I have a confession to make: for the last four
years I’ve been asking my short story students at City to write stories of
exactly 100 words (“
drabbles”) as an
exercise, yet I rarely write
flash
fiction (under 1000 words) myself. I’ve published nearly 40 short stories since
starting to write prose fiction, and only four have been 1000 words or less. And given that the next
Liars' League is a flash fiction special, I've been reading an awful lot of flash recently (60 stories, to be precise).
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| A youthful and toothsome Drabble |
I am, as anyone who’s read some of the other blog posts on
here (average length 1000-2000 words) will know, naturally prolix. Brevity
doesn’t come easily to me. If I’m going to sit down and write something, I
usually want to spend a good few hours on it: I want to explore the setting,
the character and the narrative arc at my leisure. I want, in short, to write
without limits – especially word limits. I’m sure some of you know what I mean.
Putting a bunch of words on a page has never been a problem for me – but the
right words (and
only the right
words) in the right order, now that’s the challenge …
So last year, when I was asked to teach a
Flash Fiction workshop at a university open day, I knew had to get some practice in –
reading and writing it. Luckily I had to hand
Sawn Off Tales by David
Gaffney and Tania Hershman’s collection
The White Road (both are especially
noted as authors of shorter fiction).
I also found Gaffney’s excellent
Guardian article on the subject, checked out
Sarah Salway’s writing prompts, and set myself to apply some rigid
discipline and write short. It’s harder than it looks, but I ended up with
10 new
pieces to inflict on the publishing world, and it didn’t take me ten weeks to
write them. I can see how this flash fiction thing got popular …
Flash fiction shares some of the qualities of poetry
(especially prose poetry) in that it can be impressionistic,
dreamlike and allusive, and
does not necessarily have a fully developed narrative arc as a longer story
might – which is why it’s truly impressive when writers can
get a plot into their flash. Many,
however, work beautifully as vignettes, moments of realisation, or even jokes
(see below).
In the class I handed out a series of random objects to
inspire people’s pieces, and wrote one myself, Here’s mine (a drabble of exactly
100 words):
Impact
(inspired by a postcard of the Grand Canyon)
It's on YouTube. Starts out just sky; pale clouds, birds
wheeling, somewhere high. No voices, just wind, sunshine. Panning shows scrubgrass,
brown cliffs, a river wriggling through the ravine below. The camera looms over
the edge, looks down, starts focusing in. Cliffsides fall away, slow, then
faster. Steady, smooth, an endless zoom, and just as you're thinking, shit, how long is this lens? you understand. Someone must've dropped the
camera.
Except it would be spinning uncontrollably, and it's steady
all the way down. That's why you don't realise he’s still holding it – until
it's just too late to turn away.
*
Some of other stories from the workshop are below:
Paul Sherreard – who works for
literature promotion organisation
Spread the Word which engaged me to teach the class – liked the exercise so much he wrote four …
The Lift
a drabble (inspired by a toy car)
One hand gripping the steering wheel, I push vinegary chips
into my mouth with the other. The storm is deafening – it’s a filthy dark night
in the countryside.
Luke, in the passenger seat, has finished his chips, and
tosses the balled up chip paper onto the back seat of my car. I finish mine
too, toss the paper back, rain lashes down. You can’t see anything out of the
car. We draw the conversation out as long as we can, sheltering, planning
futures. Luke and I have similar aspirations.
Not least – both of us wish I could drive.
The New Car
55 words (inspired by a toy car)
Shiny, not a scratch on it, the calamity happened on its
first day of use – the driver, unable to find it after lunch.
“But I’d parked it so carefully!” he wails – inconsolable
for the rest of the holiday.
Perhaps it’s still there, down a rabbit hole, on the Welsh
hillside where families are picnicking still.
The YouTube Sensation
55 words (inspired by a cat hand puppet)
Maru means circle in Japanese, and he’s certainly a round
cat. In spite of his size, Maru has a spectacular skill. He can jump into any
box from any practically any distance. He practices when his owner is at work.
But what Maru practices hardest of all is looking like he doesn’t understand
why it’s funny.
The Stepfather
55 words (inspired by a lipstick)
At the company dinner and dance, he looks off to one side when
the Couples’ Photo is being taken. It’s like he can’t look himself in the eye.
