FlashFiction.Net

Recently, in a guest blog at Ethel Rohan’s Straight From The Heart In My Hip (which for some reason my server won’t let me link to), I talked about flash as a machine of compression, an idea I got after reading Douglas Glover’s essay on novel structure, in which he refers to the novel as “a machine of desire.” For me, here are ways that flash machinery might work.

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Where should you enter the story? Vonnegut’s well-known advice—as close to the conclusion as possible—answers this question succinctly. But that still might leave one wondering, “How close to the conclusion should I begin?” In the short story, I often begin with the thing that happens to drive the story into existence, the thing, without which, there would be no story. With flash, I find myself sometimes beginning after that thing has happened, sometimes using the title to imply that inciting incident. If the traditional structure goes something like this—inciting incident creates desire creates a series of thwarted actions creates epiphany/resolution—then maybe the flash writer begins much later, perhaps with that final action before the resolution. It’s part of the fun of flash, playing with how far into the story one might begin, how one might imply all that has come before.

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How does a maximalist work in flash fiction? The well-known maxim—every word counts in flash—does have a literal truth, since so much of flash is bounded by an exact word count requirement. For me, that has created a rather minimalistic style and that style, as expected, makes many people think I’m a Ray Carver wannabe. So be it. The key to writing with a maximum amount of words, I think, is to make sure each word surprises the reader and tells the reader something knew. Too many time, I find the maximalist writing strings of words and phrases that are a rephrasing of the ideas before; for example, “The summer was hot, and the steam rose from the asphalt of empty school parking lots, the lawns turned to the golden brown of wheat, and air shimmered with the waves of heat coming off the cars and houses and fresh-paved roads.” Each image and phrase seems to be a retelling of the idea of “hot,” rather than a revelation of something unexpected or an exploration of some new territory or idea. I do love the way maximalist writing throws down word after word in search of the Real, the urgent building of these charged sentences, but there’s a great demand for a compression of meaning in flash, of continually adding something new to the central conflict/idea with each successive word.

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This is just the beginning of this discussion, and I’ll add to it in the coming days and weeks. Send your thoughts here.

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