Using Flash Fiction as an Outline

I've done Story A Day May for five years, now. Last year, I intended every story to feed into a collection of various previously established characters of mine. The ones based in the SAGE world, I collected, along with some others, into SHIFTY. But, in 2014, I wrote one called Salali and Vernando. That also ended up in SHIFTY, but not quite in the form I had thought.

If you follow the link and read the entry, you'll see that what I have is a bare-bones tale, with a segment in the middle that merely catalogs action. I also had a notion that everything I wrote would be only the first part of an adventure tale.

When I started expanding the story, I front-loaded A LOT of explication, backstory, and world-building into the running-away section. I tend to do that, damn my eyes. I put so much on the story's head, it falls over backward and can't get up off the floor. But, because I had written all that detail, I was able to cut almost all of it out and merely touch on it, using telling details in place of elaborate paragraphs. While I was at it, I added an encounter that turned out fortuitous, as such encounters so often are in fairy tales.

I was wrong about the continuation. The longer section of the story stub turned out to be the only adventure in it. In a way, that's too bad, because I do like a tale that goes on and on, with chases and narrow escapes and magic combs and such. This one ended up as sort of a locked-room adventure, I guess.

THE POINT IS, I've turned quite a few flash fiction pieces into longer stories, and stories into novels.
Pick the story apart. Each thing that happens is a plot point. Each plot point can be expanded and/or bracketed by rests between the beats. Room can be made for subplots. And this can all be done formally, with Roman Numerals and Capital Letters, or informally, by the seat of the pants, with the short version serving as a series of torches to show the way.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

5 Steps To Flash Fiction -- reblogged from http://marianallen.com

Every so often, I do a post on writing flash fiction. So here's one.

1. Get a core: a prompt, a character, a word, a thought, a genre.
2. Attach two characters to it.
3. Think of a conflict involving those characters and the core.
4. Choose a point of view.
5. Decide what happens after the conflict is resolved.

Now, depending on how long you want your piece to be, you can write just the conflict, or you can include some background and include the resolution.

Example:

I'm watching a fire in the fireplace. So let's have my core be fireplace.

Let's have two men in a cabin heated by wood. One of them is scared and one of them isn't. The conflict is one of them wants to stay in the cabin and one wants to leave. The scared one tells the story. One leaves and one doesn't.

Two versions of Flash Fiction

Warming His Bones

I'm shivering.

When I complained, Mike said, "Shut up and wrap one of those quilts around you."

"They probly got bugs in them. We'll freeze here. We gotta light a fire or get out."

"And the cops see smoke and then what? We're back in the can. Shut up or I'll give you somthin' to worry about."

I knew he would, sooner or later, and that ain't no way to live. When he turned away, I gave him a poker upside the head, like I did my wife. Lit a fire, got warm, put his coat on over mine, and left before the cops could get there.

It's snowing real hard.

I'm shivering.

If I wanted this to be micro flash fiction, like my monthly Hot Flashes, I would take the climax only and just add enough for context.

Warming His Bones

I'm scared, but I'm scareder of Mike, and he says no fire.

When he turns away, I give him a poker upside the head, like I did my wife. Light a fire, get warm, put his coat on over mine, and leave before the cops can follow the smoke.

It's snowing real hard.

I'm scared.

If I wanted this to be 2000-word flash, I could put in all kinds of detail, background, atmosphere, foreshadowing, and characterization.

You try!

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Story v Novel In A Flash

What's The Difference?
Novel = Break open the moment.
Story = Collapse the moment.

And there you have it: a book on fiction writing in a nutshell.

"Breaking open the moment" is a phrase I picked up from the Green River Writers, and it means dispersing what's happening from a simple statement into an experience.

In any piece of fiction, there is a pivotal moment: an important thing happens, an important discovery is made, an important epiphany is experienced. That moment might be the climax of the action (the Ring of Power is destroyed) or it might be the result of the action (Boo Radley returns our friendship).

Novels take that moment and expand it with explorations of setting, multiple characters and characterization, emotions, senses, details, internal dialog, background, relevant subplots and dialog.

Short stories have all these things, but collapse them, trimming subplots and multiple characters down or out, suggesting rather than exploring. The pivotal moment is front and center, and the diffusion of that moment is minimal.

Flash fiction has been defined as from 300-1000 words, but I've seen "flash" as short as six words (Hemingway's "For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.") up to 2000. As you can see from the Hemingway example, flash fiction can be so collapsed that even the pivotal moment is only implied.

So there you have it. Love to write novels and want to write a short story? Get an idea for your novel's pivotal moment and collapse the surrounding elements. Distill them to their essences. Love to write short stories and want to write a novel? Write a short story and then break open the pivotal moment. Sound easy? No? Maybe or maybe not, but I assure you it's doable.

Go forth, ye writers! Go forth and have fun with it!

Marian Allen is the author of EEL'S REVERENCE, a fantasy