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“It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. You remember one thing, and that sudden…

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(Cover image of Short Form Creative Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, Second Edition, (Bloomsbury, 2026), H.K. Hummel & Stephanie Lenox, eds.)

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I promised you I’d let you know when t…

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Hi friends, I am, as we speak, traveling back to Denver from the wonderful Bath Flash Fiction Festival, which took place this past weekend in Bristol, UK. Always such a fun an…

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Hi friends! I hope your writing is going well and you’re managing to stay cool. If you’re like me, you have a few flash drafts in your folder that you keep returning to in hopes of making them work. You know there’s potential there, but you just can’t seem to bring it to fruition. Some writers are now turning to AI for “help” with their writing projects. I can’t fathom getting any satisfaction from that. You probably can’t either. That’s why you’re here!

Today, let’s remember that the struggle of writing, the working through, the trying and failing, the horsing around and experimenting, is also what makes it so rewarding. Why hand it all over to a machine? What follows are twenty-three tricks for vivifying a draft that’s not quite “there” yet.

I’ve made this article (originally published in 2023) free and open to the public, so if you enjoyed it, please feel free to share it! Many thanks, ~Kathy

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1. Throw in an animal. Joy Williams, in her “Eight Essential Attributes of the Short Story and One Way it Differs from the Novel” says a short story must include “an animal within to give its blessing.” Animals can be unpredictable. Include a peacock in your story and see what happens.

2. Slap a title on that thing. Preferably one that does not, in any way, support the current draft. Now write into it. Let it inform your revision. Be bold in this. You can also start from a title alone: “The Last Time [So and So] Did [Such and Such]” or “My Life as a [Article of Furniture].”

3. Include an Unexpected Detail. Those who’ve taken my workshops are familiar with this exercise. This can be a Particular Object or it can be, well, anything. What happens to your story if you throw in some unexpected kindness, for example? Indeed, what happens in life?

4. Get boldly weird in your descriptions. Compare a smell to a sound. A color to an emotion. See how this gives your subconscious permission to think outside the box in other ways.

5. If you’re thinking, “no one will publish this” lean even further into the idea.

6. Forget the template in your mind.

7. Forget what the writer on Substack admonished you against. Especially if it was me.

8. “Poem-ize” your prose. Break it into stanzas. Create line breaks. Pull out anything but the most essential images, the most powerful language. (I learned this from Maureen Langloss, editor-in-chief of Split Lip Magazine, who offered this gem up years ago on Twitter, as if to say, “here’s something you can do,” my favorite kind of writing advice.

9. Similar to #8, pull your paragraphs apart and create one sentence paragraphs and see what lives in the white space. I do this one a LOT as a means of “re-visioning” my story. Breathe some air into a breathless paragraph.

10. OR chunk up your short paragraphs into one breathless paragraph and see what taking the air out does. For all of these, read your piece aloud, before and after. Which version best serves your intention for the story? Compare the experience of breathlessness vs. the sort of collaboration required of a story full of white space.

11. Add a minor character who “sees” the story more clearly than the others.

12. Remove the first and last paragraphs entirely. Now what?

13. If your story is in first person, remove all instances of the word “I.” (This is HARD, but really changes the movement of the writing.)

14. All questions.

15. All exclamations.

16. All declaratives.

17. All objects. (Keep at these until your subconscious supplies a pattern. Our brains are story-seeking machines if you get out of their way long enough.)

18. Try pouring your story into a new container. A list? A hermit crab?

19. Print out your story. Cut up the paragraphs. Move them around.

20. Begin with the sentence: Bear walks into a bar. Go!

21. Hunt for the “why” of your story. Lucy Cron, in her article, “Tell Don’t Show? What Brain Imaging Reveals About Readers,” examines the work of neuroscientist Steven Brown. “According to Brown, when we’re grabbed by a story, we’re instantly making inferences about the protagonist’s beliefs in order to pinpoint their intentions and what is motivating their actions. We’re not hooked by what the protagonist is doing; we’re on the hunt for why they’re doing it.” This is part of the fun of reading!

