This post is part of a series of readings and activities that I am using in a Creative Writing camp for middle school and high school students. We're examining Flash Fiction, what makes it work, and how to write them. We're going to start by reading and examining "long" flash fiction. Stories of 1000-1500 words, and as the week goes on, we're going to get shorter and shorter, until by day 4 we are looking at 6 word stories and Twitter Tales.
1000-1500 words.
300-600 words.
100-300 words.
Can we go shorter? And what happens when we do?
We discussed earlier that as stories become more compressed, more of the story becomes implied and there is a greater need for the story to focus on the change or climax. However when we drop below a certain word count, an interesting thing happens. That climax or change may not even appear in the story.
When we drop down below 100 words, we get what are really iceberg stories.
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| Borrowed from www.pvisoftware.com |
Stories that are in the 10 word - 140 character range are things that make us go, "Hey, there's a story there." We get it. We get it because what is said leads us directly to what is not said. The heart of the story doesn't even happen on the page.
All stories have some amount of their meaning, message, and character actions under the surface and one can get good at the art of implying, but these flash fictions have almost the entirety of the story underwater.
Even though we can't see the weight of the story, we should still feel it. Just like if you tried to push an iceberg out of the way without realizing what was below. The moment you touch it, you'd know.
140 Characters:
Twitter has done some really fun things with stories, and if you're interested in ways to tell digital stories, you should check them out. However, what have they done for flash fiction? Simple. Created a new limit to test. 140 characters.
Exiting the bank with a backpack of untraceable currency, Waldo and his dog lost themselves in the crowds. They were never found. #mashreads
— Ethan Brown (@TheGeoDynamo) April 16, 2014
The magician spent many nights making his pretty assistant vanish but it was the magician's wife that finally made her disappear. #MashReads
— Dustin Batt (@dustinbatt) April 21, 2014
She desperately wanted his attention. He desperately wanted a slice of pizza. A millennial love story. #MashReads
— paige blawas (@PEB5050) April 16, 2014
These tweets were winners in a twitter story contest. You can read more of the Mashable Story Contest entries here, but Twitter stories are happening all the time. @Stageoflife hosts a monthly contest.
This constraint can be fun, and forces you to think about words differently since the limit is on characters, not words. Remember that characters are letter, punctuation, and spaces.
Even shorter still?
6-10 word stories.
For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.
By Ernest Hemingway
The story behind this story was that Hemingway wrote it on a bet. True or not, this story has inspired writers ever sense to play with and put to work the implications of words.
It's called the Hemingway challenge, and it has inspired stories like this:
Puppies in windows still wag tails.
By Hannah Hart
and this:
Underwear—check. Fake passport—check. House key—left behind.
By Megan Evans
Read more of Gotham Writers 10 Words or less story contest here.
Or, if you want more strictly 6 word stories, you can try here.
In many cases these stories become lists. Sometimes they're short snippets of dialogue. Other times they focus on the details.
They all require though that the reader fill in the blanks and discover the story.
They aren't just a random grouping of words or descriptions without meaning.
Yesterday we compared micro fiction to a punch of understanding and emotion. These stories require the reader to be a quick working detective. They're probably closer then to riddles -- there is only one, or a small handful, of right answers and they always come with a feeling of surprise and/or understanding. Unlike a riddles though, they should be easy.
Activities:
Looking for some inspiration or a bit of challenge. Try to tell a story for each of the following genres during the activities below:
Fairy Tale.
Murder Mystery.
Romance.
Action/Adventure.
Historical Fiction.
Fairy Tale.
Murder Mystery.
Romance.
Action/Adventure.
Historical Fiction.
Day Four Activity 1:
Write a Twitter Fiction. Remember that punctuation, spaces, and letters are all characters.
Day Four Activity 2:
Write a 7-10 word story.
Day Four Activity 3:
Write a 6 word story.
Word count in your word processor not good enough. Here are some fun tools you can try.
Day Four Challenge:
Can your retell your "The Timekeeper" story in 140 characters or less? If you changed "The Timekeeper" each day, which version do you like the best? Which seems the most effective? Why?
Review:
Day One: Writing Flash creates a constraint that challenges us to put our words to work and think out of the box. A full story arc can be delivered in 600-1500 words.
Day Two: Words do not equal content. Rephrasing, restating, showing things from a different perspective, can all help us cut out unnecessary words and get to the heart of a story. Back story may not be as necessary as we think it is. We can want to know more about characters, but we shouldn't ever need to know more.
Day Three: Going shorter helps us hone in on underlying truth about our characters or about a topic. The focus on word choice is even greater, every word should give us insight into the situation or help bring the character to life. Symbolism and metaphor become very powerful when you drop below 300 words. Such micro fiction may also be good practice for exploring characters we plan to use in longer works.
Day Four: You can tell a story without fully telling a story. The right words combined in just the right way can trigger a domino effect of thoughts and emotions in your readers.
One Last Time. Why Write Flash?
If this four day crash course hasn't sold you on flash yet or you are still wondering how flash fiction writing can fit in with your novel writing schedule, take a look at what Grant Faulkner has to say about his schizophrenic love affair with both flash fiction and novels here.
Or, just take your own advice. When I asked on day three how writing micro fiction could blend with longer writing, here's what students said/agreed:
- Sometimes you have these characters or scenes in your head that won't leave you alone. They mean to drive you crazy, but they don't really fit into a longer work. Flash fiction gives you a chance to free them. (Sydney)
- When you're writing a story and your character makes one choice, sometimes you wonder how things would be for them had they made another. You could write a flash about the alternative choice, continue the novel, and get the best of both worlds. (Emma)
- It really allows you to focus on the scene and what you are saying. You get to stop and really think about the characters or what it is you're trying to say. (Dev)
- You could write a longer work in fragments. Scene by powerful scene, stringing them together for a longer story.
- A 55,000 word novel written like a flash (where every word is doing work and belongs there and characters come to life immediately) would be a "really good novel."
- It's fun.
Think you'll miss the daily interaction with writing instructors and other writers once camp is over? Here is a list of the 50 top recommend writers and writing instructors to follow on Twitter, picked due to their supposedly daily pearls of wisdom in 140 characters.
One good thing social media and the Internet have done is created a hub for writers to find each other, get together, read work, critique, edit, and share. Writing is largely a solitary activity, but we do it to express ourselves and make sense of the world. Getting to spend time with people who feel the same way about stories and words as you do is unlike anything else. Maybe I will see some of you in camp again next year, but in the meantime, keep reading, keep writing, and try to spend time with writers, even if only digitally. And remember, critique is a part of that. Find a community where you can get honest, insightful feedback on your work. The good and the bad. Those are the best environments as they push us to better our writing and to decide the types of audiences we want to write to.
Happy writing!
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