This is Part 1 of Jo Gatford’s Flash Fiction Masterclass
Welcome to Lesson 1 of the Smash Your Flash Workshop!
If you’re just joining us, hi there — I’m Jo Gatford, your flashy guide for the next four weeks of workshops, exercises and creative exploration (find out more about me and the general course outline here).
Today, we’re going to start from ground zero and take a quick look at what makes up a piece of flash. Quite honestly it’s going to take me the rest of this 12-part course to even come close to defining it. But I can tell you that it’s incredibly satisfying to write. And that you can get started with nothing more than a fleeting idea and a few basic tools to set you on your way.
So, with the enormous caveat that flash fiction is a shape-shifting law unto itself that is constantly breaking boundaries and discovering new forms, I’m going to try to pin down some generic ingredients you’ll find in most pieces of flash.
The Basic Ingredients of Flash Fiction
A brief flashy reminder: None of these stories will take more than a few minutes to read, so please don’t feel daunted by the reading list! You also don’t have to read all the stories if you don’t want to. Pick ‘n’ choose according to what appeals to your writerly brain today. This is not an academic course and you’ll get the gist as we go.
1. Concept or idea
I mean, you gotta start with something, right? But unlike a novel or a longer story, the focus of a flash could be something tiny and subtle: a fleeting thought or a single image. For example, the view from a ferris wheel in Cost of Admission by Cheryl Pappas.
The forest cleared to let the Ferris wheel in, let in the popcorn-chewers, the crushed, greasy striped hot dog trays, the guns in pockets, the new babies screaming for air, all those cartoon balloons…[keep reading]
2. Shape or structure
There are myriad ways to structure flash: circular, fragmented, woven, repetitious, upside down and inside out. You can even take a single moment, build a simple paragraph around it, and imbue it with layers upon layers of meaning, like A Handbook for Identifying Bird Calls by Kim McGowan
I’ve changed my ex-husband’s contact info to “Asshole,” but still when Jake calls I feel a lurch in my chest that makes me understand why apothecaries and poets once believed that emotions reside in the heart…[keep reading]
3. Character
Sometimes a flash is all about character and voice and what it is to be human. And sometimes the most important character is completely absent, like in Mother-Mother, Wasp Mother by Ani King, while still achieving the same effect.
June, always rain. Always ants after it rains. Always beetles smacking against the window and stink bugs polluting the air no matter the weather. Always fruit flies and regular flies buzzing and mosquitoes biting… [keep reading]
4. Deeper meaning
Most flash fiction has a secondary thread, a potent subtext, or some underlying truth that turns a simple tale into a meaningful one. Like The Hand that Wields the Priest by Emily Devane, which really isn’t about fishing at all.
That evening, the fish left a strange taste in my mouth. We’d gone together, Dad in his waxed jacket and waders, me in my parka and wellies. Flies hovered above the river, orange-tinged in the afternoon sun….[keep reading]
5. Turn, shift, or switch
And here’s where the magic happens. A piece of flash fiction can seem to have no obvious narrative and still take us on a journey—or punch us in the gut. The key to this is the ‘turn’—a subtle shift where that deeper meaning comes into view. To illustrate: possibly one the most well-known pieces in the flash world, Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild by the inimitable Kathy Fish.
A group of grandmothers is a tapestry. A group of toddlers, a jubilance (see also: a bewailing). A group of librarians is an enlightenment. A group of visual artists is a bioluminescence. A group of short story writers is a Flannery. A group of musicians is — a band….[keep reading]
Workshop and Discuss
Fire up your flash-neurons and start thinking about the crafting of tiny stories…
Take some time to read and re-read those stories above (they’re so short it won’t take long!) and consider the following questions:
Can you pinpoint the concept or idea each story might have sprung from? (And do you have any fledgling ideas of your own to bring to the course?)
How might you describe the different structures in each example above? Does it have a clear start and end point? Is there a ‘turn’ somewhere in there?
How do these authors create character and narrative voice in their stories?