Does he see my face in the lens
of the camera? He knows
what he is capable of.
But at least we can laugh together these days.
*
Art student Mary Taylor wrote the two below: the first was inspired by a little souvenir book of
handmade paper; I don’t know what inspired the second one but it’s interesting
that both have a twist based on identity. She’s also published some more since
then over on her blog: http://pretendingstuff.wordpress.com/
The Day before the
Wedding
Mary Taylor
-
Wooo, I took the first page,
and what a nice page it is!
-
I wish you all the best for
your future dude. Although I’ll be there as a drinking buddy throughout! Fred.
-
John, I know we havnt had the
best classroom raport, but as I said to you at prom, I have every faith that
the army will be the making of you. good luck, Mr.Watson
-
Knickers! We’ve shared some
memories. I promise never to let you live down ski trip ’08, bring on the best
man speech.
-
Not going to lie, you were
never good at maths, but tell your mum I said hi.
-
John, I love you and always
will. Sorry. Jen.
*skipped page*
-
Knickers, see you on the other
side! Class ’09
John puts the book
back in his bag. He sometimes wondered what Jen was apologising for. But he
doesn’t care. He is very happy with Fred.
The Grandmother
Mary Taylor
*singing* Happy
birthday to you!
Mum brings a huge
cake through from the kitchen.
It looks amazing.
Tom’s eyes light
up, full from the fabulous spread of cocktail sausages and mini–quiche, but
ravenous for mother’s triple-decker chocolate fudge cake.
So am I.
I scan the table
for a mark.
Tom? no, he won’t
help, neither will Laura.
And then I see
her, Grandma!
Too frail to consume
more than a quarter of any portion provided, too polite to complain.
I sit next to her
and give her ‘those eyes’.
She looks down,
pats my head and whispers,
‘Yes boy, you can
have mine.’
*
Fast forward: last month I was lucky enough to have an
especially keen short story class who liked writing drabbles, so I passed on
info about the
Times 50 word short story competition and promised that if they wrote one, I’d publish it on my blog,
whatever the Times folk thought.
Sadly none of us, including me, placed, but we had fun
writing them (well, I did anyway) and I spent Christmas Eve tweeting them in
sections to my followers … and as winter is the traditional time for ghost
stories, I hereby present our chilling tales below:
50 WORD GHOST STORIES
The Ghost in the
Mirror by Katy Darby (this
is the one I entered)
He'd always been there, staring behind the boy’s eyes out of the mirror. He
seemed impossibly old: 80, 100 even. As the boy grew, he realised the
mirror-man was younger than he’d thought. 60? 50?
One day when he looked, the man was gone. Only his own face stared back.
Why are people
afraid of ghosts? by Terece Muir
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
I stood perfectly still.
“People fear the things they can’t explain,” he
said.
He took a step closer. I did not blink.
“For a ghost, you look remarkably well,” I said.
He blinked.
He replied, “You don’t understand. Below your
dress, you have no feet.”
They showed him the dreams of the globe awaiting him; a vast swathe of
sparkling expectation. The dead man nodded. ‘I’ll do it.’
In the glade his team waited, shimmering brown, panting.
‘No red-nosed one?’
‘That’s a myth.’
The ghost, solid now, adjusted his belt and smiled.
‘Ho. Ho. Ho.’
The Thing on the
Doorstep – Katy Darby (just for
fun, inspired by HP Lovecraft)
Unspeakable, chthonic, hideously oozing, the Thing heaved
its gruesome carcass to the doorstep whence it had been summoned. It smote
thrice upon the portal; only a dead echo answered.
After aeons of waiting, it
slithered away, leaving a scrawled, blood-red missive. “Unfortunately we were
unable to deliver your package today ...”
Mudlarking (which is, as the word implies, larking about in mud - or muddy sand, anyway) has a long and colourful history, especially on the banks of great tidal rivers like the Thames. The incomparable Victorian social historian Henry Mayhew writes about them, and I vividly remember reading a book about a young London lad who becomes apprenticed to a tosher (a sewer scavenger) when I was a kid, and finding loads of treasures - though not so vividly that I can recall the title, alas. It was a great book.