22. Mad Lib it! One of my all-time favorite flashes is Madlib by Kim Magowan in Okay Donkey. I create my own “fill-in-the-blanks” stories when I have the ghost of an idea but am bereft of details. Use this framework to plug things in without overthinking until something sticks.

23. Reverse the chronology. How does that change the emotion of the story? See Stephen Dixon’s phenomenal “Wife in Reverse.”

Thanks, as always, for stopping by! This article is open to the public, so please feel free to share, or leave a comment or question below. And if you’re not already subscribed, consider joining the Art of Flash Fiction community. We’d love to have you.

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For some reason, the link for our 7:00 Write together session went wonky, so for those of you who will be joining that session tomorrow (July 10th) please use this link instead:

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Hi everyone!

The second in our series of Write Together sessions is TOMORROW (July 10th). See the times below. Choose which time best suits you and simply click the link to join in! You may come to bo…

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Links go out on Thursday.

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“Persistence of Memory” ~Salvador Dali, 1931

Hi friends,

I’ve now completed my four-part series on Poetic Forms & Devices in Flash Fiction. Here are the links to the articles in case you missed any:

I’m coming off a rough several days of wrestling with a migraine, so I hope you don’t mind that I’m rerunning a newsletter from 2023 many newer subscribers will not have seen, on an aspect of craft I feel is very important for flash writers. Below, I discuss movement and change, and give some terrific examples from Ada Limón, DeMisty Bellinger, and Lydia Davis, along with a fun prompt for you to try.

With love & gratitude, Kathy

December, 2023

As we close in on the end of yet another year, I find myself pondering the passage of time, how it seems to speed up as we get older. You probably feel it too. And apparently, there’s something to this.

All stories require the engine of time, movement, change. It’s what distinguishes flash from prose poetry. A prose poem may convey a sense of story. A flash fiction must convey it.

So let’s talk a little about what I call “movement” in flash fiction. Those of you  who’ve taken my workshops know I teach the three essentials of (great) flash are Emotion, Movement, and Resonance. 

Movement is my stand-in for plot. Flash can work without a plot in the strictest sense, but there absolutely must be movement. Some significant change. And that change can be subtle. It can live in the subtext, as long as the reader feels it.

Below, I show how movement can be handled via breathlessness and segmentation. First, let’s look at this prose poem by Ada Limón from her collection, Bright Dead Things. (Copyright held by the author). If this piece were written by a flash fiction writer, it would be considered flash fiction. There is meaningful change or movement in this piece.

Pay attention to the time markers (I’ve bolded them here) and how LImón creates movement in this piece:

After You Toss Around the Ashes

When she was dying, it was impossible to see forward to the next minute. What was happening—for whole weeks—was all that was happening and happening and happening. Months after that, I got the dumb soup wrong. How awful. It was all she wanted and I had gotten it wrong. Then, in the airless days when it was really happening, we started to power panic that we didn’t know enough. What should we do with her ashes? Water or dirt. Water or dirt. Once, she asked to just be thrown into the river where we used to go, still alive, but not living anymore. After it was done, I couldn’t go back to my life. You understand, right? it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t tell if I loved myself more or less. It wasn’t until later, when I moved in with him and stood outside on our patchy imperfect lawn, that I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.

Now let’s examine DeMisty Bellinger’s handling of time and movement in her brilliant segmented flash, “Black Girl’s Magic,” published in Cotton Xenomorph (copyright held by the author). I’m a fan of Bellinger’s sentences, her attention to sound, i.e., “Baby Legba hissed a whisper hiss then slithered away into a corner, coiled up.” But see how she conveys time very directly via the subtitles and through shifts in the relationship. Things happen, vividly, compellingly, in each segment to convey the progression of the story as a whole.

Voodoo Doll

She calls me her voodoo doll and sticks a sewing needle in the fattest part of my left breast. I am surprised at how much it hurts, how much it feels good, and wonder if there’s blood. “Hold still, now,” she says, “for it to work. Close your eyes and channel your energy through the needle.” She stabs another needle, this time, my right arm, the shoulder. How many more times she’ll jab me? How did we get here, me letting her pin cushion me? And who, I wondered, was she directing this pain to? Who was on the other side?