What is the deeper meaning or subtext behind the main ‘action’ of the narrative? Or, if you’re not sure: how does it make you feel after reading?
Which example is your favourite and why?
If you’re happy to share, I’d love to read your answers in the comments below. And if you have any questions about writing flash fiction, feel free to add those too. (The answer may well be: “take the course and find out”, but I’ll do my best to reply with something helpful nonetheless!)
Now, to be honest, we don’t need much more than those basic elements to get going. And however subtle or ingeniously interpreted, you should be able to find each of them in any of the examples I’m going to share throughout this course. But there are also some more slightly abstract ingredients that help you develop your flash fiction writing even further.
So here’s a list of extra spices and flavours to make your stories unique:
Stylisation in structure, form, narrative voice, or characterisation
Literary techniques that play with word choice, rhetoric and sentence formation
Anchor points, motifs, imagery and a holistic consolidation of all the above
Plus, some things you don’t necessarily put into your flash, but definitely need in your literary kitchen:
Practice. Lots of it. Reading and writing. To train up your flash-eye, your flash-ear and your flash-heart.
Learning by osmosis. See above. The more you read, the more you’ll absorb, the more confident and excited you’ll be to experiment.
That oof feeling in your guts. Fuck yeah. That moment when a piece of writing takes you by the hand and leads you somewhere unknown. That moment when it just feels right. And, more importantly, having the courage to trust your gut.
We’re going to go deeper into ALL of these elements over the next four weeks, looking at a range of structures, forms and styles, along with plenty of examples and exercises to get you writing. But at this point I just want to state for the record that the bounds of flash fiction are quite possibly limitless, so while I intend to give you as much knowledge and as many tools as possible, there are always untapped depths yet to discover. I’m still learning as I write, just like you, so I’m hoping this course will be a case of exploring together and sharing what we find, because it’ll likely be different for all of us.
Buuut before we do that, a few caveats for this and all future lessons.
Some ‘Smash Your Flash’ Housekeeping
You don’t have to try every exercise or prompt. Pick whichever one grabs you. Come back to them another time and try another one, if you like. No pressure at all to participate here. Just some potential springboards to get you thinking. But if you’d like to share* your idea or thoughts in the comments, I’d love to read ‘em.
(Please just be aware that some publications may consider posting a story draft in the comment section of a public post like this as ‘previously published’. Use this knowledge at your discretion. The subscriber-only lessons in this course, however, would likely be considered ‘private’ (and therefore not previously published), so you may want to wait until those to post your stories. Or just stick to chat and questions in the freebie posts. Above all, you do you.)
When you’re drafting a flash, don’t think too hard about it. Forget the theory and try not to be too intentional. Flash is fast, remember? We’re trusting our guts. Because that’s where the best flash comes from. You can engage your analytical brain when you’re editing. For now, let your ideas do the writing.
I’m going to encourage you to read a lot of flash throughout this course. As with the exercises, it’s up to you how much you engage with this. But since there’s such a vast assortment of flash out there, it’s my intention to offer you as wide a spread as possible. You don’t have to read all of them (although, y’know, they’re not very long…) but I can promise you that the more you read, the flashier you will become.
This lesson is a bit of a big boi. But I promise they won’t all be this long. I just had to get all this set-up out of the way before we get into the juicy shit! We’ll be doing a whole load of writing and creative exploring very soon… Thank you for your patience. :)
Ok, caveats done.
In the next lesson, we’ll be focusing on structure, I’ll show you some easy entryways into crafting a piece of flash, and throw a generative writing prompt or two atcha.
No matter how you join in, I’m looking forward to writing some flash with you!
See you then.
I really enjoyed all of them, and I'd like to highlight Kim McGowan's story. I have attempted to write a flash fiction piece about my ex before, but I kept feeling like it needed more context or dialogue and it always ended up feeling long and clunky. McGowan's piece showed me it doesn't have to be that way, and it honestly inspired me to write about it right now! Inspiration was waiting right around the corner for me, it seemed.
This is fantastic, Jo. Really clear and interesting. Thanks for the shout out for Collective Nouns, too.