WORLD WEAVER PRESS
  • Home
    • Start Something New
  • Books
    • All Books >
      • Beyond the Glass Slipper
      • Bite Somebody
      • Bite Somebody Else
      • Black Pearl Dreaming
      • Cassandra Complex
      • Causality Loop
      • Clockwork, Curses, and Coal
      • Continuum
      • Corvidae
      • Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories
      • Dream Eater
      • Equus
      • Fae
      • Falling of the Moon
      • Far Orbit
      • Far Orbit Apogee
      • Fractured Days
      • Frozen Fairy Tales
      • Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers
      • Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters
      • Grandmother Paradox
      • Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline
      • Haunted Housewives
      • Heir to the Lamp
      • He Sees You When He's Creepin': Tales of Krampus
      • Into the Moonless Night
      • Jack Jetstark's Intergalactic Freakshow
      • King of Ash and Bones (ebook)
      • Krampusnacht
      • Last Dream of Her Mortal Soul
      • Meddlers of Moonshine
      • Mothers of Enchantment
      • Mrs Claus
      • Multispecies Cities
      • Murder in the Generative Kitchen
      • Recognize Fascism
      • Scarecrow
      • Sirens
      • Shards of History
      • Shattered Fates
      • Skull and Pestle
      • Solarpunk (Translation)
      • Solomon's Bell
      • SonofaWitch!
      • Speculative Story Bites
      • Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls
      • Weredog Whisperer
      • Wolves and Witches
    • Anthologies and Collections
    • Novels
    • Novellas
    • Fairy Tale
    • Fantasy
    • Romance
    • Science Fiction
    • Urban/Contemporary Fantasy
    • Young Adult SFF
  • Blog
  • About
    • Anthologists
    • Authors
    • Editors
    • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Submit: Anthologies
    • Free Review Copies
  • Press / Publicity
  • Newsletter Signup
  • Privacy Policy
  • Store

WORLD WEAVER PRESS

When to trash your flash

3/24/2015

0 Comments

 
Miniature 1/12th scale book by The Shopping Sherpa via FlickrMiniature 1/12th scale book by The Shopping Sherpa via Flickr.
Should you like it or leave it? Amanda C. Davis, whose flash fiction "My Rest a Stone" opens the anthology Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales, and who recently co-authored the collection Wolves and Witches, gives short story writers some tough love:

A couple of weeks ago, my local writers' group issued a flash fiction prompt, and I completely bombed it. I made four wildly different attempts. All were terrible. This isn't unusual; I write a lot of flash fiction, especially prompted or to theme, and I end up retiring most of it right away. This time, when I griped on Twitter about discarding all those bad stories, someone ended up asking: Well, how do you know if your story is a dud?

Good question!

I don't explicitly use a rubric to decide whether to put a story into circulation or throw it into a locked drawer, but I probably could. Here's the one question I ask myself when I suspect a story isn't working:

Is it really a story?

Most of my stories fail by not actually having all the elements that make a story satisfying and salable. They're oddly easy to skip. I like to use the definition Marion Zimmer Bradley gives in her essay What Is a Short Story?:

A LIKABLE CHARACTER overcomes ALMOST INSUPERABLE ODDS and BY HIS OR HER OWN EFFORTS achieves a WORTHWHILE GOAL.

This is meant to apply to commercial genre short fiction, and a genius can break any guidelines they want, but I write genre and am no genius. I could write reams about the meaning of "likable" in this context, but I take it as "someone you don't hate reading about" -- whether you'd actually want to meet them or not. Writing dark fiction, I also don't believe that achieving the goal is strictly necessary, although I do believe the failure to achieve it should be the climactic point, and that failure should be the character's own fault.

Personally, my failed stories almost always fall short on the points of ODDS and EFFORTS.