Zombied

I think I’m high, but I don’t remember smoking or drinking anything. I look in the mirror to check if my eyes are bloodshot and they’re not; they are typing-paper white. My skin is discolored with white powder and I can see my brown hues hidden beneath. I think: white face. I think: I must go pull the weeds, mow the lawn, take out the garbage, and cut the stems from the greens.

Read Me

The snake was disorienting. I kept my eyes on him (his name was Baby Legba), even as she wrapped him around me, erasing the negative energy, centering me. The snake and the fifty candles brought me somewhere else. I sat down, cross-legged on the floor, across from her. Her hazel eyes transported me. The bones, cowry shells, and crystals she shook hypnotized me. “Ask your question,” she said, “in your head.” Baby Legba hissed a whisper hiss then slithered away into a corner, coiled up. She threw the pieces in her hands onto the marked floor between us. The bones and crystals so polished, they collected all of the light from the fifty candles and from the fire of her hazel eyes.

Prayer

Before we go to bed, she feeds flower petals to a shrine. She gets on her knees and says The Lord’s Prayer, then reads her rosary. She sprinkles the room with blessed water. She asks me when I was going to pray and I shrugged. She cuts her eyes at me and says, “You have to live a spiritual life.” I say, “I believe in you.” She looks even angrier and begins to peel away her clothes. I follow suit and ask if she’ll still have me over. “Don’t be foolish,” she says.

Before Morning

in that liminal period when the moon is still setting and the sun is still rising, you are up sprinkling your deck with watered-down rum. I feel heavy and stay in your bed, watching the day changing out your window. Then, I remember Baby Legba, and I sit straight up. You come back to bed and smile at me. “He’s in a terrarium,” you say. “You’re safe. You’re always safe.” You kneel beside the mattress and say a silent prayer. I fall back to sleep and offer potential nightmares to the fading moonlight.

Sunday Morning

Before church, we eat a simple meal of grits and fried eggs. I cook. She prefers her egg poached and I prefer scrambled. We eat in silence. When she finishes, she asks me how I’m liking my visit. I don’t tell her that I would like to have sex with her. Instead, I ask, “Where was all this in college?” “Hidden,” she says. She doesn’t have to explain what I already know about hiding, about keeping secrets that you share with only yourself and those who came before you. This is the black girl magic we all inherently know, the gris-gris we intrinsically carry within ourselves, a protection we depend on.

Before we go, she tells me, she will let herself be possessed. “It may look scary, but it won’t be. It may seem like a celebration, and it will be. Sort of. A couple of guys will be here soon.” And there isn’t a knock on the door, but an opening up of the door. Men with drums. She puts on more beads. The men begin pounding their instruments and singing. They move with the rhythm they create. She, too, sways, then dances. Her eyes go white. I start thinking about mowing the lawn and I start thinking about the needles. What had happened?

(Sunday Morning: Later)

A transformation. Sunday best and reserved demeanor. The singing is only of hymns. The rhythm only in melody. And be with you. And god be with you. Amen.

Sunday Night

After her rosary, she tells me that none of it is learned. “No one would teach me. Instead, I gleaned what I could from watching my grandmother and aunts. Mama wanted no part of it. And Daddy, well, he’s white. Nothing wrong with being white, but, well.” I reach out to her and take her hands. There is a place between all of this that Western sin doesn’t exist and I could kiss her. I could lie back and have her insert me with needles. Where I could feel the surprising heat of melting wax from prayer candles. But the burn isn’t really surprising, right? So why do I jump? Why do I flinch?

Monday

Again, a transformation. She’s in business casual and straightened hair. I’m packed and going back home to a husband who is as tired as cynicism. Tired as in: I’m tired of him. Tired as in: we’re tired together. Our children only interested in what is projected. I could show them the world in the sunlight, but they’d reach back to be inside. She pulls in front of my terminal entrance at the airport. “Life isn’t fun there,” I say. “My life ain’t fun, either. You only see the exciting parts.” I kiss her again, once more until next year. “God be with you,” she says. “Goodbye,” I say.

Let’s now turn to the use of repetition in the Lydia Davis flash (I’ll go ahead and call it a flash), from her Collected Stories. It might help to read this one aloud. Pay attention to how Davis’s relentless repetition creates movement within this story.

