Flash Interview: Ravi Mangla

Ravi Mangla lives in Fair­port, NY. His sto­ries have appeared in Mid-Amer­i­can Review, Amer­i­can Short Fic­tion, Annalem­ma, Gigan­tic, McSweeney’s Inter­net Ten­den­cy, and Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc Books). A col­lec­tion of microfic­tions, Vis­it­ing Writ­ers, was recent­ly released as an ebook by Uncan­ny Press. Twit­ter: @ravi_mangla

What are some of the chal­lenges you face when writ­ing flash fic­tion?

It’s always a chal­lenge to con­struct a sat­is­fy­ing nar­ra­tive arc with­in such a small space. Some­times I get caught up in the lan­guage and lose track of the sto­ry arc. Con­ci­sion is also a dif­fi­cult part of the process: tight­en­ing sen­tences, elim­i­nat­ing super­flu­ous details.

At what point in the writ­ing process do you con­sid­er the read­er?

Hon­est­ly, I rarely think about the read­er dur­ing the writ­ing process. When I think about read­ers and audi­ences, I start to get self-con­scious and anx­ious. Kurt Von­negut has a quote that sort of touch­es upon this: “Write to please just one per­son. If you open a win­dow and make love to the world, so to speak, your sto­ry will get pneu­mo­nia.”

You have such fresh and inter­est­ing sto­ries. What are some things that inspire their con­cept?

I love when strange events hap­pen with­in the realm of the mun­dane. There’s some­thing about the inter­sec­tion of those two things that I find fas­ci­nat­ing. For exam­ple, my moth­er once received a very spe­cif­ic thank-you note for some­thing she nev­er did, which was the inspi­ra­tion for a sto­ry called “Grat­i­tude.”

Being that you also write poet­ry, do you ever find it over­lap­ping with your flash?

I haven’t writ­ten poet­ry in a while, so I don’t wor­ry too much about over­lap (though poet­ry is still a con­stant source of inspi­ra­tion).

What key ele­ments do you think makes a great piece of flash?

A strong open­ing line is very impor­tant. Noth­ing kills a flash faster than a weak hook. And like in poet­ry, every sin­gle word in a piece of flash should feel vital and nec­es­sary. Also, I love sto­ries that employ rhyth­mic devices, like allit­er­a­tion, con­so­nance, asso­nance (more of a per­son­al pref­er­ence, I sup­pose).