FlashFiction.Net

Recently, I read and re-read Donald Murray's "Rehearsing Rehearsing." (continue reading)

In David Jauss's alone with all that could happen, he argues that point of view "is perhaps the least understood of all aspects of fiction" (25). According to Jauss, "manipulating distance is the primary purpose of point of view" (58), and he gives a number of examples in support of this novel view of POV. Imagine the trickiness of POV, the impossibility of ever quite grasping it, to no longer be the thing that haunts you. That's what Jauss does in this chapter of his book on the craft of fiction writing. He solves the mystery of point of view. Once and for all. (continue reading)

In order to read Carol Guess’s prose poetry collection “Tinderbox Lawn,” I had to sit with each piece individually, reading with care, nurturing each word. There isn’t a story that deserves a one-time read or a lazy glance. Her lyrical sentences and provocative imagery explore life with an intensity that leaves the reader just as vulnerable and exposed. Themes of identity, sexuality, and gender pulse on each page—her words breathe. In this book, you’ll be pulled deeply into yourself and wanting to stay in this place. (continue reading)

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. (continue reading)

Perhaps the element of craft most overlooked is that of writing, that talent some writers have that allows them to write more than the rest of us, to put in the time needed to get good, better, and (possibly) great. (continue reading)

So, have at it. Work your magic so instead of saying, "So what?" after reading your flash, we are saying, "By George, I think I've got it!" Or something like that. (continue reading)

About the Author

Todd B. Stevens is currently an MFA student at Rosemont College. He has studied English at Cornell and Villanova. Todd worked for many years as a bookseller. His poetry has recently been published in Mad Poets Review and Off the Coast and is featured in the anthology Prompted: Poems, Essays from Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which will be published early this year.

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Recently, for the wonderful Los Angeles Review , I wrote a blog entry, "Something About Rejection." Here's a companion piece, something about acceptance. From 2004-2009, I served as an editor with SmokeLong Quarterly , by the end reading as many as 400-500 submissions per month. So part of this advice comes from my editorial experience and part comes from my own submission/acceptance history and most is, as one might expect, a best guess. (continue reading)

Two things simultaneously occur in this passage: (1) Reuben cleans his first goose; and (2) Reuben and his sister Swede converse about her running away from the goose and, later, their brother Davy’s gal getting beat up by two boys in the girls’ locker room. The juxtaposition of these two actions—much like Coppola’s parallel cutting between Michael’s consecration as his nephew’s godfather and his family’s killing of all the Corleone enemies—creates a tension between the two actions, thereby not only creating a rich, complex meaning but also more deeply engaging the reader in the moment. (continue reading)

David Wroblewski came to Rosemont College to talk to the graduate publishing, literature, and creative writing students and faculty about the book, the book tour, writing, and what's next. He was generous, insightful, thoughtful, and all-together terrific. (continue reading)

Write a flash that is "hard" for you to write, one that (1) uses a strong, traditional narrative drive to (2) confront something that you (as writer) are trying to figure out (3) so that you are forced to face some deeper, darker emotional truths (4) by putting your POV character through a series of actions (5) leading to (for writer, reader, character) an ending with emotional resonance (continue reading)

And here are The Eleven Essentials to Writing Great Flash Fiction. (Coincidentally, these are the eleven things I try to do when writing flash fiction) (continue reading)

1. See if the first line can be deleted and work instead as the title. Example:
   
   

   She's a Stork

   She's a stork and [And] that makes it ungraceful to bowl. The only thing falling for her here are pins, and not that many….

2. Same with the last line.

   I'd Hardly Call Making Out a Few Times Dating

   …Over the cubicle, I kept reassuring him, "But you're Owen Wilson." A computer beep—and there it was, the reply, not the thing you wanted, something harder[.] : I'd hardly call making out a few times dating.

3. In fact, check any line that gets deleted through drafting and revision as a possible title. A line not needed in the body might work perfectly as a title.

   Like So Many Things in That Childhood

   My father pushed against the pedal, and the dog flew past my window as if caught in a cyclone, up and away, like so many things in that childhood. In the passenger seat, on that dirt road in Potter County….

4. Someone once told me to count five lines up from the bottom. There you'll find the title. Every time. Here's the fifth line of a recent story:

   Someone makes her way out of one of the cottages on the hill. She wears the white bathrobe from the resort. She smokes a cigar.