Agreement

First she was out, and then while she was out he walked out. No, before she walked out, he walked out on her, not long after he came home, because of something she said. He did not say how long he would be gone or where he was going, because he was angry. He did not say anything except, “That’s it.” Then, while he was out, she walked out on him and went down the road with the children. Then, while she was out, he came back, and when she did not return and it grew dark, he went out looking for her. She returned without seeing him, and after she had been back some time, she walked out again with the children to find him. Later, he said she had walked out on him, and she agreed that she had walked out on him, but said she had walked out on him only after he had walked out on her. Then he agreed that he had walked out on her, but only after she said something she should not have said. He said she should agree that she should not have said what she said and that she had caused the evening’s harm. She agreed that she should not have said what she said, but then went on to say that the trouble between them had started before, and if she agreed she had caused the evening’s harm, he should agree he had caused what started the trouble before. But he would not agree to that, not yet anyway.

HOW TO CONVEY MOVEMENT/CHANGE IN YOUR FLASH

1. Use of time markers (see the examples above)

2. Change something small in the story, along with the “big” thing, i.e., the roast is burned, the Christmas tree lights burn out, the meal is finished, etc. An external change.

3. Physically move your characters from Point A to Point B, show their departure, their arrival, or their time in transit.

4. Convey change within your character. A change of mind, a change of heart, a realization, an epiphany. An internal change.

5. The rule of three. (from good old Wikipedia: “The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that a trio of entities such as events or characters is more humorous, satisfying, or effective than other numbers. The audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information conveyed because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern.”)

6. Adding to #5 above, creating a distinctive pattern, then breaking it, is another great way to convey movement in your story. (Thanks to Paul D’Arcy for his comment that reminded me of this.)

YOUR PROMPT

Your exercise for today will have you using repetition to convey movement and heighten emotion in your flash fiction. 

I’d like you to write a flash using the poetic device of repetition in any way you wish to use it. You may find the one paragraph form particularly useful here.

Go for sound and rhythm. Go for incantation. See if you can build and create movement with your repetition. And see how that movement creates an emotional arc for your story, a drumbeat that becomes more insistent. 

Making use of time markers as you see in the pieces in today's craft essay as an easy way to create movement as well.

(If you’re working to pull together a linked collection see how repeating elements, objects, actions, images, even words/phrases from other pieces lends a sense of cohesion and continuity even to very disparate stories.)

If you need a nudge, you might try to repeat the following phrases:

Her mother never…My mother never...

In the morning…In the evening…in the afternoon…

I remember…

Try a collective POV maybe:

We never…

We always…

They wanted…

This exercise lends itself well to 2nd person POV as well. 

Allow whatever comes. Write fast. Keep going. Writing automatically and repetitively will let your subconscious out to play. What emerges may surprise you.

(From The Comical Hotch Potch, or The Alphabet turn'd Posture-Master, 1782 —Public Domain)

Hi friends! The last few newsletters have been a bit on the longer side and for that, I apologize (maybe you …

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“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ~Pablo Picasso

Hi friends, this June newsletter is going out to all my subscribers. Thank you so much for your continued readership and support!

First, thanks to all the writers who turned up for the two sessions of Write Together on Friday! These are low-key, but focussed, paid subscriber events where we gather online and write to a prompt (provided by me) for 45 minutes, with some discussion and sharing of work afterwards. LOADS of fun. If you’re a free subscriber, consider upgrading to enjoy this and other amazing perks throughout the year, like weekly craft articles, Immersion Extravaganza workshops, and celebratory readings. Here are the dates/times for upcoming Write Together sessions:

• FRIDAY, JULY 10TH 10:00 a.m. & 7:00 p.m. EASTERN TIME U.S.

• FRIDAY, AUGUST 14TH. 10:00 a.m. & 7:00 p.m. EASTERN TIME U.S.

Recently, I posted this on Notes:

If you want to be told the do’s and don’ts of writing, the internet will provide with all you need to last you to the end of time. Especially the don’ts. Never this and never that. Always this and always that.

Something in me recoils at these kinds of rules. Never? Really?

Good writing, great writing, is something to strive for. Beginners especially want guidance that’s delivered with confidence and authority. I did when I first started writing stories and flash fiction. To be honest, I still do.

