FlashFiction.Net

Now I should take a step back, and clarify: the word "tell" in craft discussions has some nasty connotations. As writers of prose everywhere, we are exhorted to show not tell, over and over, and I'm not implying dropping large chunks of bald exposition willy nilly, but I do agree with Steve Almond when he says, "The reader should know at least as much as your protagonist." In other words, if you know something as a writer about the plot, and it could be introduced, there is no real reason to conceal it from the reader. Its often better to just get it out there.

This is horribly difficult for a poet to get used to, being accustomed to always approaching things obliquely, Poetry, which is often about that which is unsaid, is a difficult place to just tell the reader something. I can also see a version of this that prose writers, schooled in the above show don't tell, are reluctant to just say what they want to communicate with the reader. To quote Steve Almond again, "Never confuse the reader. A confused reader spends his energy the wrong way; struggling to orient himself, rather than empathizing with the characters." If you know what is going on, let the reader know.

A few reasons why I find myself withholding information from the reader, when I shouldn't be:

I'm not confident in my plot. I often find I don't really believe that my plot has enough tension to sustain the reader's interest. In these cases I think that withholding a piece of information will create enough mystery to hold the reader's attention. I say to myself, "I'll introduce a character and just call her 'the woman', surely the reader will be intrigued and read on to figure out who she is and what she means to the protagonist!" This is probably not the case, and a false way of creating tension. When I find myself doing this, I know I have to work on my plot.





I want to create a vague and unsettled atmosphere. This stems directly from being used to writing poetry, where leaving out information is often a good way for the author to make readers participants, cause them disquiet, and make them start to conjecture to fill a void in knowledge. I've found when I do this in prose, particularly flash, readers of my pieces feel more confused than anything else. Here I have to remind myself that, while it isn't a rule and can be broken for a good reason, readers of flash and prose in general have an expectation that the author has a narrative in mind. Their expectation is that the author will give them the information they need to perceive the unfolding of that narrative. One goes against this expectation at one's own peril.





I don't really know where a narrative is going. It is sometimes useful when it happens, when a detail, a turn, an idea I didn't expect emerges as I'm writing. Suddenly, I get the "Oh, yes, this should be true, moment." When I get these rarities, I'm often a little too proud of them. I feel like I owe the reader the same journey of discovery I had. Here I have to be honest with myself, and say, yes, this was a surprise for me, but could it make the story stronger if I shared it with the reader earlier?





My plot relies on a twist ending. Sometimes the urge to do this is incredibly strong; it seems so neat and simple. We go along, create all this dramatic tension, drop our bomb at the end and wham! Everything is resolved neatly; it all makes sense. The only thing I can say to myself if I find myself wandering off too far in this direction is this: if the piece depends entirely on one piece of hidden information, it better be a heck of a twist, something never been done or even hinted at before. Overall here it might be better to just put down the story and go do something else for a while until this urge passes.

Flash is a concise form. Tthere's not a lot of time to waste beating around the bush. While as a poet I am predisposed to favor the abstract over the concrete,  I have to discipline myself constantly to notice when I'm spending a graph hinting around a point that could be stated in a sentence. Sometimes to move the plot along, I just have to give myself permission to tell the reader what I want them to know.