Category: Uncategorized

Ask A Flash Fiction Editor: A Ukulele is Not a Miniature Guitar

On By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized1 Comment

At the Flash Fiction panel at AWP last year, Tom Hazuka said one of the things he loves about flash fiction is that it truly defies genre—with the exception of the word constraint, there are really no other “rules”. As a result, flash stories show up as letters, found texts, lists, exercises, conversations, sometimes they go backwards, sometimes they are told entirely in dialogue, or changing tenses, or different points of view, or maybe even in one long sentence. And to exemplify stories behaving differently in space spaces, I’m delighted to have Cath Barton’s piece in progress, “This Is All It Takes”, to spark the discussion. (Full story below)

Flash fiction has created a new sort of genre freedom with only one rule: tell us a story in 1000 words. I don’t care how you do it. Just make it work. So flash writers are giving themselves permission to take risks, attempting literary acrobatics that could not be accomplished (or at least as effectively) elsewhere. And what ends up happening is we begin telling stories that could not be told in any other form. 

As a flash fiction writer, that’s incredibly exciting.

I like to use the comparison of the guitar vs the ukulele: to the untrained eye, a ukulele is a miniature guitar. Having played the guitar all my life, I was initially thrilled by the simplified chords and smaller neck of the ukulele, and thought to myself, “Well, this will be so much easier!” But I quickly began to realize that, while one may just look like a shrunken version of the other, they are really two different instruments and they require two different repertoires. Songs that sound good on the guitar may not translate well to the ukulele, and the ukulele, with its distinct tuning and style, makes certain songs come to life in a way they never could on the guitar.

So with that in mind, Cath, let’s take a look at your piece, “This Is All It Takes”.

Your story is a perfect example of utilizing techniques that wouldn’t work in longer forms. For instance, your story really seems to vibrate in that second person point of view, that strange narrative voice that so mimics our primal “gut”. In addition, your attention to sentence structure, rushing the reader along your winding, breathless sentences–alternated with the shock of short and punchy bursts—and then back to the frenetic pace of words tumbling on top of one another, recreates the feeling of breathlessness and panic of running, trying to keep someone in sight, almost losing them, finding them again. You do a great job of creating syntax that really supports your story tone and message. And all of these techniques really find themselves at home in the flash form.

I have three suggestions for this piece. The first is to look at the point of entry into the story. As it stands now, we begin the story after the flash of red has already happened. The impetus for the whole story—that flash of red—happens offstage, out of sight.  As a result, we don’t connect with that glorious moment of panic/excitement/mystery—we come in later, as a spectator, after the momentum is already going. I’d like to propose that seeing the flash of red and everything that it stirs up in our character IS the game changer, here, so don’t have it happen offstage. Have it happen, here, and have it affect us in the moment as it affects the character. Because what happens now is that we are running, but always trying to “feel” why we are running.

A second suggestion is that sometimes the character’s “thinking” slows the story down. Just run—don’t think about running. See the flash of red, let it grip her gut and go. A character “thinking” about what he or she is doing—the exposition that might work in a longer piece—is often the first place to start cutting in a flash piece. In this form we must trust our reader to “get it” more, so resist the urge to explain whenever possible. Show us the flash. Run. Run with an unexplained vigor. Show us what to “do” and we will naturally feel the emotions with the character.

For example: (This is from your original)

You shake your head, very slowly, as if you’re in a film but you’re not, you’re in town on a Tuesday morning and you were just taken by the red flash of a man’s coat and now he’s there in front of you and you can’t believe, you really can’t believe that it’s him, holding out your hat to you, holding out your life to you. You were quite happy, you weren’t looking for anyone, you are, you were, completely content and now everything has changed in an instant. This is him, the one. There is no mistaking that he is the man you will now leave with, leave this market, leave this town and never come back. You won’t even stop to think, you daren’t because if you did you would remember that just a few streets away there is someone waiting for you, probably looking at his watch and thinking that you should have come home with the  bread for lunch, that it isn’t like you to take so long.

Here is it, stripped down:

You shake your head, very slowly, as if you’re in a film but you’re not, you’re in town on a Tuesday morning, and now he’s here in front of you, holding out your hat. It’s him, the one. You don’t even stop to think because if you did you would remember that just a few streets away there is someone waiting for you, probably looking at his watch and thinking that you should have come home with the bread for lunch, that it isn’t like you to take so long.