For example, Elmore Leonard commanded: “Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.”

There is the unspoken, unreasonable feeling that if you just follow these rules to the letter, your story will be “perfect” and publishable.

This art means so much to us. We want to get it right. Right?

If you are genuinely interested in learning and growing, of course you’re going to seek out any wisdom that’s out there. I am grateful to have been drilled in spelling and grammar as a student. I don’t regret the time spent diagramming sentences either. (I am not sure that’s even taught anymore.) I truly love that we have these tools. How grammar serves clarity, even beauty. I love my craft books. The most worn volume in my collection is the gospel according to Strunk & White.

But over time, my own preference has been for guidance over rules, suggestions over commandments. Show me examples of artful rule-breaking! Show me creativity run amok. Show me things artificial intelligence could never, would never come up with. Because AI can only draw on what’s already been done.

Artists of every kind do well to master the rules first before going about breaking them willy nilly. But today, because there’s not nearly enough lightheartedness, I am sharing a few lighthearted nuggets about writing and the writing life. Further down, you’ll find today’s prompt aimed at creative rule-bending, if not breaking.

advised:

“If you put a gun on the mantel in the 1st act, then in the 2nd act, you must offer a glass of warm milk to help soothe everyone’s nerves.”

Joyce Carol Oates quipped:

“Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: ‘A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.’”

Joy Williams noted:

“A novel wants to befriend you, a short story almost never.”

said:

“the true “artist’s way” is just staring into space

Frederick Barthelme said:

“No characters named Brooke or Amber.”

Margaret Atwood scolded:

“Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.”

She also said:

“Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.”

said:

“Professional writing tip: The comma goes wherever you think it sounds nice.”

Roddy Doyle said:

“Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.”

Ann Enright said:

“Only bad writers think that their work is really good.”

She also said: “Have fun.”

Richard Ford said:

“Don't take any shit if you can ­possibly help it.”

Thomas A. Edison said:

“Hell, there are no rules here. We’re trying to accomplish something.”

When asked by The Guardian to provide Ten Rules for Writing, Philip Pullman said (and good on you, Mr. Pullman):

“My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.”

gives arguably the best advice:

“when you sit down to write, always set a small goal, like winning a Pulitzer or unearthing the meaning of life”

YOUR PROMPT

"If you must break a rule, break it on purpose."~Josh Steimle

“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.” ~Katharine Hepburn

“Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.” ~Claude DeBussy

• Choose a writing rule. Maybe one that gets repeated over and over again to the point where it’s become a commandment. Perhaps one that begins with “Never” or “Always.”

• Now break it.

• Write with abandon, singularly focused on breaking that rule.

Purpose of the prompt: An opportunity to write like a rebel.

What may happen: You either 1) create a piece that is surprising and that somehow…works or 2) you become an ardent believer in the rule and vow never to break it again.

Either way, you’ve thrown down some words, learned something, and you have a fresh draft you can revise however you wish. I once challenged myself to write a story completely out of fragments. It was published in Swamp Pink.

Happy rule-breaking, friends!

Kathy

SOURCES (There’s GREAT advice in these links!):

Joy Williams’ Eight Essential Attributes of the Short Story

The 39 Steps from Frederick Barthelme

Elmore Leonard: Ten Rules for Good Writing

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction from a bunch of folks, including Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Ann Enright, Jonathan Franzen, and more, The Guardian

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction (Part Two), The Guardian

Substack Notes

Image: 1638 A.D. Baroque Painting from Spain - Public Domain

Summer can be a busy time. Let’s carve out some space for our creativity and cheer each other on!

Dear paid subscribers, I very much appreciate your ongoing support and readership. As I mentioned in m…

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Lions, and Tigers, and Ligers, Oh My! (Public Domain image, 1900)

UPCOMING SUMMER WRITE TOGETHER SESSIONS!

Hi everyone! First of all, heads up! I’m going to lead six Write Together sessions this summer! We will write for 45 minutes (I’ll provide inspiration / prompt, etc.) and there’ll be time afterwards for those who want to share. This is a paid subscriber perk, so if you’re keen and want to join us, consider upgrading!

