it was some kind of joke, but when the highway guys tried to bulldoze it on out of the way, it wouldn’t budge.”
Following this flash piece’s indirect hook, which focuses on the everyday, is a scene and summary that might appear shocking to most readers. Having been lured into the daily practices of a quiet pastoral county resembling that of The Andy Griffith Show, the reader receives something of a literary sucker punch with the drastic transition to a massive book that’s inexplicably materialized in the library parking lot.
The everyday events in the indirect hook also are related in the form of summary rather than immediate action. Such a technique leads readers to suspect that the action will begin soon. In fact, it must, or you’ll lose readers. They’ll grow bored if a summary goes on for too long.
By flash fiction standards, this opening summary is quite long, but it gambles with the sucker-punch delivery of the inexplicable massive book into the sleepy country setting. The function of this summary, then, is to heighten the first and final scene—the telephone conversation between the narrator and the deputy—when it finally arrives.
WRITING PROMPT
Review some of the events you’ve recorded in your journal. How many are best described as summaries? How many as scenes? Now try taking one of the summaries and rendering it as a scene. One possible way to do this is to begin with the dialogue of a conversation.
Backstory and flashback
“How do you even know it’s a book?”
“Hell, Professor, I reckon you’ve handled enough of ’em: it looks like one. We even tried to pry open the cover with the dozer, but no dice there either. In fact, the machine busted a hydraulic hose tryin’.”
“This all sounds crazy, Ronnie, but why are you calling me about it?”
“’Cause we need an expert opinion, Professor—from someone we can trust. Books are your whole deal, right?”
“Sure, but not house-sized ones with no titles.”
“That’s just it.”
“What is?”
“Seems it’s got a title and author etched into the cover up where no one can see. We had no idea they were there until we flew a chopper over the thing.”
“Well let’s have it.”
“Necronomicon, by some fella named Abdul Alhazred.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Neither has anyone we’ve talked to, which is why I’d like for you to look into it for us.”
“It sounds like it may have been written in another language, Ronnie. I doubt I’ll be much use.”
“We’d be obliged if you’d try, Professor.”
“Get me out of my next speeding ticket?”
“You bet.”
“OK then.”
“Thanks … Oh, and Professor: confidential and all, you know.”
“Sure Ronnie. Confidential.”
Although the story has entered its action via real-time phone dialogue, the conversation itself contains both backstory and flashback through the passing references the narrator and deputy make. Readers learn that Ronnie more or less trusts the professorial narrator (he’s both a homegrown good-old-boy and an academic), despite his past episodes of receiving speeding tickets. But the deputy also has concerns about confidentiality—either based on the narrator’s past behavior or a more general professional desire for secrecy.
Through the narrator’s dialogue, you can glean that he seems at once incredulous about the giant book, doubtful of his ability to help (I wonder how good of an academic he really is), and also something of an opportunistic sort who’s less interested in helping out the police and more interested in improving his driving record.
A story like this one, which begins in medias res (Latin for “in the midst of things” or in the middle of the action), often is forced to deliver its flashbacks and backstory at various points during its progression. Even in the dialogue near the end, the reader is able to learn things about the deputy, the narrator, and their motivations and past relationship. Yet the possibilities of different interpretations remain at the end: is the narrator being ironic in repeating the word confidential because a massive book is difficult to hide, or is he being self-deprecating, exposing his doubts that he can aid the police in their quandary?
WATCH OUT!
Conclusions are crucial to all writing. It’s important to resolve most of narrative elements, but you need not reveal every little detail. Remember all those horror movies in which there’s some vague intimation at the end that the monster may still exist. Explaining away everything can make the reader bored and jeopardize a piece’s chances of getting published.
Remember that in all forms of fiction, the best backstory and flashbacks fill in crucial missing information and then quickly bring the reader back to the present action with a bit more knowledge and suspense.
Prosody in flash fiction
In fewer than 500 words, readers of “Reserved Parking” have reached their destination, which—as in many interesting stories—answers some questions while leaving plenty for the readers to contemplate as a means of keeping the story working in their minds.
Although I’ve talked about prosody already, I should note that it’s an especially important dynamic in flash fiction. Words are at a premium, so the sound and nuance of each becomes essential, especially as you near the story’s climax.
It’s no accident that the language in “Reserved Parking” moves from descriptive prose to the short, punchy dialogue that quickens the pacing and ultimately propels the reader to the end. The long sentences and multisyllabic words at the beginning give way to sentences of dialogue—five of which contain three words or fewer. As the sound of the vowels and words becomes shorter, the speed of the narrative increases.
Thus, this flash fiction—although unsatisfying and something of a tease in terms of the information it withholds—concludes sonically with a bang rather than a whimper. The final, one-word sentence (“Confidential.”) literally reflects the deputy’s request but also symbolically addresses the reader as well: you still don’t know why the gigantic book is there.
WRITING PROMPT
While timing yourself or taking a break from work, cleaning, or another task you regularly perform, try writing a short tale based on a story about a child, a story about a secret, or a story about a traumatic event. Let’s assume you have 500 words or fewer in which to tell the story.