I like to tell stories. (This should not be a surprise to anyone who’s met me in any way.) One of the things this means is that I have a lot of stories sitting around. Some are finished and short – flash fiction is a hell of a lot of fun and I think more people should try it. Some are partial shreds of longer works – if I could finish the novels I started, I’d have a backlist of at least fifty books.
I’ve been looking through my flash fiction collection, though. Most of them have just been languishing on my hard drive for years. I think it’s time I dusted them off, gave them one last edit, and sent them out into the world. Some, I’ll put here, but I want to get my newsletter running again, so some of them will end up going out to newsletter subscribers.
https://buttondown.com/JoanGrey
I’m also always looking for interesting flash fiction prompts, so if you’ve got an idea, send it my way!
In case you don’t know what ‘flash fiction’ is, it’s a super short story; I try to keep them under 2000 words. (I’ve done them in 1000 words, which is always a fun challenge.) Drabbles are different – they’re 100 words only, not including the title.
Keeping a story that short can be hard work. You need to have a complete story – not just a single scene without an actual ending – or it’s unsatisfying. Often, the stories rely on techniques which are frowned upon in longer-form works. ‘Telling’ is perfectly good if you only have 1500 words to get the whole story down.
They don’t need to be epics. In fact, they shouldn’t be epics, though now I’m tempted to see if I can make an epic fit into 2000 words. (This is in direct conflict with the meaning of the word ‘epic’, but we won’t discuss that part.)
The next flash fiction story I’m going to work on is one that’s been living in the back of my head for a decade or more. Many (many) years ago, when I’d first moved in with my now-husband, we were watching videos of Scottish troops marching through the streets of Edinburgh. (It’s an annual parade.)
And, against the bagpipes came the heavy tread of hundreds of boots marching in step, the soldiers’ kilts and cloaks swaying in time… and all at once, I pictured a tiny little alien child staring at the incoming ground troops of a defending army. From the child’s perspective, these are aliens. Frightening and interesting, all at once.
(Something like this: https://youtu.be/9iuc2Pxhp24 )
I wanted to make a story out of this; I could picture a bunch of different ways the story could go, but in the end, the idea sat waiting. I have a half-outlined space opera it could be shoved into, but it’s not really a good fit.
So, here we are, back at flash fiction. Can I get a story out of this one scene? I’ll give myself a total upper limit of 2500 words, which is more than enough.
Let’s go!