The Art of Writing Short Fiction

by Sarina Dorie

If a short story falls under a thousand words (1500 words in some markets), it is considered “flash fiction” or “micro fiction.” With a number of new markets out there publishing flash fiction; Penumbra, Daily Science Fiction, and Flash Fiction Online being a few among many, it is a plentiful market in which to submit. Because writing short, succinct stories is a skill I wanted to develop, there is a high demand for flash fiction, and it takes less time to write flash fiction than a long story (in theory) I decided I wanted to take a stab at it.

When Daily Science Fiction opened about two years ago, Wordos, my speculative fiction writing critique group in Eugene, Oregon decided we wanted to dissect flash fiction in order to hone our skills and see what makes a short, short story work. It isn’t surprising that because of our critiques and dissections, quite a few writers from our critique group went on to sell flash to Daily Science Fiction.

What we noticed about these stories is that they were tightly written, limited details, often had an interesting idea, a twist or punch line at the end, and were emotionally powerful or shocking or funny. The form of these stories were sometimes written as though someone was telling a story to a friend, might be in the form of a letter or letters in an epistolary fashion, were written like a fable, joke or essay or used some other unusual writing device to tell a story. Many of these stories weren’t even traditional stories in the sense that there was a character arc, plot or conflict. Still, there was something that happened in each “story” that made it catchy, edgy or worthwhile. These are just my observations, as well as some that I remember from members of Wordos.

My advice to someone genuinely interested in breaking into the flash fiction market is to read and analyze lots of flash fiction and decide what it is about each piece that made the editor choose it.

As a result of studying the market and trying to think in the “short” mindset, I wrote about twenty flash fiction stories in a few months. Some of them I submitted to my critique group and got feedback, some I later turned into slightly longer short stories, and some I left unfinished because there wasn’t enough there to create a story. I didn’t feel guilty about not finishing because they were so short and I considered them experiments.

Though I had been submitting stories to magazines for several years, it was my flash fiction stories that sold first. The first four pieces sold in 2011 were Zombie Psychology to Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting Human’s which won the Whidbey Student Choice Award, Losing One’s Appetite to Daily Science Fiction and Worse than a Devil to Crossed Genres. From there I went on to sell slightly longer short stories as well as more flash. One of my favorite flash fiction pieces, Mr. Kick-Ass Werewolf President is in the July politics issue of Penumbra.

Sarina Dorie is a speculative fiction writer, artist and belly dance teacher who currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. She has been published
in a variety of magazines including Daily Science Fiction, Flagship, Allasso, Roar, New Myths, Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, Penumbra, and Crossed Genres.

Her fantasy novel, Silent Moon, won two second place and three third place awards from Romance Writers of America. Silent Moon is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.

To learn more about Sarina Dorie, please visit her website.

Those Onerous Overdone Outlines

By Larry Hodges

I used to outline in great detail. I'd do a detailed listing of each scene, with a paragraph or two describing what happens. I'd also have lengthy notes on the side, including character bios, descriptions, and notes on just about everything else. I'd also have pages of dialogue I planned to use - I'm always jotting down interesting snippets of dialogue that pop into my head.

When I did my first novel, I outlined in great detail. My notes totaled 12,000 words. After writing 23,000 words of the novel, everything came to a crashing halt. The novel just wasn't working, and I was bored out of my cranium writing it. The problem was I'd painted myself into such a detailed outline and plot that there was nothing really creative to do. I was just connecting dots, and the result showed.

I went back to it a year later, and threw out the detailed outline and most of what I'd written. This time I put together a very loose outline, with a few sentences outlining each chapter instead of the detailed outline of each scene I'd had before. The only detailed thing I worked out was the ending. Excluding research notes I'd already done (much of which I would still use), the outline was about two pages. I also had the many pages of dialogue I'd put together.

As I wrote the novel, the creative juices flowed. I'd start each chapter by reading the few sentences that outlined what was supposed to happen, then make the rest up as I went along. I'd often leave the outline which wasn't a problem as long as I continued to move in the general direction of the planned ending. I learned I could do whatever I wanted.

The novel still involved a lot of research, but I did most of that when it was needed, either looking it up on the spot, or making a note and researching it later.

As I wrote, the characters became more developed, and I created character bios as this happened. Later, I went back and fleshed out the characters, especially in the early chapters before I had started this practice.

I regularly browsed the dialogue pages I'd written, cannibalizing them whenever pieces fit, and sometimes even writing scenes in such a way that I could use a great piece of dialogue I'd written. This seems to be the one part I like to do in advance. Not only is it fun--I often act out the dialogue when no one's around--but I think it's helped turn dialogue into a strength of my writing. A key thing is to make sure the dialogue fits the scene--if you force it, the reader will know.

Using this new approach, productivity, creativity, and (hopefully) quality shot up.

I wrote a second novel that went much easier. I again used only the loose outline, plus many snippets of dialogue I wrote as I thought about the novel. After several rewrites, both novels are now making the rounds.

For short stories, I also have cut out the detailed outlines in favor of looser ones, along with bits of dialogue written in advance. I still like to work out the ending before my work is complete--a tip I learned from Isaac Asimov--but even that changes if I come up with a better ending. For short stories, I put together at most a half page of bullet points, a few side notes, and start writing. My new outlining strategy seems to have worked as I've sold over 60 short stories and have agents expressing interest in the novels.

Larry Hodges is an active member of SFWA with numerous short story sales. He was the 2010 Garden State Horror Writers Short Story Competition Grand Prize Winner. He's a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and a full-time writer with five books and over 1300 published articles.

To learn more about Larry Hodges and his work, please visit his website.

Tangrams And Storytelling by Daniel Ausema

I suspect it's no surprise to those who've read "The Square That Hides a Thousand Stories" that the story was inspired, in part, by tangram puzzles. Sometimes you'll see tangrams referred to as a storytelling device, and one fanciful history of the puzzle from a hundred years ago claimed (with no evidence) that the puzzle originated over 4000 years ago as a gift from the god Tan. Neither claim is reflective of the puzzle's actual history. Most reports I can find suggest that the puzzle was invented--as a puzzle, not a storytelling device--in China in the 18th century. It's possible that it predates those first references by some years, and it certainly has antecedents in a variety of sources in the preceding centuries, but it is vanishingly unlikely that it dates back thousands of years (and there is no evidence of the supposed god Tan).

Yet the idea of such an ancient origin entertained me, and the tangram is used today in school classrooms as a storytelling device as well as a mathematical manipulative. So I started with the idea that the puzzle (or something similar to it) truly was that old and that its original purpose was for telling stories. And if that old...then likely it would have spread to many other places in antiquity as well, and inspired local legends wherever it ended up. So that is how this story came about.

Editor's note--Daniel Ausema's story The Square That Hides A Thousand Stories, is in Penumbra's inaugural issue, available now at www.musapublishing.com.