And my final suggestion is: I bet you can come up with a killer title for this piece that will really draw the reader in. I tend to think the strongest titles use striking nouns and verbs. I keep thinking Red wants to be part your title…

Cath, thanks so much for trusting me with your work and allowing us all to learn from your process! And all comments are welcome—jump into the conversation! We want to hear from you.

Happy Writing!

~Nancy Stohlman

(Questions? Email me at nancystohlman@gmail.com or find me on Facebook)

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This Is All It Takes

by Cath Barton

You come out of the yoga class and you hesitate. Will you turn left for home or right for town, following that flash of red you just saw out of the corner of your eye? You’re thinking if in doubt say yes. You turn right. You’re a little behind as the person dodges into the market hall, you see the red cloak swirl as he goes out the back and you run.  You could trip, but you don’t, you’re sure-footed, and you’re out in the yard gazing at the bowl of the sky above your head and there’s no one there, except that out of the corner of your eye you see something against the blue, bright red on bright blue so that for a moment it’s purple and you’re off running again, and he’s running too, must be because you’re really fast but he’s faster.

You’re down the street and there are sheep in the cattle market, the acrid smell is in your nostrils. You stop, your breath coming out all jagged, because you’re not used to running so fast for so long, and you twirl around, and all you can see is sheep, and the sound of their baaing is loud and rude and somehow gets in the way of your looking.

Someone coughs behind you, really close, and you gasp and hold your breath and you daren’t turn, not for a minute.

“You dropped your hat.”

You turn. It’s him, the man in red, holding out your hat, your purple hat.  You shake your head, very slowly, as if you’re in a film but you’re not, you’re in town on a Tuesday morning and you were just taken by the red flash of a man’s coat and now he’s there in front of you and you can’t believe, you really can’t believe that it’s him, holding out your hat to you, holding out your life to you. You were quite happy, you weren’t looking for anyone, you are, you were, completely content and now everything has changed in an instant. This is him, the one. There is no mistaking that he is the man you will now leave with, leave this market, leave this town and never come back. You won’t even stop to think, you daren’t because if you did you would remember that just a few streets away there is someone waiting for you, probably looking at his watch and thinking that you should have come home with the  bread for lunch, that it isn’t like you to take so long. But he won’t worry for a while because you always do come home, always have before and why should it be different now, and that is such a pity, because by the time evening comes and he knows that all cannot be well, you will be far away. So far away that no-one will find you. You and the man in red, the one you followed, the one you were always meant to be with, you and the man will be somewhere else and that will be an end to it.

Cath Barton is an English writer, photographer and singer who lives in a small town in South Wales. Cath particularly likes writing short fiction, and has had work published in Fractured West, Short, Fast and Deadly, Vine Leaves Literary Journal and beyond. She has recently published the anthology of stories and photographs Candyfloss II in collaboration with her husband Oliver.

Cath blogs about short story writing at www.cathbarton.wordpress.com and posts her daily photographic journal at www.blipfoto.com/Cathaber.

Ask A Flash Fiction Editor: The Story Begins Before The Story Has Begun.

On By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I love the creative ways that writers sneak meaning into unexpected places. Many flash fiction writers decide that, when every word really does counts, even the title is an opportunity to convey meaning to a reader. Which is why I’m so glad that we have M’s piece, “A Three-Character Play Wherein One of the Characters Never Appears on Stage” on the agenda for today. (Story in its entirety below)

I have to admit that I love a well-crafted title, and I’ve used this technique often myself in stories such as “My Boyfriend Lives in the Tree In Front of My House,” and “Sometimes I Still Smell the Smoke in the Walls.” A fellow writer, Travis MacDonald, even takes guerrilla titling to an extreme in his piece:

Everyone Enjoyed the Buffet At The Chef’s Wife’s Wake Until That Awkward Moment When The Neighbor’s Dog Disturbed The Casket, Spilling Little Yellow IOUs All Over the Borrowed Carpet.

Flash fiction writers are discovering what journalists have known all along: headlines and lead sentences—the who-what-when-where-why served up front and without apology—are essential to communication between writer and reader. Titles I love include Ron Carlson’s “Bigfoot Stole My Wife”,  Kona Morris’ “I’m Pretty Sure Nicholas Cage is My Gynecologist” and Rob Geisen’s “The Night I Discovered I Wasn’t as Cool As Han Solo”. Whether your title is somber or humorous, a well-crafted flash fiction title can convey meaning to the reader before the story has even begun. A nice trick when you only have 1000 words, no?

