Flash Structures

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I'm working on a project that involves a whole whallop of short bits of writing.  Primarily fragments, 750-1200 words long.  Tiny things.  This size story is called "flash fiction" and, with the advent of an ADD culture and the internet, has risen in popularity (if not prestige) over the last decade.  So how do you write it?

A lot of authors bio's I've read, and authors I've met, have commented that writing short stories is, in some ways, more difficult than novels.  Per capita, every word holds more weight, carries more of the load.  I've seen novels wander around for pages on things that, while entertaining, aren't really important to the story.  Short stories don't generally have that freedom.  Perhaps a few paragraphs, but obviously, since the whole thing is smaller, the leeway is smaller.  Now if you consider flash is the smallest version of short story, we're approaching a word weight/significance ratio that is actually closer to poetry than typical prose.  Want to hear about how to stay up all night toiling for the perfect word combination?  Talk to a poet.  They're amazing that way.  Sadly, I am no such poet.  The beauty in the subtle combination of verbiage generally eludes me.  When it happens for me, it's not usually intentional.  I am more rooted in plot and setting, character and concept.  So short of becoming a poet and writing a poem long enough to be considered flash, what's a prose writer to do?

When faced with this sort of question I do what I always do; look to the authors I admire most and see how they handle it.  So I turn to my number one standby; Roger Zelazny.  When asked about his short stories Zelazny once explained that many of his short stories are what he'd consider the last chapters of novels he'd never written.  Going back and looking at them, it's clear that most of his short stories have a "tip of the iceberg" sort of feel when it comes to their world settings.  Characters enter the story already knowing one another, with pasts, and goals that they understand, even if the reader doesn't.  Follow with it, and once you get over that climax, it all makes sense.

So lets take a minute to look at how Zelazny would have to accomplish this.  In his mind, there is a novel.  Not set to paper perhaps, or maybe it is, but only in outline form.  What matters is that the novel, the whole thing, is there, present in the imagination.  Now, since it's fully developed, he can step in and begin writing wherever he likes.  (For the record, evidence that Zelazny wrote with "full concepts" from the start is all over his works; chapters out of sequence, backwards, massive chunks of missing time, only writing key scenes)  Instead of starting at the beginning, the call to action, where the character typically leaves their normal setting and tromps off into the story, he starts at the end.  At those final steps before the climax.  If you want to talk Heroes Journey speak, most of Zelazny's short stories start in either the "Supreme Ordeal" (the characters low point) or, more commonly, the moments before "Seizing the Sword/Item", that vital moment where everything come to a head and the character succeeds or fails. 

This doesn't mean that all those "unwritten" chapters have no place.  They are folded in to the ending, used to slow it down a bit, provide some context.  But instead of having the chapter where something is detailed out and explained, we have a paragraph, if that.  Sometimes it's literally only the scars and vague recollections of the previous material.  But it's there, and it adds a reality and richness to the story, something we can't see, but can feel.

So how does this apply to flash?  Well, if a short story is a twelve chapter novel with the first eleven "folded in" and the last remaining.  I'd say flash fiction should be a six scene short story with the first five scenes "folded in" and the last remaining. 

The climax of any story is the "tasty bit".  It's that sweet spot, like the center of a watermelon.  It's why we're on the trip, it's the destination.  Sure, the journey needs to be interesting, but in the end, you need, well... the end.  The climax.  

Flash doesn't have to be just a fragment of writing.  I doesn't have to be incomplete.  Flash is a climax, supported and nestled in the buffer of very real, carefully implied story.

Now go flash someone!

First Time Scouting: Caverns and Cities

Image: Strange World by ~Pixie-kemh

I wrote my first location scout essay.  The goal of the essay was to explore locations that would work for my evil cult story.  I intended to write it in a particular voice, but I failed at that.  Despite that failure, I think that I came up with some decent ideas to work from.

The first paragraph defined the story outline.

The story has a cult with numerous members, and they're into human sacrifice.  There's an ex-cultist from years and years ago who made off with some valued relics.  The cult snatches up a relative of the ex-cultist for their next human sacrifice.  All of this implies that the group has been active for a long time -- a generation or two, at least.  The ex-cultist undertakes a rescue operation, so it's one ex-cultist against a fully-staffed cult gathering.

 The following paragraphs built up the ideas for which locations to use.

I hate to say it, but isolation is probably a good starting position for the cult's grounds.  They can't have been doing much human sacrifice in a public space, can they?  Unless they're the majority in the area, or the powerful elite in the area, so that they can kill with impunity.  Going the first route, we're looking for wilderness of some kind: deep forest, dark swamp, high mountains, vast caverns, etc.  Going the second route, we're picking on a small town or village, or maybe a small country with a totalitarian regime in place.  Can't we have both?  A small country with a lot of natural resources, where there's a ruling class more or less dominated by the evil cult.  So there's settlement here and there, and abandoned industrial zones of some kind (mining, logging, oil drilling, etc).

