from Steve Himmer

I rarely start writing with a length in mind, so my short and long stories often start the same way: I glean some fact or idea from history or science or folklore, and invent a character for whom that information puts something at stake. Reading about the impact of global warming on potato harvests, for instance, made me wonder how someone whose identity depends on farming might reorder their world in response. As someone told me recently, my stories have research questions behind them, and those questions are often closer to the surface in shorter fiction because I focus more directly on exploring a driving idea – lately, that driving idea has been tall tales. Plus, if there’s anything big publishing houses are more excited about than flash fiction, it’s research questions.

The relationships I’m most interested in writing about aren’t between people (can I say that without being sent off the island?), but between a person and nature or history or technology. So I tend to write one character stories, or create isolated characters without families or friends, and very short fiction lends itself to that because if stories go on long enough a reader will ask, “Hey, where’s this character’s family?” or even, “Is the guy who wrote this story a bearded creep who lives in a cave somewhere?” Really short stories can stay inside a constrained view of the world without giving readers time to worry what’s missing. And even if the story goes right past them without making any impression, at least it won’t take very long. In longer stories, more context might need to be added, maybe explanations of why a character is alone, even if I’m less interested in those details.

When it works, very short fiction can offer a burst of awareness, like a breakthrough moment in meditation or an incredible vista appearing at a bend in the trail. That moment can be a view through the scaffolding of stories we surround ourselves with to survive, like the myth of manifest destiny in “Sanctuary.” And that fleeting clarity is so powerful, when it comes, that the drive to recreate it can lead to more stories. That’s pretty much how I think about fiction in general, of any length, but with very short fiction I think it’s easier to know when it happens, and when it doesn’t. That’s the excitement and risk of the form, an immediacy of success or failure as loud and clear as a song.

Bio: Steve Himmer is the editor of Necessary Fiction, and has just finished a novel about a bearded creep who lives in a cave somewhere.

Read “I Grow Potatoes” in Amoskeag: The Journal of southern New Hampshire University

Read “Sanctuary” at Steve's blog, Tawny Grammer, reprinted from NANO Fiction

Read “The Lion King” at Titular

from Ethel Rohan

The Tremendous In The Tiny

In many ways I’ve changed three-hundred-and-sixty degrees as a writer. I’ve gone from writing two novel manuscripts, three partial novel manuscripts, some thirty-plus short stories over the course of a decade, to now favoring Flash and Micro Fiction. In the past twelve months I’ve written well over a hundred Flashes, publishing close to eighty to date, and still feel like I’m only warming-up.

Early in my writing career, my stories came from an image or character I’d observed or remembered, or that somehow popped into my mind, taking seed. I wrote slowly, liking to “perfect” each line before I moved onto the next. I didn’t use prompts or exercises, but pulled from my memory and imagination. I liked to know where I was “going” in the work, and took my sweet time getting there. That’s also all changed.

Today my Flash stories are still triggered by the observed, imagined, or remembered image or character. However, now for my first drafts, I also use prompt words gleaned from whatever poem, Flash, story, novel, or song lyrics inspires me and write as fast as I can, free of that inner critic, tapping into my sub-conscious, and letting everything spill uncensored onto the page.

I write the Flash in one sitting, put it aside for at least a day, and return to it with fresh eyes, finding its heart, its conflict and resolution. My goal is to revise the Flash to the point where every word counts, where there’s trouble and strangeness, where every expectation is twisted, where there’s a satisfying end, where the work is, hopefully, electrifying.

You can read some of what I believe to be my more successful published Flashes to date here:

“Under Water,” Monkeybicycle

“Babies On The Shore,” PANK

“Rocket Into A Pocket,” (So New) Necessary Fiction

Myfawny Collins and Kathy Fish, to name just two of the best contemporary Flash writers in our midst, both had enormous influence on my growth as a Flash writer. Go read their work. Study how they do what they do. You’ll learn far more from their Flash stories than you ever will from reading this essay. Good Luck!

BIO: Raised in Ireland, Ethel Rohan now lives in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from elimae; PANK; Wigleaf; Storyglossia; Monkeybicycle; Word Riot; mud luscious; Staccato Fiction; (So New) Necessary Fiction, and many others. She blogs at www.straightfromtheheartinmyhip.blogspot.com.