Time, Movement, Change: The Engine of Flash
With examples from Ada Limón, DeMisty Bellinger, & Lydia Davis
“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
Use of time markers (see the examples above)
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.
Physically move your characters from Point A to Point B, show their departure, their arrival, or their time in transit.
Convey change within your character. A change of mind, a change of heart, a realization, an epiphany. An internal change.
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.”)
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.
.....what makes flash feel bigger than its word count isn't what gets left out... it's the feeling that time somehow sped up without asking permission.
a year disappears in a sentence... then a single second suddenly refuses to move.
funny how a few hundred words can make time behave so strangely... n a full novel sometimes can't (｡◕‿◕｡)
This is so good.