Flash! Ah-aaah!

                I sent a story off to Microhorror. I fully expect it to be rejected. In my desperation to send them something, anything, I found an unfinished story. I condensed what I’d already written, changing, incidentally, the viewpoint, from the boyfriend’s to the girlfriend’s, and the narrator from the first person to the third.

 I also had to supply an ending, and I had about sixty words left to do it with. The original draft was written as a regular short story of about 3,000 words, whereas Microhorror want flash fiction, 666 words or fewer. I lost a lot of atmosphere that way, and a lot of jokes, and a lot of insights into the couple’s relationship. I wasn’t happy about that.

The story takes place over the course of one day. I realize now that what I should have done is begin it one hour from the end. I’ve formulated a few rules of thumb for constructing flash fiction stories:

1)      Have the story take place over no longer than one hour

2)      Have no more than 2 characters (I ignored that one, as well)

3)      Set the story in one location only (ditto).

I’ve read some other advice for writing flash fiction- write one-word sentences where you can, don’t name your characters. But those are mine. And as with all writing, rules are made to be broken.

                I’m going to have to write biographies for my characters before I begin writing the actual stories. I keep promising myself that I will, and I keep breaking that promise. It does pay dividends, although, to me, it always feels like a chore. I’m also convinced that, to create a character, you have to start off with a real person. If you don’t like the person, you have no compunction putting the resulting character through anything, and you won’t worry about whether the real-life model is offended or not. But when you start with somebody you like, you have to tread carefully.

                Started following two more great blogs:

http://caughtinthemiddleman.wordpress.com/

The thoughts and feelings of a middle-aged man, and:

http://katyboo1.wordpress.com/

The thoughts and feelings of Katy, a wife and mother. I've found them both charming and funny.