Writing Flash

Fred White

Description

Flash fiction―the art of the ultra-short story―is a challenging skill-building exercise for any writer. Learning how to compress a story to its most essential elements will make your writing vigorous, evocative, and full of emotion. In Writing Flash, acclaimed writing teacher Fred D. White gives an in-depth introduction to a fascinating genre, complete with exercises to develop and strengthen your flash-writing techniques. Writing Flash presents a complete guide to the writing techniques and creative possibilities of writing flash fiction, plus tips on publishing and marketing your own flash fiction to build your writing career. White also shows how the writing techniques of flash fiction are invaluable tools for any kind of writing, including writing novels and longer short fiction. Writing Flash won’t just help you become a better flash fiction writer; this book will help you become a better writer, period.

Informations

• Publié par: Linden Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610353328
• Langue: English

Extrait

A DVANCE P RAISE FOR W RITING F LASH
In Writing Flash , Fred White has compiled a wonderfully compact resource for writers.
-from the Foreword by Chris Tusa , author of The Yellow Girl
There is more to Flash than just its brevity, and White provides discerning writers with many lenses through which to understand and explore the diverse range and multiple styles of Flash. This insightful text, a welcome contribution, captures the essence of this important genre.
- Opal Palmer Adisa , author of Love s Promise
This is a thoughtful book that covers flash fiction from Aesop to podcasts. White analyzes his own writing as well as others to find those quintessential elements of storytelling that may particularly shine in abbreviated form.
- Hannah Voskuil , author of Horus and the Curse of Everlasting Regret
W RITING F LASH
How to Craft and Publish Flash Fiction for a Booming Market
Fred D. White

