Final draft posted on your blog by the end of class March 29th.
Flash fiction is a VERY SHORT STORY, usually featuring a single act, focused around a specific theme or event (EG.“The Dinner Party” by Mona Gardner).
THE PROCESS: Using both of the quotations you selected for PART ONE of your Tapestry assignment as inspiration, write a short piece of fiction of NO MORE than 500 words focused on your theme. This first draft will be edited and revised to 400 words and then in your final edit to 300 words.
Some ideas to inspire you:
1) The small idea: Look for the smaller ideas in your larger theme. These small ideas may be found in your selected quotations. For example, to discuss the complex ideas surrounding ‘secrets’, you would need to write a novel. To write a piece of flash fiction, I would try to determine what a smaller piece of that complex issue was: How might keeping secrets help / hurt relationships? How would telling a secret change someone’s life? What if someone had a dark secret and didn’t tell? Find smaller topics within your theme (inspired by your quotations) and build on one of them.
Here are two quotes I chose to show the two sides of my theme SECRETS:
“Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret” Jean de la Fontaine
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” Robert Frost
To me these quotations reveal the heavy burden that keeping some secrets weigh on us, and the second quotation tells me that some secrets will eventually reveal themselves, showing our true natures to the outside world. So what would happen if a person with a ‘secret’ heavy burden did not really accept and acknowledge the secret, so continued to hide it from society?
2) Bury the background information in the opening: When you write your story, don't take two pages to explain all the pre-story. Find a way to set it all in the first paragraph, then get on with the rest of the narrative.
The streetcar is crowded today, and Meeda has to stand in the aisle, her small suitcase wedged between her legs. But Meeda doesn’t mind. She is free, and, in a way, she is going home.
3) Start in the middle of the action: To reduce the word count and up the action, begin with: A man is running. A bomb is about to go off. A monster is in the house. Don't describe any more than you have to. The reader can fill in some of the blanks.
The car clangs to a stop. Meeda sees her reflection in a grocer's window. Her hair is tied in a bun. There are deep shadows and wrinkles under her eyes. The faded yellow dress the orderly laid out on her bed this morning doesn't help.
At Church Street, a seat becomes available, and Meeda unfolds her copy of the Gazette and, glancing at the classifieds, hopes she isn't too late. What luck finding the ad so close to her release.
4) Use few characters: You only need a protagonist and an antagonist and a few flat, static supporting characters to tell the story of your theme. Select your POV wisely.
The past eight years are a blur. Her short stay at Hudson County then the transfer to Pinehurst. Dr. Philby telling her she'd snapped like a twig on a cold morning. Her husband's disturbing letter: “I'm taking Janie away. Don't try to find us!” Such a contrast to Matron's lovely letter: Meeda has shown such devotion to our younger patients. The driver announces her stop. Meeda rises and walks to the back exit.
5) Use dialogue: To reveal the characteristics of your main characters, have them speak up! Dialogue is a quick easy way to present your characters to the reader in few words.
“Rats in the cellar,” she'd told the young clerk at Miller's Hardware. “I've tried everything. Everything.” And to this day, as far as Meeda was concerned, she had.
So she bought the colorless crystals in the bottle with the red plastic cap and mixed them in with Nathan's formula. Just to get a little sleep, she told herself.
Meeda is almost there now. Only a few more blocks.
6) Focus on one setting: Find one significant setting in which to explore your theme and focus your story. (A war-torn street. A school under seige. A hospital where a mother waits for news. A mythological monster on a hill at sunset.) They say a picture worth a thousand words. Paint a picture with words, then set the action within it.
Walking the neighborhood, Meeda shivers as a familiar vision returns. Early winter. A woman sits on the steps of an old brownstone dressed in a light cotton blouse and black woolen skirt. A small child stands beside her, resting a hand on her shoulder. The sun hits the limbs of a bare maple, casting shadows on the pavement below while the woman rocks an empty baby carriage to some inner sound only she can hear, a rhythm only she can feel.
7) Make the reader guess: A little mystery and suspense goes a long way. This will lure them on to the end.
Meeda didn't need eight years of therapy to understand she was the woman on the steps and the child standing by her side, Janie. She was such a good girl. But then came Nathan. What was the saying? ‘Wednesday's child is full of woe’. That was Nathan. She would sit and rock him for hours. And he would scream and scream. Nothing worked. Not the warm milk, the patting, the caressing, the soft tone of her voice whispering in his ear. “Quiet, Nathan, quiet.”
8) Use a twist to conclude: Flash fiction is often twist-ending fiction because you don't have enough time to build up sympathetic characters and show how a long, devastating plot has affected them. Like a good joke, flash fiction is often streamlined to the ‘punch-line’ at the end. This doesn't mean a surprise ending that doesn't fit in with the rest of the story. Your reader should be left with the feeling of "Ah, I didn't see that coming, but it makes sense."
Meeda checks the address in the paper against the black numbers painted on the transom: 653 Tanner. Yes, this is it.
She goes up the stairs and rings the bell. A well-dressed woman opens the door. “Yes?” And then, after no response, “Can I help you?”
Meeda returns the woman's smile and holds up the newspaper, the words, ‘full-time Nanny’, circled in red. “I've come about your ad.” *
Four hundred and ninety-three words later, Meeda and the reader reach their destination. The newspaper, mentioned earlier, makes an important appearance at the story’s end and underscores the themes that initially inspired the story: a child, a secret and a traumatic event.
*This is a story written by Paul Alan Fahey called “Wednesday’s Child”.
