Flashnano Pep Talk/Writing Flash Fiction: What You Don’t Say Is The Story

On October 30, 2013March 25, 2018 By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized7 Comments

In the month of November, in solidarity with our Nanowrimo friends, we’ll attempt to write 30 flash fiction stories in 30 days.

So you’re going to try your hand at this flash fiction thing, huh?

In the beginning you will still very often land closer to the 1,000-word cut-off mark, trimming and pruning to make sure your story makes it into the official flash fiction guidelines. As you become more comfortable with the form you will find that your stories naturally shrink and start to land well beneath the 1,000-word mark.

What happens in between is a process of letting go.

First of all, let go of being good at it. Whether you come from poetry, longer fiction or nonfiction, it takes a while to get used to the new form. So let go of the need to be an instant expert. So many of us find it frustrating to “start over” and embrace being a beginner in a new genre. I invite you to instead see it as an opportunity.

Let go of exposition. We have become fond of our exposition techniques, our lush, sardonic, witty, poignant, clever, or otherwise expository voices. This is often the first thing to let go of in flash. It doesn’t mean you must let go of it altogether, but your urgent storytelling voice must trump your love of exposition for the magic to happen.

Let go of description. Not all together, but let your description come only in service of your storytelling. Let go of the urge to linger. In flash fiction, one well-placed detail brings an entire story into focus. Opt for one or two telling details over a wash of description—you just don’t have that kind of time.

Let your silences become informative. Don’t rush to fill them. As we learn to let go of exposition and description, we learn to embrace silence as a tool, and the juxtaposition of silences to infer information.

Let go of extra words. Try removing words and see if you can create potent gaps of intuition. See how much you can not say. Often what you don’t say is the story.

So what’s left you ask?

What’s left is tightly crafted little nugget of concentrated gold.

What’s left is flash fiction.

~Nancy Stohlman

Check here for daily Flashnano Prompts during November.

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“The Reluctant Hero”

On October 13, 2013November 23, 2013 By nancystohlmanIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Flash fiction by Nancy Stohlman

I wanted to just keep walking and pretend I hadn’t seen it. I knew plenty about bags floating in rivers. It wiggled, and I knew I should stop but I kept walking, and I was reminded of my mother sneaking me down to the edge of the river, showing me all the empty bags left in the mud like used condoms – look at those stories, she would say, people just threw them away like trash! They could have lived. And then she would fall to her knees and pray to her god.

So when I saw the woman leaving the edge of the river, I knew what was going on. I avoided eye contact with all the gypsies, beating deflated pillowcases against rocks as I crawled up the muddy banks and caught the tail of the story. I dragged out the waterlogged thing and took it home, where I set its cold, blue body gently on the page and let it live.

Originally published in Flash Frontier. Read original here

“The Hostess”

On September 18, 2013November 23, 2013 By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Flash fiction by Nancy Stohlman

The hostess decided to throw a small dinner party, just the neighbors and a few friends, just something to lift her spirits. She made pot roasts and French Onion soup from scratch while he retreated to the basement.

There was a few weeks truce, an uneasy truce for the sake of the children, and then another all-night battle followed by a series of murder mystery parties, complete with costumes, wine tastings, realistic weapons rented by the hour, and yucca whipped into small hills as light and fluffy as French pastries.

By the end-of-summer-Hawaiian-luau, the hostess was holding back tears through her fake eyelashes and long, black wig as he moved his things into the spare bedroom: You invited them, you entertain them! he yelled, slamming the door. The guests tried to keep her glass filled with an assortment of specialty rums and freshly crushed papaya mixers.

Soon the invitations started going unanswered; the guests found excuses for not attending the 1950’s sock hop, the M*A*S*H party, the “1001 Arabian Nights” celebration complete with whole roasted goat. Come spring, the 25-foot-tall Maypole looked desolate, pastel ribbons hanging limply like unwashed hair.

But today, the sound of hammers. It would be the greatest party she had ever thrown. Everyone would come. A crew of a dozen was sawing, hammering, painting, and creating a to-scale facsimile of the Titanic. Another crew was bringing in 500-gallon tanks of water that would, at the appropriate moment, be released into the back yard, while the guests, in full pre-World War I formalwear (as specified in their invitation) would get into actual lifeboats and attempt to row themselves to the safety of the house. A caterer was reconstructing an iceberg two stories high, and, at 11:40 pm, the gong she rented would sound, the string orchestra would begin to play, the water would begin to rise and the guests would file into lifeboats, of which there would, of course, be too few.

Originally published by Pure Slush. Read original here.

Nancy answers The Hue Questionnaire:

What is your favourite colour? Why?

Red. When I was 10 I was told by the Avon Lady that I was a “winter”

Do you wear this colour? How often and when?

As often as I possibly can. Lipstick. Boots. Red sparkles if I can get away with it.

What does the colour suggest to you?

Wonder Woman at a voodoo German sparkle party.

What does it not suggest to you?

Barfing out the window of a moving RV.

How long has it been your favourite colour?

I’m pretty sure my placenta was red.

When does it work best?

Here’s the thing: Red is both celebrity and paparazzi. When a person walks into a room embodying red, everyone secretly feels better: Red has arrived. It’s kind of like when someone brings the Hot Damn Cinnamon Schnapps to a wedding reception. Maybe you wouldn’t have done it yourself, but you’re glad to know that someone else has, and you might crowd around that person and even take a swig because it will make your story better later.

When does it not work for you?

When I want to disappear. There are plenty of days I just can’t live up to the expectations of red.

How does the colour relate to you, or you relate to it? Are you this colour or is this colour you?

At my best, I am always red.

Your Success Is Mine and Mine is Yours

On September 4, 2013September 4, 2013 By nancystohlmanIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

As an artist, I walk a path that has been smoothed by others. If I take an easy step, it’s because someone before me has been kind enough to move a rock out of the way. And each rock I move on my journey leaves the road a little clearer for you.

What if we all stopped and really embraced this idea for a moment? What if, instead of feeding the fear, the jealousy, the insecurity, and the competition, we wrote ourselves a new story of mutual success?

Unfortunately most of us operate from a vantage point of scarcity. Writers live in a very real world where publishing houses are folding, or merging, a gazillion books are being written and published every year, and every year we are faced with a new study about how few people read books. We’ve been conditioned to believe that by this time next year there will be only one reader left on the whole planet…and she’s dying.

So if I’m living in the scarcity paradigm, then your success is a direct threat to my own.

But what if this isn’t the only story?

We’re storytellers, after all. We are writers and artists and painters and musicians—our job is to create ideas that weren’t there before. So what if we created a new story? A story that says there are enough readers/fans/audiences for all of us?

What if we created a story that said every reader you recruit is a reader for the collective? What if every book I sell is a potential reader for you? What if, as a collaborating community, we can rebuild our dying readership and infect the world with our love of words?

If I step out of my fears, the ones that say there isn’t enough for us all, then your success can only support mine and my success is in service of yours. And like a perfect partnership we take turns: I teach, you learn. I learn, you inspire. I surprise, you applaud. I applaud, you dazzle.

We are traveling a well-worn road, and every one of us owes our successes to someone before us. In return, we share our successes with those who follow. Applause is contagious, after all, and when one of us wins, we all win.

Together, we can create a new story.