But is that cheating?

I suppose, technically, if the story is exactly 1000 words and the writer is only trying to squeeze in a few extra, it could be questionable. But more often than not, an effective flash fiction story falls well short of the 1000-word cutoff anyway, so it’s usually not so much about “getting in extra words” as it is about using the title differently. Borrowing from journalism—which, incidentally is another place where writing is confined by layouts and wordcounts—the flash fiction story squeezes meaning into every available space.

So M, let’s look at your story, “A Three-Character Play Wherein One of the Characters Never Appears on Stage”

Obviously I think your title is really working to not only convey additional information to the reader but also to provide a potent “hook” into your story. I also like the natural leanness of your language—I can tell you come to flash fiction from poetry, and often poets have an easier grasp on this than writers coming from other genres. And lastly you have some really striking images—I particularly like the building as a delinquent dental patient and the pear in yogurt as volcanic islands. I feel as if this story is already well on its way to being an effective piece of flash, keeping tension strung and covering a great deal of distance in a short amount of time.

What still needs work are some technical issues of clarity most often brought about by your use of multiple pronouns. While I’m also a fan of nameless characters, I find it works best when you limit anonymous characters to one male and one female. As soon as pronouns are used for more than two characters, or if two or more characters are using the same gender pronoun, it can quickly become confusing.

Right away in this piece I’m not sure whether “her cigarettes never go out” and “she never leaves the window” refer to the neighbor or the speaker—it could be either. When you finally say “he lives across the street” I’m surprised that the neighbor is male. Then I’m trying keep track of the “he” of the neighbor vs. the husband, and the “she” as our speaker vs. the dead woman, who may or may not be the same woman? Now I realize a bit of mystery, especially in the Hitchcock legacy, can be wonderful, but too much might be getting in the way of your story.

There are many ways you might be able to fix this. One suggestion is rather than using straight pronouns, you can use different “names” such as “The Husband”, “The Neighbor”, etc. Or you can refer to characters as “the one that smokes” or “the one with the lamp”.

Lastly, by the end I’m still unsure if he killed a third woman “she” or the speaker. (If this is what you are going for, then great, but if you wanted more clarity by the end you may still have to tweak). And then when he addresses himself by name, Jeff Jeffries, after a story full of anonymities, it feels just a touch too “ta-da!” and possibly contrived? Not sure if you need it…

M, I think once you can clear up these confusions for the reader, the story will have the effect you want it to. I hope this helps you on your revisions, and thanks so much for trusting me with your work and letting us all learn from your process!

Happy Writing!

~Nancy Stohlman

Please feel free to join in the conversation! And if you would like me to feature your flash piece in progress, please find me on Facebook or email me at nancystohlman@gmail.com.

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A Three-Character Play Wherein One of the Characters Never Appears on Stage

by M 

She has a neighbor. Her neighbor has a lamp. The lamp has a green glass shade. The lamp never goes out. Her cigarettes never go out. She almost never leaves the kitchen window. It’s the only place she smokes now. He lives in the building across the street. She’s watched the window for weeks. She’s never even seen him.

Eight in the morning, the lamp is on. Three in the afternoon, lamp’s on. Midnight. Lamp. On. It’s pre-dawn. The building looks like the mouth of a delinquent dental patient, every tooth knocked out by neglect except for one green straggler suspended by a rubber band of gum tissue.

She’s on the second floor. She has binoculars. She’s too low to see anything but the lamp. “You look like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window,” her husband says. He’s scratching his balls and doesn’t remotely resemble Grace Kelly. He’s obsessed with bottle blondes in classic films. He’s carrying a glue bottle. He thinks she spends too much time in the kitchen since her mother died. She thinks he spends too much time out of it. She wants to ask why glue doesn’t stick to the inside of the bottle. She wants him to sing I got glue, babe. “If this is your idea of quitting, it’s not working,” he says.

She’s waiting for the day, the hour, the lamp goes out. She’ll call the cops. “This doesn’t require police intervention.” She says something out of the ordinary: A slight evasion in the infinite cosmos of arrested light. Gregory Building. Fifth floor. South-facing corner apartment.