Wasn't there a Greek city-state with a silver mine?  It got flooded due to overdevelopment or somesuch.  Make it an goodly sized island with natural caverns and an exploited mine, then flood the thing out.  The ruling class is manipulated by cultists.  (The ex-cultist who ran away was part of the law enforcement or military community, which might be a valuable trait for the story.)  The cult sacrifices to an evil god of some description, and it can be an ancient practice that ran in cycles.  Give them temples and statues and all that.  Flood the most potent areas.  That puts us on bridges and boats going in and out.  A subset of the island population can be kept in the darkened areas as labor and service for the old grounds, too.

The ex-cultist fled the cult, which also means escaping the island.  The ex-cultist lives elsewhere now, and so will the cult's chosen victim.  Where is this?  We're going into some rural island territory, backwaters with ancient ruins and so forth.  Wouldn't some contrast be nice?  Somewhere modern, techy even?  Japan, say.  Getting from one point to the other involves planes and boats, maybe even hops between multiple countries.  (A quick Wikipedia stroll leads to Odaiba, which is a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay, Japan.  Seems neat enough: contrast modern development and tech stuff with the more primitive cult island, but keep the island theme.)

And I finished with how I felt about the material.

My initial reaction to having a story hop from Tokyo, Japan to some unspecified (possibly fictional) Greek island is apprehension.  Does the story need that kind of exotic locale?  Might that clutter the story, or cloud the conflicts?  But that's the point of the exercise: to expand my writing beyond the confines I normally use.  These particulars aren't necessary, but they could be cool, and it's a good challenge.

This isn't to say that I'll succeed at evoking these places for the audience.  I think the goal of the essay was achieved: I have better places to set my story than an unnamed city in decent weather.

Image: Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba by ~samoorai

Nowhere is Dull

Image: Welcome to nowhere by ~Paskaler

At Cult Fiction, we talked about our stories.  I laid mine out, as much as I had, and there was much critique.  One question that didn't get asked was, "Where is this taking place?"  Which is good, because my answer would have been something like, "Doesn't matter.  Anywhere, really."

My current story has a cult that engages in human sacrifice.  There's a victim for the cult to murder, and the victim has a rescuer.  When I took my first run at the structural layout, I didn't even ask where it'll take place.  When I imagined staging the events, I pictured some modern city in the United States, during some temperate weather.  There'd be a house in the city, there'd be a cult gathering site on the outskirts.

Well, a major benefit I get at Cult Fiction is being made to face up to my limitations.  How many drafts of how many stories do I need to write before I stop slighting the setting?

Spare No Expense

One lesson I've been slow to learn is that I'm not saddled with a budget.  Were I making a live action movie, I might have trouble putting my cult in the Himalayas.  Or having the cult attack the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, abducting their victim during the middle of a ballet. These would be impossible to shoot on a shoestring, but prose comes cheap.  "A nondescript room in the middle of nowhere interesting," doesn't cost me more than, "A noisy morgue in the embattled city of echoes."

Setting Isn't Clutter

Habitually, I select the minimum number of locations and backdrops, and I aim to make them unimportant to the unfolding drama.  It's as if I regard the setting as clutter that needs to be swept off the page.  Instead, I should seek to mine the locations and backdrops for interesting complications and embellishments.

New Tool: Location Scout

I'm a fan of making tools to overcome writing problems.  This one is less formulaic than others I've made, and it consists of writing a short essay in the voice of an excited location scout.  I come up with my story idea, even do a bare-bones layout of some structural components, then I write a five paragraph essay that explores wild, interesting, and exotic locations and backdrops that would enhance the story.  What this should do is kick me out of my habitual rut.

My goal is to turn in a draft of my new story on Tuesday.  I want to do all the things right that I already know how to do, and I want to deliver an engaging setting along with it.

   - Eric M. Cherry

The Cult has arrived!

Worship the written word!  Bow before the dark gods of story crafting and tremble before their massively dangerous creativity!  Know that without story; nothing exists.  To write is to invoke the very essence, nay, the primal goopy stuff, of reality!  There are those who dare such a feat!

We also like to meet up in a mostly abandoned bar.

 We are CULT FICTION!

After pages and pages of material written, dozens of writers workshops, three live performances, and a whole lot of s'mores, we've decided it's time to officially launch the Cult Fiction Blog!  It's mainly a place to discuss genre writing, keep tabs on your local cult activities, and provide us with a place to communicate with a world that will soon fall under our evil sway!

Just you wait and see...