FlashFiction.Net

Yesterday on FlashFiction.Net, the idea of "flash fiction" rules (gasp!) arose:

Imagine if flash demands things from you that you've never dreamt of. Image if word-count is the least of all the boundaries that confines flash fiction. If that is so, it shouldn't be so surprising to find, in what Roberta Allen refers to as a "tiny container for change," a sense of the walls closing in, of not being able to move too far without bumping against a boundary. In fact, were I to play devil's advocate, I might ask, "Why did you go to the tiniest spaces of all to find freedom? Why did you flee here, of all places, to find the freedom in writing you so desired?"

In The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, Julio Ortega describes the "high rhetoric of sudden fiction":

It has a character (I call him 'John,' but he has 1,000 names); there is a dominant action (the story-telling is fully present); and what is shown or said happens in time. Not less important, it announces the very rule of any story—the breaking of a code. John is an adventurer who stands against authority and decides to leave, to explore, to know (151).

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Instead of using "rules" to describe such statements as above about flash fiction, I prefer "reader expectation," and that expectation (of course) changes from reader to reader. Rather than I ask myself whether a statement "rules" the way flash fiction should be written, I wonder if indeed readers will have that specific expectation&mash;will they, for example, be expecting to see a "dominant action" in a flash piece‐and I also think about what readers might share that expectation and which ones might not. The experience of an editor, for example, might determine his or her expectation for "originality" in flash fiction. Sometimes something as simple as the use of comma splices in a flash piece might be okay for one reader and a deal-breaker for another one.

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So, in short, craft "rules" fascinate me not necessarily because they define for me what flash fiction is or isn't but because they give me greater insight into the flash fiction expectations various readers—undergraduate journal readers, online editors, print editors, experienced and inexperienced slush readers, other flash writers, short story writers, novel writers, poets, non-writers, and so on—bring to them when they read (my) short short fiction.

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So what does knowing what readers' ideas about "the high rhetoric of sudden fiction" have to do with writing flash fiction? How might that change the way one approaches flash fiction. Well, let's say that I find that idea of "dominant action" in a number of articles, essays, interviews, and so on. Then, in reading certain journals and the work of their editors, I begin to take note of those that seem to have that "dominant action" expectation of flash. Do I share that need for "dominant action" in flash? Sometimes. Sometimes not. The question for me, and I know that I might be indeed odd to think of these things, is this one: "How can I make a reader who expects 'dominant action' in a piece know that I understand their 'rule' but chose, instead to break it?" In other words, I want that reader to know that my lack of "dominant action" came not from a lack of knowledge about "rules" but a conscious decision to break from it.

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Yesterday's post about "rules" came out from my experience with rule-resisting writers who express a complete disdain for any mention or focus upon rules. Maybe it's that word "rules" that gets it wrong. But I'm still amazed at how many writers I encounter who seem to say, "It's a story because I wrote it as a story." Or, "It's 'creative' writing, not 'rule-generated' writing." As if form and creativity cannot exist together. As if form and rules and boundaries having nothing to do with generating flash fiction, giving it something to cling to, making it stick. Just as the rule-resisters seem to dismiss me, I've reached the point where I've chosen to dismiss them. But, as a last ditch effort to bring them out of the darkness, I'll say this. Try thinking of the rules as the (possible) expectations against which you either set yourself against or with.

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I find that my blog entries tend to ramble here and there. Oh, well. Somewhere, back there, I wondered (1) if writing that goes against expectation should make it clear that it does so consciously and (2) if so, that it should make its break from expectation clear, then, how can it achieve that effect. Let's say I've set myself against the expectation of "dominant" action. The flash piece proceeds without it. How can the piece itself teach a reader how it is to be read? That this is a piece to be read, not as meaning coming from its dominant action, but from elsewhere? That is the flash fiction question for today. If you go against expectation, how do you make it clear to readers that they are to read it differently, that you are aware of the expectation they bring to your piece and you are aware of how that expectation might lead them away from the "point" of your piece?

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