There is nothing to sign up for! All paid subscribers will receive the links to these sessions via this newsletter ahead of time.

Mark your calendars and please remember to convert to your own local time zone. Note that in some cases the time conversions will result in the date changing to the next day (hello, Southern Hemisphere folks!).

• FRIDAY, JUNE 12TH 10:00 a.m. & 7:00 p.m. EASTERN TIME U.S.

• FRIDAY, JULY 10TH 10:00 a.m. & 7:00 p.m. EASTERN TIME U.S.

• FRIDAY, AUGUST 14TH. 10:00 a.m. & 7:00 p.m. EASTERN TIME U.S.

Okay! As you know, I’ve been exploring the use of poetic forms and devices in flash fiction. See below my two recent newsletters on the sestina flash and the pantoum:

Today, I’d like to discuss a true literary hybrid: the haibun. There’s a fun prompt at the end for you to try as well!

I’ve noted before that the flash form has evolved, become more fluid, expanding its purview to include hybrid forms such as haibun and prose poetry. The Best Small Fictions series has furthered this evolution since its inception in 2015, featuring micro, flash, haibun, prose poetry, and other hybrid forms. In his introduction to the 2020 edition, outgoing Series Editor Nathan Leslie said:

“Perhaps there is something in the water, in the shifting aesthetic sentiments. Best Small Fictions has always nurtured deep hybrid roots, open to genre-crossing literature. In 2020 especially, categories seem less and less meaningful to this editor. Words are words. Literature is literature.”

What makes haibun such a true hybrid is that it blends poetry and story. They are also just fun to write!

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Grisaille Lancet Top with Foliate Pattern, French, ca. 1320–30 Public Domain

"The pantoum is always looking back over its shoulder." — Edward Hirsch, A Poet's Glossary

“An incantation is created by a p…

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Photo by David von Diemar on Unsplash

“Formalism was part of [my] strategy—like asbestos gloves, it allowed me to handle materials I couldn’t pick up bare-handed.”—Adrienne Rich, Arts of the Possible

…

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Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash

“The hardest thing about writing, for me, is facing the blank page.” ~Octavia Spencer

Hi friends! This May post goes out to all subscribers. Hope you’re all doing well. As I am still away from home, I’m rerunning this newsletter from 2021 that many of you have not seen. I am a devout believer in writing prompts and want you to be as well. Enjoy! Much love, Kathy

July 15th, 2021

Now, today I’m compelled to speak out in defense of writing prompts. Every so often I see folks shooting arrows at them. The objection? Prompts are for beginners or poseurs. Real writers don’t need prompts (because presumably they take dictation from God). Or any story written from a prompt can’t possibly be good. If it didn’t spring from a tortured soul, toiling away in a dim, but tastefully decorated cell it must be artificial or facile. Writers who use them lack imagination. And so on.

Let’s right here and now dispense with the notion of the “real writer” and while we’re at it, anything else that’s designed to make you feel small. You’re a writer because you write, period.

My mantra, as a writer and teacher has always been: “Whatever gets you to the page.”

I want to distinguish prompts vs. exercises here. Exercises (and these are what I offer in my workshops) are aimed at acquiring and building skills as well as illuminating and concretizing concepts that might otherwise feel abstract. A prompt is chiefly aimed at getting the words flowing. Anything that achieves both is a huge bonus and is what I always seek to deliver in my workshops.

So prompts / exercises:

• Support and build upon skills introduced in a workshop setting.

• May take the writing deeper by tapping into the subconscious.

• Get the pen moving, serve as pre-writing warm-ups.

• Can simply be a low-stakes, fun way for writers to generate new work.

I love when writers surprise themselves under the transformative spell of a good writing exercise. Something loosens. Words once stuck in the throat flow freely. There’s new daring, risk-taking, joyful exploration.

Pamela Painter has a terrific essay on the value of writing writing exercises (“You and the Piano Bench”) in Rose Metal Press’s Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. Painter makes the case that writing exercises are just as important for writers as practicing scales is for piano players or doing vocal exercises is for singers. Writing from prompts, and anything else that gets you to the page regularly, is good creative hygiene.

Your Prompts (Of course I’m giving you lots this month!)

