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Talespinner View Drop Down
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    Posted: 23 Sep 2018 at 8:03am
Like me, many here are learning to write flash fiction.

I believe one way to learn to write is to read good published stuff.

For anyone interested, here's an excellent story (not mine) that the publisher of Flash Fiction Online recommends to aspiring writers.

Ch3 NC story SF/hospice/armband
Ending; Happy?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote GGreen Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Sep 2018 at 8:43am
Thank you for sharing this, I really enjoyed it. Reminded me of an episode of Charlie Broker's dark mirror. It's remarkable how many details about this tech she gets in without a single info dump.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kimand48 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Sep 2018 at 4:54pm
Can we make this a thread to share your favorite short fiction? 

This definitely isn't 1000 words, but I just listed to it on This American Life, and fell in love. It's called What Police Cannot Do by Aimee Bender and you can hear it on episode 653, Act 2.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Talespinner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Sep 2018 at 2:54am
Hmmm, I thought I had posted in the flash fiction area; apparently not. I'm not sure that listening to stuff helps us learn to write flash, unless we're writing screenplays. The flash, 1000 word, form is very challenging, and I think that seeing what others can do with just 1k words is inspiring. 

But yes, sharing published stuff here is a good idea. Here's another excellent flash piece from FFO:

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote bartelbysamsa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Sep 2018 at 11:51am
Originally posted by kimand48 kimand48 wrote:

Can we make this a thread to share your favorite short fiction? 

This definitely isn't 1000 words, but I just listed to it on This American Life, and fell in love. It's called What Police Cannot Do by Aimee Bender and you can hear it on episode 653, Act 2.




Heard this the other week and thought it was beautiful! Going to get the collection of stories it comes from methinks.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote bleustick Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Sep 2018 at 11:58pm
Haruki Murakami's short story collection "The Elephant Vanishes" is fantastic and a great introduction to my favorite author for those that might find his chunky (but phenomenal) novels intimidating. Francesca Lia Block's short story collection "The Rose and the Beast" may be my favorite of her works; they are all adaptations of classic fairy tales. And Charles de Lint is an amazing urban fantasy writer overall, but his short story collection "Dreams Underfoot" is still the best I've ever read by him. Just a few suggestions for excellently written short stories that could help guide or inspire a writer.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Talespinner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Sep 2018 at 3:46am
Mmm, thanks everyone. I too have many favourites, but few helped me learn the focus and conciseness necessary for flash, and valuable everywhere.

Writing that has helped me do flash includes Robert Heinlein's SF: he famously wrote,
"The door dilated," and said much much more than just three words; I wish I could remember where he wrote it. I learned that in SF it's not necessary to waste words and bore the reader explaining imaginary tech, unless its workings are material to the story.

In a delightful example of brevity, The Economist's Style Guide said, in my ancient edition, "To never split an infinitive is divine!" Further, The Economist has a wonderfully brief writing style; their journalists often reduce a complex situation to just a few words: there was a time when I read the Economist regularly in the hope that their economy of style would rub off: as you might have noticed, it didn't so I cancelled the subscription.

A long-time 007 fan, I love Ian Fleming's writing. He's clever at setting the scene and backstory in an entertaining way, so that, when the action explodes, he can pace it fast with short sentences: if someone gets hit with a table, we're not surprised, we've already met the table and can see it in the mind's eye: what it's made of and where it was and how it was to hand, available in the action.

Fleming often keeps the pace fast by avoiding commas and using "and" again and again in one sentence in a way we're taught not to do because it's illiterate and people might think we're writing like we talk and it gets more and more breathless and the sense of urgency grows and grows and grows...Wink

Fleming is also a master of "Chekhov's gun." (a foreshadowing technique valuable in all kinds of writing including flash) When, in Goldfinger, Odd Job decapitates a statue on a golf course, we learn that his hat is a vicious weapon, and we're not surprised when it becomes a weapon; indeed, knowing what he and the hat are capable of, increases tension and suspense: a useful technique for flash, methinks.

Now, where's my hat...
Pat. 


Edited by Talespinner - 25 Sep 2018 at 4:37am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote KJHunter Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Sep 2018 at 9:13am
Originally posted by bleustick bleustick wrote:

Haruki Murakami's short story collection "The Elephant Vanishes" is fantastic and a great introduction to my favorite author for those that might find his chunky (but phenomenal) novels intimidating. Francesca Lia Block's short story collection "The Rose and the Beast" may be my favorite of her works; they are all adaptations of classic fairy tales. And Charles de Lint is an amazing urban fantasy writer overall, but his short story collection "Dreams Underfoot" is still the best I've ever read by him. Just a few suggestions for excellently written short stories that could help guide or inspire a writer.

I am bookmarking this !I love Haruki Murakami!

As I mentioned over in the practice thread, I think I really need to focus on completing a full story arc within 1000 words - my most common critique is "reads like a prologue." I like this thread a lot because I do think I need to read more flash right now. I do get the Flash Fiction Online stories every week, and subscribe to Asymmetry Fiction, and there are some excellent stories there. But reading some with mastery level may help to improve my weaknesses.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Talespinner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Sep 2018 at 10:37am
Maybe identify from your prologue:
Genre:
Significant location:
Critical object:

And take yourself and a pen and notebook (no laptop) to a different Costa from usual -- outside your comfort zone -- and free associate a flash fiction story triggered by the prompts into the notebook?

I accidentally did something like this a while ago practicing for the FF Comp here at NYCM and discovered the opening story of a meta-arc of little stories I can use in my 'novel-in-slow-progress' to link chapters and provide back-story, much as Watson sometimes offers us tidbits of info about Holmes. 

To make it work, you may need to push further outside comfort, with an object selected at random, say the first noun your kid picks from a dictionary or picture book.

I was recently challenged at a flash workshop to write 100 words on a picture our mentor gave us, way outside my comfort zone: the result both surprised and pleased me!
Flash can be a mine of ideas, methinks. 

Pat
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote bleustick Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Sep 2018 at 10:40pm
Also, I didn't realize exactly how much I valued Vladimir Nabokov's writing voice until I read the collection of his short stories. (Literally just called "The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov"; no special subtitle or so forth.) He is a master of incredibly beautiful dramatic pieces, just this incomparably gorgeous writing voice despite how horribly depressing many of his stories tend to be. Also, a fantastic example of short science fiction stories is Robert A. Heinlein's "The Past Through Tomorrow" collection. I believe it includes "All You Zombies" which is one of my favorite short stories of his, which was later turned into a movie... called Predestination, I think (likely to keep from being mistaken for a zombie thing, which it isn't). It is amazing to see what some of the world's favorite novelists were able to create when limited to short story form, especially when they often tended to be so verbose otherwise (Heinlein and his long tech descriptions and sociopolitical theories LOL still occasionally present in his short stories, but cleverly worked in a much different fashion).
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