I gasped with delight on checking my emails this morning, which is not generally a regular occurrence. The reason was a message from Cambridge Writers’ to let me know I had come third in their annual flash fiction competition. The entries are voted on by members, which makes it even more wonderful to have my piece ‘Location, Location, Location’ recognised.
For this flash fiction competition, there was no theme or genre, but the word limit was very tight, at just 250 words – definitely a challenge! So how did I go about it?
I have always been amazed at how the best flash fiction stories seem to pack so much into so few words. I am no expert, but I have identified a few ingredients that seem to be common to the good ones.
Plot – Get a concept. It doesn’t have to be complex. If you are struggling, pick a nursery rhyme as a starting point. The themes are often quite dark, and you may end up with a story that no one would ever know was originally inspired by one. Write from the point of view of one of the children of ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe’, for example. With themes of poverty, child abuse and neglect, the piece could really pack a punch. It could be made into a more positive story though, perhaps by having the child escape to avoid being “whipped soundly”.
Characters – Keep the cast small. One or two characters works best, there is only space for those vital to the narrative. First person point of view (I ran, I wanted) is often used to very good effect, and I would choose it in the ‘Old Woman…’ example, to get the reader right inside the head of my main character. Also, avoid describing a character as brave, working class or whatever, and instead show these traits through their actions and use of language in dialogue.
Action – Create a single scene. The bulk of your story will probably take place in one ‘scene’ or event. Think of it like a seminal moment in a movie, a scene that can stand alone. In my example, I would pick the moment the child is creeping out of the house in the middle of the night with a bundle on their back to run away. The reader doesn’t need to be told everything that led up to this moment, they can infer from the context of the writing what has happened, and how high the stakes are.
Conflict – Give your hero a problem to overcome – This is necessary for any narrative of any length. With the demonstration story, the old woman/mother could catch the child in the act of escaping. This would provide a really thrilling scene with a high degree of peril.
Ending – Finish with a bang. In flash stories, endings are often ambiguous, or designed to make the reader think. Having said that, they do need to make sense with the rest of the story so far. The hero could be allowed to escape, they could be caught and punished, or they could stand up to, or even murder, the abusive parent.
Demo Story
Let’s take ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe’, here’s how I’d follow each step in a (very quickly written!) flash fiction story.
I crept towards the heavy wooden door, careful to avoid the creakiest floorboards. The house was unnaturally quiet, my brothers and sisters all sent to bed with their bruises.
This opening couple of sentences tells the reader that it is night, the character is a child, the setting is a house, probably an old, creepy house, due to the creaky floorboards. An atmosphere of tension and fear has been introduced, the child clearly does not want to be discovered. I’ve also identified the theme of child abuse by the mention of bruises. This section, at 29 words long, is pulling its weight in terms of storytelling.
At the foot of the stairs, my backpack of clothes slipped from my shoulder and thumped onto the floor. I froze, breath held, dreading the foul squeal of my mother’s bedroom door. Nothing.
This section shows the character is running away, why else would they have packed a bag and be creeping downstairs in the middle of the night. The reader now knows the child is afraid of their mother, and the horror of the child is clear at the prospect of being discovered.
I carefully gathered up my bag and tiptoed across to the door. I turned the big iron key in the lock and grasped the doorknob.
“Where do you think you’re going?” mother sneered.
Here, I raise the reader’s hopes by almost letting the child escape, then bring in the conflict as the mother appears. I’ve included a few quick descriptors so far, about the key and door, which add to the atmosphere and setting, without adding too many words. You want to create a picture in your readers’ minds, you just don’t want to go on about it for too long.
I span around to face her, babbling excuses, my fingers scrabbling desperately behind my back. As she loomed out of the gloom, my hand closed on the knob and twisted it. She grabbed my arm as I flung open the door but I wrenched free of her talons. My bag flew across the hallway, scattering its meagre contents on the stairs behind me. I hurtled out down the garden path, her boots thundering, too close, at my back.
I throw the reader right into the action in this middle section, as the child tries to escape, and is pursued. At this point, I’ve written 173 words, and the story is in full swing, the reader is hopefully gripped and invested in the outcome for the main character.
Now for the ending. I know lots of writers, myself included, struggle to decide on one. It sometimes seems impossible to know how a certain story should finish, but finish it must. I have been known to write several alternatives and read each through to determine my favourite. As this is a quick example story, written just for this blog, I’m not going to lose sleep over it, and just have my character escape. But, as the story has dark themes, I want something of a sting in the tail. The prospect of the siblings left behind offers the perfect foil to the relief of the escape.
I leapt the fence, and dashed into the forest. The gate clanged shut behind her as she gave chase. By the edge of the wood I had a good lead, she was an old woman after all. I entered a field, smashing through corn that towered over my head. Surely she would not follow me in here. I slowed down and slipped stealthily between the rows. Finally, I stopped and listened for sounds of pursuit. There were none. The night was silent again, as if nothing had happened. Then, from within the leather walls of that distant house, came the old woman’s shouts of fury. I blinked hard as I turned my back on the crying of my brothers and sisters, and made good my escape.
I dropped in an ‘old woman’ reference here, and progressed to actually calling the mother ‘the old woman’ by the end. This, in conjunction with the ‘leather walls’ and ‘brothers and sisters’, explicitly references the nursery rhyme, though you could be more obvious if you wished. Equally, you could continue to call the villain ‘mother’, and remove the word ‘leather’. In that case, it would be much less likely anyone would identify the source of your inspiration.
A final word on word counts
This came in at 299 words. After jotting down the initial story, which ran to about 450, I decided I would trim to 300 words, a commonly used limit for flash fiction competitions. I always focus on writing the story first, without worrying too much about the word count. I usually find I can edit down a fairly large amount if need be.
Tense can provide Tension
As I was writing, I found myself slipping into present tense at times, and if this story was for any other purpose than a demonstration for the blog, I would probably experiment with tenses. Though not something I generally use, I suspect present tense would aid the immediacy of the story, and make it more exciting. That’s another fun thing about flash fiction. You can experiment, and it doesn’t take forever to do rewrites.
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