• Describe in detail some scene from ordinary human life from the point of view of a space alien. Practice defamiliarization. Need a nudge? Describe one of the following: Travelers going through security in a busy airport. Marauding Trick-or-Treaters invading a suburban street. Rabid football fans in a packed stadium. The process of choosing, boiling, and devouring a lobster. You get the idea. What does this do? It forces you to see the world anew. You may unearth some insights on human behavior. You may find yourself drafting a surreal, uncanny, dystopian story and I for one, am all for it.

• Write a dream as if it’s real. Do not identify it as a dream. Embellish it with strong sensory and specific details. Likely an actual story will begin to germinate in your brain. Run with it.

• “Dreamify” an incident from your life, significant or ordinary. Doesn’t matter. What does this do? It creates a sense of magic on the page, the flowy, gauzy feeling of prose poetry.

• Begin with “I remember…” and go from there. Keep the pen moving for ten minutes. Make stuff up with abandon. Let loose your inner liar. You may find yourself “becoming” a character with a past. His or her distinct voice may assert itself. OR you may end up with a great personal essay!

• My 50 RANDOM SENTENCES exercise. (That’s on the Flash Fiction Retreat Blog. Nancy Stohlman and I published a whole month’s worth of prompts there during lockdown. Check them out!

Recommended Reading

What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers (3rd ed.) by Anne Bernays & Pamela Painter

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (Tara L. Masih, ed.)

Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman (also available on Amazon)

Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich (a classic, lots of exercises)

The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice by Kelli Russell Agodon & Martha Silano

Jack Lemmon & Sandy Dennis, The Out-of-Towners, 1970

I’ve discussed liminal spaces before, but just quickly:

What do we mean by liminal spaces? From Dictionary.com, a liminal space is:

“a state or plac…

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“...time was not passing...it was turning in a circle...” ~Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Hi friends, I spent this past weekend in Geneva, where I taught a workshop to the lovely folks from the Geneva Writers Group, and had an absolute blast. A really engaged, enthusiastic, talented bunch of writers! Many thanks to Christine Breede for the kind invitation.

I was thinking that we writing instructors often talk about the importance of opening sentences, giving great reasons for this and general tips, but we’re often not specific. For today’s post, I’d like to offer a specific type of opening you might try, which conveys in a single sentence two simultaneous “events.”

This immediately lends a feeling of significance for the story you’re about to tell. It indicates this day is special. Surely what follows has never happened before. It’s a great way to engage your reader right away. Today’s prompt will show you how to do this…

I’m reminded of the iconic first sentence to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, which, hmm, admittedly doesn’t show two simultaneous events, but rather juxtaposes a moment with a memory. Note the fascinating use of time:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice“

“I have been through some of his works with a fine-tooth comb, and marked sentences according to whether they refer to future or past, and I have been not entirely surprised by the pattern that emerged, of future-past, future-past, future-past . . . the forward-back, forward-back of a ticking metronome. Just as he does in that first sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude, often García Márquez writes as if there were a kind of parity to past and future, almost as if there were no forward arrow of time at all.” ~Claire Adam, Literary Hub

Of course I went down a rabbit hole with this! Read more this excellent analysis of this iconic opening sentence by Claire Adam at Literary Hub.

But what is “synchronicity” exactly?

Synchronicity: “The simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”

Here’s an example from the opening line of Check Your Risk Level by Tara Stillions Whitehead:

“Shoshona got her period the day after the Fallbrook Fire erupted east of highway 15 and incinerated hundreds of acres of pot and palm tree farms.”

And another, from The Fractal Geometry of Grief, by Jolene McIlwain (not precisely simultaneous, but within a specified time frame):

“Hubert Ashe fell in love with the doe in August, four months after his wife passed.”

YOUR PROMPT

This is a prompt I have given before which tends to work well.

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Description: A time-worn black and white photograph, circa 1962, of my six young brothers and me as a toddler. Not pictured: my younger brother not yet born.

Hi friends, I have managed to catch my gr…

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Viterbo, Italy

Hi friends, I’m still writing to you from Italy, where I am having a wonderful time. Have you had a chance to revise and send out your Extravaganza stories? I’d love to hear how it’s go…

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