Posted: 04 Oct 2012 01:01 AM PDT
by Erin Entrada Kelly
Flash fiction has an underbelly. Don’t believe me? Scour the Internet and read the flash fiction literature that’s out there. You’ll find some really weird stuff. Stories that would never grace the pages of the Paris Review or New Yorker. Stories that don’t necessarily follow all the conventions, but find their place anyway. That’s why I love flash so much. The already-vague rules are constantly being broken.
Sometimes there are concepts that are intriguing enough to be written, but won’t work as a traditional short story, novella or novel. Sometimes that’s not what we want, anyway. We just want to provide a peek of someone’s oddball life; we don’t want to delve full-force into it. (The more delving, the less interesting that life can become, after all). Flash fiction allows us to do that — it provides a platform to stretch our creative fingers and let loose our own weird underbellies that have nowhere else to go.
We’ve all heard the old adage: Write what you know. In flash, that doesn’t really matter. You can throw it out the window. You don’t have to write what you know. You can write what you create, what you imagine, what you conjure, what you pull out of thin air. You can break the rules, because the rules don’t really exist anyway.
Have you ever sat in a silent room and wondered what would happen if someone – maybe you – suddenly stood up and screamed like a maniac? Write it. Ever attended a wedding and considered objecting, just to see what would happen? Write it. Been at work, lounged back in your cubicle, and considered the possibility that all of your co-workers were synthetic androids? Write it.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a master of quirky fiction, even if you feel most comfortable within the confines of “traditional literature” (or maybe especially so), write it. Stretch your imagination. Push your limits. You’re a flash fiction writer — you have the avenue, you have the opportunity. See where your mind will go. Break off the chains of writing rules. Forget what you’ve learned.
How? Here’s a few thoughts:
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Erin Entrada Kelly is staff editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles. Her fiction has been published widely in places like Keyhole Magazine, Monkeybicycle and the Kyoto Journal. She was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer National Fiction Prize and the Philippines Free Press Literary Award for Short Fiction. She works at Swarthmore College and has a debut novel forthcoming from HarperCollins’ Greenwillow Books. Read more at www.erinentradakelly.com. If you’re on Facebook, find her here.
Flash fiction has an underbelly. Don’t believe me? Scour the Internet and read the flash fiction literature that’s out there. You’ll find some really weird stuff. Stories that would never grace the pages of the Paris Review or New Yorker. Stories that don’t necessarily follow all the conventions, but find their place anyway. That’s why I love flash so much. The already-vague rules are constantly being broken.
Sometimes there are concepts that are intriguing enough to be written, but won’t work as a traditional short story, novella or novel. Sometimes that’s not what we want, anyway. We just want to provide a peek of someone’s oddball life; we don’t want to delve full-force into it. (The more delving, the less interesting that life can become, after all). Flash fiction allows us to do that — it provides a platform to stretch our creative fingers and let loose our own weird underbellies that have nowhere else to go.
We’ve all heard the old adage: Write what you know. In flash, that doesn’t really matter. You can throw it out the window. You don’t have to write what you know. You can write what you create, what you imagine, what you conjure, what you pull out of thin air. You can break the rules, because the rules don’t really exist anyway.
Have you ever sat in a silent room and wondered what would happen if someone – maybe you – suddenly stood up and screamed like a maniac? Write it. Ever attended a wedding and considered objecting, just to see what would happen? Write it. Been at work, lounged back in your cubicle, and considered the possibility that all of your co-workers were synthetic androids? Write it.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a master of quirky fiction, even if you feel most comfortable within the confines of “traditional literature” (or maybe especially so), write it. Stretch your imagination. Push your limits. You’re a flash fiction writer — you have the avenue, you have the opportunity. See where your mind will go. Break off the chains of writing rules. Forget what you’ve learned.
How? Here’s a few thoughts:
- Revisit an old concept that you thought you couldn’t write, or thought was too ridiculous. Consider ways to morph that concept into a piece of flash.
- Observe people. Think: What if?
- Go beyond your comfort zone. Try something you’ve never tried before. You have nothing to lose, really. The more we push our limits, the more versatile we allow ourselves to be.
“Write what you know?” Fuggetaboutit. Try the what-ifs. You might surprise yourself.___________________________________________________________________________________
Erin Entrada Kelly is staff editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles. Her fiction has been published widely in places like Keyhole Magazine, Monkeybicycle and the Kyoto Journal. She was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer National Fiction Prize and the Philippines Free Press Literary Award for Short Fiction. She works at Swarthmore College and has a debut novel forthcoming from HarperCollins’ Greenwillow Books. Read more at www.erinentradakelly.com. If you’re on Facebook, find her here.
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I WILL REJECT ANY CHINESE OR JAPANESE IDIOMATIC WRITING, AUTOMATICALLY.