Tuesday
Not exactly a flash, but today's flash focus looks at Swift's masterpiece Gulliver's Travels. Here is how it begins [bold added for emphasis]:
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years. My father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematics, useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed it would be, some time or other, my fortune to do. When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my father: where, by the assistance of him and my uncle John, and some other relations, I got forty pounds, and a promise of thirty pounds a year to maintain me at Leyden: there I studied physic two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long voyages.
Soon after my return from Leyden, I was recommended by my good master, Mr. Bates, to be surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannel, commander; with whom I continued three years and a half, making a voyage or two into the Levant, and some other parts. When I came back I resolved to settle in London; to which Mr. Bates, my master, encouraged me, and by him I was recommended to several patients. I took part of a small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition, I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, in Newgate-street, with whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion.
But my good master Bates dying in two years after...
I love this build up to the adolescent boy's joke, that "master Bates." I wonder if Hitchcock chose the name of the unmarried Norman Bates for the same reason; he, too, is a Master Bates. What does all this have to do with flash fiction?
So much of flash seemed to work in this way, building to its punchline, each paragraph's purpose to separate the "master" from the "Bates," until, through some clever twist at the end, they (pardon the expression) come together. I think my flash still works this way, only I've tried to replace the pieces of the joke with something else (other than participants in a punchline), characters perhaps who encounter each other throughout and then finally "couple," thus producing something never before seen.
So that's today's flash focus. Imagine your character is "Master" and he/she runs into something that is "Bates." Keep bringing the "Bates" and "Master" together in ways that approximate their final pairing. I kind of did that in this tiny piece that appeared in FRiGG.
Reuben and Rosemary
He introduced her to slant rhymes, for orange and porridge, and she wondered at first if it were enough that her menus nearly rhymed, if burger and bulgar truly inclined to each other naturally or if it were forced upon them, until one day it didn't matter, when beans and steamed met, slanted, like ham steak and pancake, radish and sandwich, the waitress who loved rhyme with her toast and the man at the counter who loved her almost.
For further reading, check out FlashFiction.Net's suggested readings of flash fiction and prose poetry collections, anthologies, and craft books, by clicking here.
