"Frisson": The Aesthetic Chills We Get from Great Art

what it feels like to be alive

The Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh, Saint Rémy, June, 1889

Hi friends,

Happy Monday! This newsletter goes out to all subscribers this morning. Thank you, as always, for your support, whether as a free subscriber or paid, I appreciate you for being a part of The Art of Flash Fiction. I’d also like to extend very warm welcome to my recent new subscribers. Thank you!

JOIN ME THIS SATURDAY!

I quickly want to mention there are still some openings in THIS Saturday’s (June 15th) 3-in-90 live workshop, “Delving into the Subconscious & Dreamwork: Excavation,” at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. These sessions are always so lively and productive. I love running them and I’d love to see you there. Go HERE for more information and to sign up. Reminder that all sessions are recorded and everyone receives a recording afterwards (some prefer to watch the recordings only and work through the prompts on their own time).

Frisson

I recently came across a fascinating article in Big Think about the concept of “frisson” as it relates to music: “This 715-song playlist is scientifically verified to give you the chills, thanks to frisson.”

“Frisson” derives from French and is “a sudden feeling or sensation of excitement, emotion or thrill,” and the experience is not confined to music. Historically, frisson has been used interchangeably with the term “aesthetic chills.”

It’s a gorgeous list you should check out on Spotify. I was happy to see Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” on there, along with Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and several chill-inducing classical compositions in the mix. Some songs are deeply sad and moving, while others make us feel especially joyful. Either way, the music creates a physical response in us.

For more on this (I tend to go down rabbit holes of my own obsessions, so anything to do with neuroscience grabs me), read “Exposing the Weird Pleasure of Aesthetic Chills” by Maria Ter-Mikaelian which explores our brains on art. Or check out this interview in Napkin Poetry Review: “How Poems Give Us Chills, Among Other Riddles.”

But, okay, what does this have to do with flash fiction? I’ve often said that really good flash has three elements:

• Emotion

• Movement

• Resonance

All other things being equal, what distinguishes the best of the best? In my opinion it’s frisson. Basically, flash fiction that provides such pleasure as to give you chills. You feel it psychologically, but in your body as well. It’s over and above simple enjoyment. Also, “pleasure” can mean many things in response to great art. Friedrich Schiller defined being moved as “the mixed sentiment of suffering and pleasure.”

As humans we feel most electrically alive under the spell of frisson.

I’m always challenging flash writers to try to achieve the same or similar effects of music, live performance, art, film, etc. But we only have words at our disposal (and not very many at that). How does the flash writer create a felt experience at the level of frisson in a tiny story?

One point made in the Big Think article, is that frisson may be the result of “violated expectations.” It may be a shift or change or a divergence that shocks our systems and creates a powerful emotional state. I think this is something worth exploring in flash fiction, something flash fiction may be very well suited to create.

Some Examples

These are some flash recently recommended to me by the flash community on Twitter in response to my request for stories they found particularly resonant, that stayed with then long after reading. Resonance and frisson are not exactly the same thing. A story can resonate, even if it didn’t exactly give us chills. But reading these over, I think they qualify:

Tim Craig noted “Rehearsal” by Nuala O’Connor in Lost Balloon for its VOICE. This is a tiny story, but O’Connor establishes a strong voice from the very first line: “Marty’s car was a hearse, so that was the first turn on.”

Nicole Hart pointed out the powerful volta (or dramatic rhetorical shift) at work in Jim Tomlinson’s story, “Flights” published in Smokelong Quarterly. A few people said this of my own piece, “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” as well.

Taleen Voskuni, on “Magdalene” by Maura Yzmore in Molotov Cocktail said she has a “soft spot for small girls taking revenge, for unexpected friendship. and the rabbit, imagery so strong I never forgot it.”

A few mentioned Brady Udall’s powerfully resonant, compact story, “The Wig.” (Here’s an excellent close analysis of the story by Pamelyn Casto.)

Gillian O’Shaughnessy, on Helen Rye’s Bath Flash Fiction Award winning story, “One in Twenty Three”: “I can’t forget it. The title is everything, then the visceral delicate detail of sun & figs, the horror that’s revealed. It takes a crisis of unimaginable scale & forces us to reckon w the humanity. It’s a perfect & devastating use of the form.”

Barlow Adams on Cathy Ulrich’s “Being the Murdered Girl” series: “They feel like love letters from beyond the reach of our societal failures. They are lonely, beautiful, painful, and they make me want to ask strangers if they are okay.” Read “Being the Murdered Pageant Girl” in Wigleaf.

Karen Russell, who recently judged the American Short(er) Fiction Prize, said this of the winning story, “Tombs” by Yasmin Adele Majeed: “The image of the rotting palm stump outside of the young narrator’s bedroom window has stayed with me ever since I read it…”

To these, I’d add “Sleep” by Gary Moshimer, recently published in Milk Candy Review and “Tilt” by Pat Foran in Anti-Heroin Chic.

YOUR PROMPT

Frisson very much depends on subverting reader expectations, whether on the level of the story or on its expression or form. Today, let’s take an existing, perhaps troublesome, draft and re-vision its ending, such that we enhance its emotional depth and power.

Ask yourself: What would a reader expect at this moment and are you too safely delivering it to them? What can you show us instead? Consider a sudden shift in tone, or prose cadence, or a character’s behavior as a means of subverting expectation and creating frisson in the reader.

Look at the final paragraphs of “Flights” by Jim Tomlinson, the unexpected urgency of the words of the dying father:

“Write me alive,” he says. “Write me confused in this hospital, rambling. Write a plump nurse at my bedside. Write that day down, son. Keep it alive, the river smell, the tattered blanket we spread, my Betty beside me, the stem of her weed tracing martin flights.”

What flash has given you chills, friends? I’d love for you to share. Or for that matter, any form of art that’s had this effect on you.

Thanks so much for reading.

Love & Peace,

Kathy