It’s a slow night. They find the corpse in the bathroom. Female. Blonde. Early thirties. Fatal blow to the back of the head. Blood coating the rim of the tub. Every front tooth knocked out.

“Jesus, chill out, Jeff Jeffries,” he says. He’s slicing a pear into a bowl of vanilla yogurt. The slices are volcanic islands. The yogurt is a tranquil lagoon. His knife is caught by the glare of a grow lamp she turns on every morning, turns off every evening for the orchid she knows she’ll kill. It needs light and dark in equal doses. Eventually she’ll forget this.

 

M is a performance poet who occasionally dabbles in other genres. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, and received a number of awards, including finalist position for two consecutive years in the annual Rattle $5000 Poetry Prize. Her poetry chapbook, To That Mythic Country Called Closure, winner of the 2012 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize, will be released in the fall of 2013. You can listen to her perform selections of her work at the Rattle Audio Archives:http://www.rattle.com/poetry/audio/. She also does her own manicures weekly, and has been known to wear foundation, mascara, and lipstick while undergoing major surgery.

Why I Write

On By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Most of us remember the book that made us want to become writers. For me it was The Mirror, a time-traveling novel set in the mining camps of Colorado long before I ever dreamed of living here. I was 10 years old. That same year, sitting on the bleachers at a soccer game, I told my mother I was going to be an author.

Since those days I’ve dedicated my life to the creation of art. I’ve strolled, stumbled, skipped, and often dragged myself down the path that any writer understands: the manuscripts abandoned in drawers, the shame of rejection, the yearned-for approval of publication, lonely hours spent wrestling with creation, the exquisite moment of birth. And I’ve spent a good deal of that time looking for colleagues with the same dedication, long-term vision, and commitment to an artistic life.

But, despite having been touched by many beautiful wordsmiths, my circle of colleagues continues to shrink. Reality picks them off slowly. The first ones fall to fantasy—those who are talented but undisciplined, or committed but only to a caricature. The ones who believe each word they write is precious, or who retreat after one rejection.

After fantasy it becomes more personal. The next fall to circumstance: your graduate school colleagues, your heartbroken writing partner who could no longer face the page, the writer who was forced into parenthood or personal tragedy, the brilliant writer who lost herself in a bottle of whatever was on sale. The disciplined writer who wrote ten manuscripts but never found her voice. The writer left autopsying her only manuscript until it was something unrecognizable.

And finally, the last fall to hubris. Having counted themselves among the few still standing, they think they’ve already won. Hubris arrives slyly and tempts us to no longer struggle. Because for god’s sake we’ve struggled enough. They should be knocking on our door, after all. And they, quietly, fall.

I write from this wreckage because I’m looking for survivors.I write

Last summer, while cleaning out my bookshelves, I came across my old copy of The Mirror. I reminisced over the author’s black and white headshot, her long straight black hair, and reread the bio I’d read 100 times as a child. Wait a minute—Boulder?

After much sleuthing I found her, hermitted away in a grand house in the hills of Boulder immaculately gardened by people with time to garden. She shyly opened the door, and I recognized the aged version of the woman on that book jacket. I followed her down the long hallway of a dozen or so framed best-selling books and into a sunny living room with a waiting tray of sweet lemonade.  I’d already been warned by her husband about the Alzheimers, that she hadn’t written for many years and didn’t feel she had much to contribute to an official interview. After a while I finally got brave enough to ask:

Do you miss writing?

She answered without hesitation: No.

It got to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore, she clarified. They always wanted me to write the same book, they didn’t want anything new. They’d want to see the first three chapters before I even knew what the story was about, and then they’d try to give me edits and tell me where the story should go until it wasn’t my story anymore. It got to the point where I couldn’t do it.

She gazed into her lemonade.

But I made a lot of money, she added. Back in those days a writer could make a lot of money…and I do mean a lot. Especially once you sell the translation rights.

Dust swirled in the silence. Your book is the one that made me want to be a writer, I finally told her. And I shared my world: the bodies tasting of defeat and bitterness, the bone yard of forgotten words, the preciousness of the survivors, writing unafraid into the pink crayon mornings.

And then I held out my 30-year old book and, in very shaky penmanship, she signed it.