Here's a storyline I write a lot: a character wants something, does what it takes to get it, and succeeds. This isn't a story. There's no opposition -- the "odds" are unimpressive. People following me on Twitter know that I bake a lot, but I only tweet about the disasters. Nobody wants to hear about the time you made a cake according to the recipe and it turned out fine. They want to hear about the time your cat dropped something in the batter.

Here's another storyline I used to write a lot, when I was new and did more horror: something bad happens to a character, who tries to escape, but can't. The problem's not that they fail, but that a) the "odds" didn't initially spring from their own wants or actions, and b) the "goal" is a return to normal. It's hard to make a satisfying narrative out of such tenuous cause-and-effect and such a commonplace goal.

They look like stories: they're about yea long, they're fiction, they're made up of words. They sure feel like stories when I'm writing them. But taken as a whole, they don't hold up.

So if this thing I wrote is not a story, what is it? When I'm able to stand back and really evaluate a failed story, I can usually reframe it as a different form of writing. Maybe it's just a proof-of-concept for an interesting storytelling mechanic. Maybe it's a scenario worth exploring further. Maybe I was just test-running a new character type. I never regret having written what I wrote; something about it must have intrigued me enough to do it. Running a quick eye over Bradley's definition, however, tells me whether to retire it (NEVER to delete it -- nothing's THAT bad) or to send it on into the world.

I rarely manage to "fix" a piece of flash fiction. It's more efficient for me to just write another piece. Speaking of which, I finally got back on that local writers' group prompt. Fifth try, almost done. The main character wants something, and goes for it, but runs into unexpected opposition and has to either overcome the problem or change her goals. Sounds like a story to me.

Picture
Amanda C. Davis is a combustion engineer who loves baking, gardening, and low-budget horror films. Her short fiction has appeared in Shock Totem, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, and others. You can follow her on Twitter (@davisac1) or read more of her work at amandacdavis.com.

Picture
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    World Weaver Press

    Publishing fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction.

    About WWP
    Books
    Authors
    Contact

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    October 2012
    July 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Tweets by @WorldWeaver_wwp
World Weaver Press | Books | About | Contact | Blog | Press

© 2012-2022 World Weaver Press
  • Home
    • Start Something New
  • Books
    • All Books >
      • Beyond the Glass Slipper
      • Bite Somebody
      • Bite Somebody Else
      • Black Pearl Dreaming
      • Cassandra Complex
      • Causality Loop
      • Clockwork, Curses, and Coal
      • Continuum
      • Corvidae
      • Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories
      • Dream Eater
      • Equus
      • Fae
      • Falling of the Moon
      • Far Orbit
      • Far Orbit Apogee
      • Fractured Days
      • Frozen Fairy Tales
      • Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers
      • Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters
      • Grandmother Paradox
      • Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline
      • Haunted Housewives
      • Heir to the Lamp
      • He Sees You When He's Creepin': Tales of Krampus
      • Into the Moonless Night
      • Jack Jetstark's Intergalactic Freakshow
      • King of Ash and Bones (ebook)
      • Krampusnacht
      • Last Dream of Her Mortal Soul
      • Meddlers of Moonshine
      • Mothers of Enchantment
      • Mrs Claus
      • Multispecies Cities
      • Murder in the Generative Kitchen
      • Recognize Fascism
      • Scarecrow
      • Sirens
      • Shards of History
      • Shattered Fates
      • Skull and Pestle
      • Solarpunk (Translation)
      • Solomon's Bell
      • SonofaWitch!
      • Speculative Story Bites
      • Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls
      • Weredog Whisperer
      • Wolves and Witches
    • Anthologies and Collections
    • Novels
    • Novellas
    • Fairy Tale
    • Fantasy
    • Romance
    • Science Fiction
    • Urban/Contemporary Fantasy
    • Young Adult SFF
  • Blog
  • About
    • Anthologists
    • Authors
    • Editors
    • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Submit: Anthologies
    • Free Review Copies
  • Press / Publicity
  • Newsletter Signup
  • Privacy Policy
  • Store