Creative Alchemy: Embracing Hybridity

Try everything.

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?” ~Anne Carson, Glass, Irony, and God

Hi friends,

I find myself lately drawn to alternative structures and forms in flash fiction. As always, I think this stems from a desire to keep telling big stories in a small space, and finding new and interesting ways to do so. Playing in this way is absorbing. and well, fun! The brain is a story-seeking, variety-craving organ. My goal as a teacher is always to gently lead you to your own unique brand of genius, the material and stories only you can write.

It behooves us as flash writers to keep innovating. In that spirit, let’s look at the curious creature that is the literary hybrid. Today’s prompt is aimed at transforming your unsatisfactory flash draft into a startling and original hybrid piece.

Hybridization is not so much about breaking the rules as creating a whole new set of rules. It’s about disruption and defiance. The literary hybrid subverts reader expectations and in so doing, offers a whole new level of reader/writer collaboration and meaning-making.

Blurring the lines in your writing can be wonderfully liberating. That story that’s going nowhere? What happens if you write it in the form of a play? The flash that doesn’t feel “plotty” enough? How does it work as a poem or prose poem? Try pouring the work into a new container.