Called to Love (Fast Fiction)

Despite being late Summer, the air of Blackpool Bay retained a surprising chill to it.

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By the looks of them, he doubted that any of them cared. Betty first saw Hell through a car window as they sped down the Interstate. Outside, the trees turned to ashen husks as the cornfields became desolate dustbowls. The sky hollowed out to an empty darkness that swallowed all the twinkling stars whole. She began crying and her mother pushed her[…]. He could not get comfortable.

Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction

The cushions were soft and the couch was spacious but he kept shifting his weight, unsuccessfully trying to find a spot where he could relax. His neck hurt and he felt fat. His shoes were too tight but[…]. She first saw him as a fleeting shadow across the rooftops of her City.

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She hesitated ever so slightly and then she leaped lightly up the wall to chase after him, blades disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. When the noise fell silent, ten thousand satellites strained to hear it. When the noise fell silent, ten million eyes strained upwards to find some evidence or indication of hope. When the noise fell silent, ten billion lives on planet Earth looked around for something… Anything. But there was nothing.

He had always been attracted to fires. Fire consumed and destroyed everything, leaving only ash behind. His mother and stepfather had been in his first fire. It was like his birth because he[…]. A sharp pain shot down his spine and he heard[…]. He first heard it when he was a child. He had been home alone a lot when he was very young. His mother worked in the nights. The back of his throat tasted bitter and his mouth was dry. He rolled over and grabbed his last cigarette, an empty bottle from last night clinking as it rolled away.

And any tendencies to go all purple — if it sounds like writing, rewrite it, as Elmore Leonard said — were almost completely eliminated. By the time I got to Birchwood I had it down to words, by Warrington to , at Widnes and as the train drew in to Liverpool Lime Street there it was — words, half a page of story; with a beginning, a middle and an end, with character development and descriptions, everything contained in a Polly Pocket world.

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These stories, small as they were, had a huge appetite; little fat monsters that gobbled up ideas like chicken nuggets. The habit of reducing text could get out of hand too; I once took away the last two sentences of a story and realised I had reduced it to a blank page. Luckily the Phone Book liked my stories and published them, and I continued to churn them out each day on the train, while the train guard announced the delays, the tea trolley rolled past, and a succession of passengers sat next to me, reading over my shoulder.

A week after sending the manuscript to Salt Publishing I got a call from Jen, their editor. They wanted to publish it, and quickly. All I needed was a quote for the cover, a photo for the sleeve, and we were off. I don't commute that route any longer — my new job covers the whole north west of England involving train trips to Blackpool, Lancaster, east Lancashire, west Cumbria and Cheshire, so my stories have grown quite a bit longer.

But last time I was on a train to Lime Street the guard's identity badge took me right back — because that's where I got the names for all of my characters. You won't have time to describe your characters when you're writing ultra-short. Even a name may not be useful in a micro-story unless it conveys a lot of additional story information or saves you words elsewhere.

In micro-fiction there's a danger that much of the engagement with the story takes place when the reader has stopped reading. To avoid this, place the denouement in the middle of the story, allowing us time, as the rest of the text spins out, to consider the situation along with the narrator, and ruminate on the decisions his characters have taken.

If you're not careful, micro-stories can lean towards punchline-based or "pull back to reveal" endings which have a one-note, gag-a-minute feel — the drum roll and cymbal crash. Avoid this by giving us almost all the information we need in the first few lines, using the next few paragraphs to take us on a journey below the surface. The last line is not the ending — we had that in the middle, remember — but it should leave the reader with something which will continue to sound after the story has finished.

It should not complete the story but rather take us into a new place; a place where we can continue to think about the ideas in the story and wonder what it all meant.

Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction | Books | The Guardian

A story that gives itself up in the last line is no story at all, and after reading a piece of good micro-fiction we should be struggling to understand it, and, in this way, will grow to love it as a beautiful enigma. And this is also another of the dangers of micro-fiction; micro-stories can be too rich and offer too much emotion in a powerful one-off injection, overwhelming the reader, flooding the mind.

A few micro-shorts now and again will amaze and delight — one after another and you feel like you've been run over by a lorry full of fridges. Create a lump of stone from which you chip out your story sculpture. Stories can live much more cheaply than you realise, with little deterioration in lifestyle. How to write flash fiction 1. Start in the middle.

You don't have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character. Don't use too many characters.

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Make sure the ending isn't at the end. Make it work for a living. Make your last line ring like a bell.