In a Flash

I finished final revisions for the story that I’m submitting to the World Horror Convention contest last night. I thought I was done already except for one last read-through, but I ended up cutting another 150 words from it. I can get very brutal with my fiction in the final stages, slashing and chopping unnecessary verbiage. I love finding one word that will replace two–or three, four or five. Meaningless or redundant words and phrases that have escaped my attention previously stand out on that last readthrough. Slash, slash, slash.

I think I’ve rambled previously about the 10% rule — the theory that you should be able to reduce the first draft of a story by 10% of its word length on revisions. I am a firm believer. I wonder if it is iterative, if you can reduce 10% of the next draft and so on, until you are down to the perfect story, which consists of a single word of fewer than 10 letters!

A good way to perfect your self-editing skills is to write flash fiction, which is generally defined as stories of 500 words or less, though some markets allow up to 1000 words. To create a complete story with a beginning, middle and end in 500 words presents a unique challenge. It starts one wondering what exactly it is that constitutes a story.

I went down to the store and bought a loaf of bread. Then I went home.

Okay, that’s a story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Sixteen words. The editor in me looks askance at the word “down” and wonders if it’s necessary, but we’ll let that pass for a moment. My little story, though, is devoid of the things that make stories memorable: conflict, description and characterization. Flash stories must have some or all of these in some proportion. We don’t know who “I” is, and his story isn’t very interesting at present.

The last thing I wanted to do after a long day at the mill was go out to buy a loaf of bread. I slogged through a dense fog, muttering under my breath all the way about how my lazy teenage son could have pried himself away from the computer long enough to help out around the house. The bodega’s CLOSED sign swung back and forth in the window as if it had been put up moments before I got there. The sense of frustration that seethed through my veins all the way home boiled over when my wife criticized my inability to do anything right, so I shot her and made a roast beef sandwich on stale bread.

(I’m winging this as I go along, so don’t expect Shakespeare here!) 119 words and now we know more about the guy and his family environment. His trip to the store has some conflict that culminates in something else, and I’ve used about 1/4 of the allowed words for a flash tale.

I wrote a flash story this morning for a contest. The challenge in this one is that, in 500 words, you have to establish an alternate reality (another planet, another social order, an alternate history) and tell a story. Imagine Philip Roth trying to do The Plot Against America in 500 words. Lindbergh wins the 1940 election and sets about implementing an anti-Semitic, isolationist government.

Some of the best flash stories are akin to prose poems. You use rich but economical imagery, but you can’t skimp on story. In the piece I wrote this morning, called “Shore Dive,” I established what looked like a normal, familiar setting and activity in the first 100 words. In the next 100 words, I reflected it through a funhouse mirror to show that it was completely different, while dribbling in some characterization through character interplay. Nearing the halfway point, I pushed the characters into the action that leads to the conflict, the crisis, the climax. With the 75 or so remaining words, I resolved the conflict and had enough left to make a tiny philosophical commentary.

The first draft was about 530 words. After several revisions (I love revising flash fiction! You can go through a story several times in a few minutes and see the impact of your tweaks immediately.) I was down to 495, and I’m very happy with the result. I’ll let it sit for a couple of days and take another stab at it. When you’re close to the maximum word length, each change becomes a negotiation. If I add this phrase, something else has to go. Which is more important.

The first prize in the contest I’m entering (a no-fee contest, which is the only kind I enter these days) is $100, which works out to 20 cents a word. Even honorable mention (4th, 5th, 6th and 7th place) works out to 4 cents a word. But it’s not about the money. I write flash fiction to hone my editing skills and help me find economical but powerful ways to express myself. If the story doesn’t place, I’ll post it here next month and we can dissect it.