Thursday
The compulsory task of slivering and slicing away at one's handiwork is all too familiar to most writers, regardless of our chosen form(s)—as Hemingway put it, "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket."
For flash fiction writers, Hemingway's words ring particularly true. That one page of masterpiece is (more or less) all we're allowed to keep. With word counts looming overhead alongside customary craft-related concerns, we defy ourselves to eliminate nonessentials. We weigh syllables against syllables in our minds, like scrupulous chefs who happen to be produce shopping on a budget.
Having just recently begun to dabble in flash, I haven't yet overcome the fear of compactness coming at the expense of emotional resonance. I often worry about the unintended effects of hacking away to reach my intended word count—what if I lose the essence of what I'm trying to communicate? So when I read Robert Swartwood's essay about hint fiction (wherein he actually coined the term), I reacted with equal parts confusion, intrigue, and trepidation.
A hint fiction piece must clock in at 25 words or less, and, according to Swartwood, it's "[n]ot a scene, or a setting, or even a character sketch. [Readers] are given a hint, nothing more, and are asked—nay, forced—to fill in the blanks."
Pretty tall order, if you ask me. Writing an imaginative and impactful piece in less than 250, or 500, or even 1,000 words is daunting enough.
I couldn't wrap my mind around how to whittle a complete story down to a scant 25 words—what would that even look like? While Swartwood's definition was a helpful start, I sought to arrive at my own understanding of how a writer could pull this off without merely producing fragments in want of a short story—or worse, sounding like a fortune cookie. Something about "bite-sized" stories (a phrase NPR used to describe the form) felt inherently gimmicky to me. Something wasn't clicking.
Swartwood used the classic six-word example we all learned in high school—here, we circle back to Hemingway: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." This must have elicited an emotional response when I first read it, but I couldn't send for those feelings to conveniently return; it's too familiar now. I poked around online, skimmed some blogs, considered ordering a hint fiction anthology on Amazon…
…Then, apropos of nothing, I remembered Richard Brautigan.
Though Brautigan, like Hemingway, obviously predates the pinning down of flash fiction (and its offshoots) as a form, his short poems strike me as excellent examples of moving, effective hint fiction. Consider the below poems, with line breaks removed to make them stylistically resemble hint fiction pieces:
The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster (20 words)
When you take your pill it's like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside of you.Color As Beginning (10 words)
Forget love I want to die in your yellow hair.15% (17 words)
She tries to get things out of men that she can't get because she's not 15% prettier.30 Cents, Two Transfers, Love (28 words)
Thinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that I was alone.Donner Party (22 words)
Forsaken, fucking in the cold, eating each other, lost runny noses, complaining all the time like so many people that we know.Xerox Candy Bar (13 words)
Ah, you're just a copy of all the candy bars I've ever eaten.
In 110 words, readers can detect a wide swath of emotional and psychological states, a range of relationship types, and myriad characters. Each snippet could easily be expanded into a short story or a longer poem, yet Brautigan deliberately kept them all under 30 words apiece. Moreover, in nearly every case, the carefully chosen titles provide crucial information which deepens our comprehension of whatever is being described or expressed. We're always given just enough to make us feel, and enough to push us out of the realm of abstraction—and, in my eyes, what we're given wouldn't particularly benefit from being fleshed out further. Whether they're 25 words or 250 or 2,5000 words long is almost beside the point, as the emotional cores of each piece would, I believe, remain unaltered.
In all likelihood, Brautigan didn't intend to be a predecessor of hint fiction, but—for this writer, anyway—he provides one hell of a model.
About the Author
Alina Ladyzhensky lives in South Philadelphia, by way of Moscow. Her preoccupations include reading, writing, and drinking middle shelf whiskey--sometimes, all at the same time. She'll earn an MA in Publishing from Rosemont College in 2011, if she can manage to sit still long enough.
For further reading, check out FlashFiction.Net's suggested readings of flash fiction and prose poetry collections, anthologies, and craft books, by clicking here.
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From Rich Grohowski
January 7, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Thank you for shining a light on hint fiction, something I love to read, but am also having trouble wrapping my brain around as a writer. Excellent point about the role of the title as a means of conveying meaning and adding depth. Also, thanks for introducing me to a poet I’ve not read before.
From Alina L.
January 8, 2011 at 7:10 pm
So glad this piqued your interest in Brautigan! Let me know if you’d like some recommendations (though he doesn’t have a ton of publications, anyhow); he’s one of my all-time favorites.
From Nicole Kukuchka
January 8, 2011 at 8:07 am
Well-articulated and insightful. As a poet, I have no trouble wrapping my brain around this concept as a writer: These are what poets call “fragments.” It’s harder for me to wrap myself around them as a reader. But very cool stuff. Like short stories in text messages.