Today’s episode also features the flash fiction story “Sullivan’s Choice”
My name is not Dave
Dave was born bawling. He didn't really like what he saw when he popped out into the light. "Rather depressing," he drawled. But there was nothing to do about it, so he sighed, shut up and set up shop in my head.
To date, that is the shortest “flash fiction” story I’ve ever written at exactly 42 words, not including the title.
Flash fiction is a sub-genre of the short story that can range from a few hundred or fewer words to maybe a thousand words. In other words, a really short short story! As with any story, it needs to have a progression: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Flash is a genre I knew nothing about until early 2024 when I randomly decided to get back into writing fiction. Since I needed something to force me forward, I found an online course at Oxford University entitled, “Flash Fiction Workshop,” with writer and teacher Gail Anderson. On a whim, I enrolled.
Over a twelve-week period, this group of students was courageous enough to present their creations to each other and receive live feedback. I won’t lie; the first time my story was discussed, I was terrified. I can write until the cows jump over the moon for the world wide web, but here were real, live people dissecting my work in front of me while I was muted. I suppose years of code reviews by my peers have helped, but this was on another level.
Writing flash stories is an art. If I had been asked how difficult it would be to write a piece of fictional literature under 1000 words, I might have said, “It can’t be that bad.” In reality, with less space to get your ideas across, each word becomes a ponderous weight on your lips. In such a situation, your mind can lazily wander into a “telling” mode where the reader is left unsatisfied and unchallenged. With 1000 words or less, can you craft a story with any wonder at the end? Does the story leap from the page into your subconscious long after you have read it because it made you think? Can you even get the reader to see the same things you do and get to the same conclusion?
The first story I wrote for the class was called “In the looking glass.” It centered on the perspective as seen from within a mirror stationed in the hallway at the entrance of an apartment, something I had thought was obvious. But it wasn’t. It was only obvious to me because I had imagined my current apartment, which has a mirrored closet at the end of the entrance hallway. Seeing my short short story through other people’s eyes was enlightening. One person even thought there was a video camera behind the glass; another could not understand why the person was putting on shoes in their bedroom. After all, that’s where they had their mirrors!
Every week we were given “prompts” and a specific word count with which we played for the following week. The prompts could be photos, audio clips, or random words, to name a few. For me, a haunting melody turned into a tragedy for twins; a prompt about a city turned into a story about a parrot; and a photo of an old storefront bearing the name C. Sullivan turned into a version of the devil come to visit, called “Sullivan’s Choice.”
If you are interested in starting up writing again, or for the first time, Gail’s course is one of the best I can recommend. I had...