   A possible title might be "Resort" or "Someone Makes Her Way" or "Cottages."
5. Use an allusion/line from a well-known work, such as "The Right Place for Love" from Robert Frost's "Birches" or "Too-Rough Fingers of the World" from Langston Hughes's "The Dream Keeper" or "Skip a Life Completely" from the Velvet Underground.
   
   
6. Something of the prompt, if the prompt generated the story, could work. The title "Skip, Patch, Eye, Brownie, Chalk" came from the five prompt words that generated the piece. For example, a SmokeLong Quarterly prompt from Meg Pokrass asked writers to do the following:

   Imagine one of those annoying family Xmas letters you get too many of. Where everything seems incredible, unless you read between the colorful lines. Write your main character as a family members who feels cheated by the way it's worded about her/her. Maybe the mom writes the letter in a way that subtly puts her husband down (I'm just saying). Your narrator will be that person, the one who gets put down. Or your narrator can be someone observing this chronic seasonal abuse!"

   Possible titles might include "Where Everything Seems Incredible" or "Chronic" or "Maybe the Mom Writes the Letter."
7. Poets often use titles to direct readers to the central metaphoric image, as in William Carlos Williams in "The Red Wheelbarrow," Sylvia Plath's "Daddy," Anne Sexton's "The Witch's Life."

Originally published in July.

I entered a flash fiction course thinking I knew what flash fiction was. Wrong. See, I thought flash fiction meant short, short stories. A fully realized short story that just happened to be small in size but not in stature. (continue reading)

In his "Writing Realistic Dialogue and Flash Fiction," Harvey Stanbrough writes the following: If your purpose is to draw your reader into your world for the duration, everything you put on the page—every word, every sentence, and every bit of punctuation—must be placed with a thought for how it will affect the reader. All other considerations are secondary (46). (continue reading)

In Alice Munro's story "The Lives of Girls and Women," a young girl Del confronts the organizing principles of the people in the Canadian small town of Jubilee. Religion, neighbors, sex, marriages, gender, love, social mores—all these throw obstacles in the way of Del as she seeks to grow into womanhood. The story begins with Del's search for glory in her small town, and that search for glory becomes connected to sex, as she finds a "sex" book belonging to Del's friend Naomi's mother. Mr. Chamberlain, a male friend of a boarder in Del's house, gropes Del, leading to further encounters with Mr. Chamberlain. Del returns from these encounters, that journey into chaos, with a new understanding of sex, of men, of the type of woman Fern desires to become. (continue reading)

This final entry in the Monomyth looks at James Joyce's "Araby" and how the monomyth works to both structure the story and provide its meaning. (continue reading)

Previous posts took an introductory look at Joseph Campbell's Monomyth and a more in-depth view of the first and second rites of Campbell's monomyth, the separation and the initiation. Today, in the third part of the series, the focus turns to the end of stories—and the return. (continue reading)

Previous posts took an introductory look at Joseph Campbell's Monomyth and a more in-depth view of the first rite of Campbell's monomyth, the separation and the initiation. Today, in the third part of the series, the focus turns to the middle of stories—and the initiation. (continue reading)

Writers who have their characters create their own doom end up with a story far more complex and interesting than those that use Fate to drive the narrative into existence. (continue reading)

lot, Peter Brooks argues in Reading for the Plot, is a "form of desire that carries us [readers] forward, onward, through the text" (37). In other words, for plot to work, both readers and characters must be "stimulated from quiescence into a…tension, a kind of irritation, which demands narration." If plot, as Brooks argues, occurs in both the text and the readers, then the writer must be concerned, not only with inspiring within the character the desire to do something, but also with arousing within the reader the intention to read. Both character and reader sit quietly, yes, but also poised for something to happen. The known world doesn't do it for them anymore. A deadness pervades the everyday. They're ready for something to happen—and something does, the inciting incident that demands a story. (continue reading)

Image patterns play a particularly strong role in supporting the plot of flash fiction. For example, as I drafted a flash piece about a germaphobic woman confronting a worker who has crapped on her lawn, the image of dirt, of waste, a brownness popped up here and there, like a symbol of a wasted land. (continue reading)

Narrative-based flash pieces tell a story. The basic structure of such a narrative might go something like this: (1) something creates a very strong desire in the character, a desire which creates the need for (2) some kind of action(s) to fulfill this desire, leading ultimately to (3) a resolution/revelation. (continue reading)