First, read David R. Slavitt’s “One-Word Poem.” Now, write your own flash fic­tion piece that uses foot­notes in either a sim­i­lar or not-at-all sim­i­lar way. One way might be to use them how Nor­ton Anthol­o­gy does to explain now-lost mytho­log­i­cal ref­er­ences, as in Eliot’s “The Waste­land.” For exam­ple, a ref­er­ence to Grape Ape or Hong […]

First, here’s my bare bones nar­ra­tive struc­ture for the short sto­ry: Some­thing hap­pens (pre­cip­i­tat­ing inci­dent) to cre­ate a desire, and that desire cre­ates a need for action that is thwart­ed by this and that and this and that until, final­ly, there’s res­o­lu­tion. Vonnegut’s oft-quot­ed advice to begin as close to the con­clu­sion as pos­si­ble works well for flash. Guid­ed by that sug­ges­tion, a flash writer might begin with “Final­ly, there’s res­o­lu­tion.” The writer might find a way to imply the rest–that incit­ing inci­dent, that series of actions. Or maybe a writer might want it all, the all of the short sto­ry struc­ture, and write a com­pressed ver­sion with all the parts in place.

Yes. It is true. Hav­ing been immersed in the world of com­po­si­tion ped­a­gogy, I’ve learned this truth about the state of the world: lan­guage con­structs the world and then becomes a con­struct of it. Con­fused? Wel­come to the post­ness of post­mod­ernism. Or at least my sense of it.

Recent­ly, I read and re-read Don­ald Murray’s “Rehears­ing Rehears­ing.”

So, for this Wednesday’s Ther­a­py ses­sion, in my hum­ble opin­ion, writ­ers should just flat-out say what it is they are com­fort­able say­ing with­out the attached “not real­ly.” It makes per­fect sense, at the begin­ning of an arti­cle on flash, to estab­lish one’s cre­den­tials, as it makes sim­i­lar sense to pro­mote some­thing (your self or a jour­nal or an MFA pro­gram or an award or a press) in the bio.

Yes­ter­day, I had the sin­cere plea­sure of blog­ging at Flash Fic­tion Chron­i­cles and attempt­ing to answer the ques­tion, “What is flash fic­tion?” Today, as a kind-of fol­low-up to that arti­cle, I’d like to answer a dif­fer­ent ques­tion: “How do I make my fic­tion flash?” This ques­tion is one that I’m often asked by stu­dents, who […]

The ques­tion I’m most asked is, “What is flash fic­tion?” It is often, accord­ing to Google Insights for Search, one of the top search­es asso­ci­at­ed with flash.

Let me begin with say­ing this year in movies wasn’t the great­est, though we did have some ric­ock­u­lous­ly good movies. Over­all though, this was nowhere near as good as last year. Grant­ed last year was some­thing mag­i­cal, and 2009 had very lit­tle chance of even com­ing close to match­ing the sheer awe­some­ness that was 2008, but it could have done bet­ter than this. Maybe it was that writer’s strike a cou­ple years back final­ly tak­ing its toll.

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.