Fresno, California
Writing Flash
Copyright 2018 by Fred D. White. All rights reserved.
Published by Quill Driver Books
An imprint of Linden Publishing
2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721
[phone] / [phone]
QuillDriverBooks.com
Quill Driver Books and Colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 978-1-61035-317-5
135798642
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
This book is for
Leonard and Teresa George
Steve and Lisa Mackay
Terry and Sue Tarrach
Frank Vozak and Terrie Rymer
Dear and steadfast friends;
and, of course, Therese
I have written this letter longer than usual because I did not have the time to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
Brevity is the soul of wit.
-William Shakespeare
Other Books by Fred D. White
from Quill Driver Books:
LifeWriting: Drawing from Personal Experience to Create Features You Can Publish
from other publishers:
The Writer s Idea Thesaurus
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
The Daily Reader
The Daily Writer
Approaching Emily Dickinson
Communicating Technology
Science and the Human Spirit
The Writer s Art
with Simone Billings:
The Well-Crafted Argument: A Guide and Reader, 6th Edition
as editor:
Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir s Best Writings
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Chris Tusa
Part One: The Foundations of Flash
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Exploring the Possibilities of Flash Fiction
Chapter 3: Analyzing Flash Fiction
Part Two: The Nuts and Bolts of Writing Flash
Chapter 4: Writing Genre Flash Fiction
Chapter 5: Writing Literary Flash Fiction
Chapter 6: Writing Humorous or Satirical Flash Fiction
Chapter 7: Writing Experimental Flash Fiction
Part Three: Marketing and Publishing Flash
Chapter 8: Marketing and Publishing Your Flash Fiction
Chapter 9: Preparing a Volume of Flash Fiction
Chapter 10: Concluding Reflections and a Self-Interview
A Flash Fiction Checklist
References
Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Opal Palmer Adisa, Peter Cherches, Utahna Faith, Sherrie Flick, Anna Lea Jancewicz, Maria Negroni, Antonya Nelson, Lex Williford, and Hannah Bottomy Voskuil for permission to reprint their stories.
I also wish to thank the following individuals for their support and encouragement:
My agent, Rita Rosenkranz, of the Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency, NYC
Kent Sorsky, publisher, Linden Publishing/Quill Driver Books
My wife, Therese Weyna, for her wise suggestions
Foreword
In Writing Flash , Fred White has compiled a wonderfully compact resource for writers. As a writer who teaches flash fiction at the university level, I often find myself looking for a writing guide that not only provides writing exercises, strategies and techniques but that also includes a wealth of vital resources for writers. Because my students generally experiment with other forms, I always find myself looking for a writing guide that not only defines flash fiction effectively but one that also examines the connection between flash and longer, more traditional forms of fiction.
I was particularly delighted (as I think you will be) to find that, unlike most writing guides, Writing Flash not only examines the origins of flash fiction, tracing its beginnings to Old and New Testament parables (including ancient myths, allegories, sketches, and fairy tales), but it also explores the connection between flash, short stories, novellas, and novels. Sections like The Influence of the Short Story on Flash Fiction and Writing Flash as Preparation for Writing Traditional Short Stories and Novels are extremely rare in writing guides, and for that reason are uniquely useful and informative here.
Like many effective guides, Writing Flash provides sample flash stories for analysis, examining specific aspects (narrative voice, engagement, characters, and purpose) of each story. Not surprisingly, it also includes resources, such as a flash fiction checklist, information concerning query and cover letters, and a list of major writing contests (for individual stories and book-length collections). Most guides end here, but what s particularly striking and unique about Writing Flash is that it also focuses on various forms of flash fiction. Chapters such as Writing Genre Flash Fiction, Writing Literary Flash Fiction, Writing Humorous or Satirical Flash Fiction, and Writing Experimental Flash Fiction provide readers with a unique insight into different forms of flash-a topic that is often overlooked in most flash guides.
But it doesn t stop there. Writing Flash moves beyond the act of writing itself, dedicating an entire chapter to preparing a volume of flash fiction, instructing writers on how to arrange and sequence the stories within the manuscript, even focusing on the use of intriguing titles for your stories and how those titles might warrant a particular arrangement. Readers will also be pleasantly surprised (as I was) that White devotes an entire chapter to marketing your work, detailing how writers can successfully build an audience through social media and participation in writing groups. As someone who has read numerous flash fiction writing guides, I can attest that most (if not all) books rarely touch upon marketing your work.
Yet, with all of this said, what s perhaps most notable about Writing Flash is how uniquely personal it is. Unlike many writing guides, White includes samples of his own work, analyzing each story as well as including interesting, personal asides relating to what inspired him to write the story, and what specific decisions he made while constructing the narrative. This tendency toward creating a uniquely intimate experience between reader and writer culminates nicely in Chapter 10 with the Self-Interview, where White personally answers common questions concerning how to successfully compress language, the reason for flash fiction s recent popularity, as well as what inspired White to write the book.
-Chris Tusa
Editor, Fiction Southeast
Author of The Yellow Girl
P ART O NE
T HE F OUNDATIONS OF F LASH
1
Introduction
Flash fiction is hot. * A hybrid and fluid genre, it has the narrative grip of traditional short fiction combined with the compression, imagery, allusiveness, and evocative power of poetry. A good flash tale instantly intrigues us, may also momentarily bewilder us, and delivers an emotional jolt to the solar plexus-all within one to four pages. It leaves us with the sense that a dark, overlooked corner of this world (or some other world) has been glimpsed, a place at once familiar and strange. Flashes are fun to write because they challenge us as writers to render a substantive drama with the fewest words possible. That means you must be able to convey characters, settings, and situations in a way that suggests much more than what you lay out on the surface. Don t let the shortness of flash stories mislead you into thinking that they re easy to write; like poems, they re easy to write badly. A successful flash story has all the aesthetic complexity of a story ten times its length. How can that be?
In this book, I will break down that aesthetic complexity into easily digestible lessons about the craft of flash writing so that you will be better able to master them. You first learn about the techniques of indirection: unfolding a story in a way that suggests much more than what is conveyed on the surface. You will learn to use literary tools like metaphor, symbolism, and allusion as strategies for creating stories that seem much more developed than their length would suggest. To ensure mastery of these and other nitty-gritty literary techniques, you will be asked to complete challenging but fun-to-do exercises along the way-exercises that will make you a stronger writer.
The Basics of Flash Fiction
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of crafting flash fiction, let s go over the basics. At the outset, I m tempted to say that there are no basics to flash fiction. There are so many different varieties it seems purposeless to scrounge for universal elements aside from length (1,000 words or fewer is the generally accepted maximum length of a flash story, but some editors will accept slightly longer maximum lengths). Even so, we can make a few generalizations. First, flash stories are stories in the sense that some external or internal problem or struggle is brought into focus, and that one or more characters are involved, including the narrator. The problem is then resol