Some Thoughts on Flash Fiction

Hi Nicholas and Dogwood,

OK – as promised, here are my thoughts on flash fiction in 2015…PLEASE let me know what your thoughts are. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with and want to change?

First…

1. My Intention and Vision

As I said in my last email, I believe the ability to craft scenes is the fundamental skill as a storyteller, fiction, film or otherwise. Everything else is secondary or not conducive to the writer actually practicing his craft. This is a very personal hurt for me (I’m getting all vulnerable here guys). And talking to other “aspiring writers” I see the same pattern. They spend ages brainstorming their character, world or plot… But never actually putting anything to paper. Writing scenes forces you to figure those things out as your characters FACE CONFLICT AND TAKE ACTION.

So selfishly – the point of the weekly flash fiction in 2015 is to actually hone my craft. And not spend hours masturbating on my great world, character or plot. But mutually beneficially, of course – help you guys WRITE fiction as well.

Nicholas… you were SUPER excited about this idea as I brought it up. What are your reasons for wanting to do this?

Dogwood, you kinda just tagged along. But I know you’re keen on this too. What are you looking to get out of this?

2. Methodology

I’m thinking something like this. Please tell me if it works for you:

Sometime on the weekend… One of us - scheduled by rotation – will text the other two writers: One, a VERB and two, a random thing (word, phrase, picture, prompt). I’ll explain the verb in a moment.

Then – all three of us have the rest of the weekend to stew… And the week to write a scene. A flash fiction. The deadline would be Thursday at midnight maybe. And that means post it on your blog. That way, we have Friday and the weekend to read it, think about it and comment.

Now – up in the air:

And then rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat until we can write scenes in our sleep.

3. Writing your flash fiction

Why a “verb”? Because verb means action. And action means there’s an intention and goal… And every goal means you’ll run into conflict, obstacles and tension.

From a verb, we have a fundamental seed to make everything else up. This leaves us to make up any character, plot and world. Go nuts. You can also interpret the verb any way you like. Attack can be physical, verbal, psychological, spiritual.

As for the random thing (word, phrase, object, picture)… Well, that just makes it fun and sets some boundaries. The hardest thing is to stare at a blank page and make stuff up. A random thing would hopefully inspire us in some way. I think we should treat it like a title of a book. You don’t even have to mention it, or use it explicitly. But to the three of us, it should be obvious you were inspired by it.

Thoughts on these two guidelines? A verb and a random thing? Do you like that? Do you want more parameters? Or did you want to kill “verb” and just go with random stuff?

4. How do we critique each other’s stuff?

Well, here’s the funny thing. We’ll end up talking about character, plot and world.

But I think to REALLY help each other… We should focus on scene construction at the core. To me a scene is a story in microcosm… And referring to the article I sent earlier… A MRU (Motivation-Reaction Unit) is an even smaller unit. MRUs make up a scene, scenes make up a sequence/chapter, chapters make up a book.

ANYWAY – going back to save the cat stuff… A scene can be broken down to approximate beats like this…

  1. SETUP 10-12% - Character wants Goal, because of Stakes.
  2. BUILD UP TO ACTION 12-25% - Heading towards the action
  3. CONFLICT 25-50% - He tries stuff and gets screwed over a few times
  4. MIDPOINT TURN 50% - something unexpected happens. a shifting point.
  5. INTENSIFIED CONFLICT 50-75/80% - Character has to deal with this “shift”
  6. CLIMAX 75-80% mark - One last try at goal and ends up with DISASTER
    • No, character doesn’t acheive goal
    • No, character doesn’t acheive goal and what’s more, more crap.
    • Yes, character acheives goal, but… more crap / pyhrric victory with consequences.
  7. DENOUMENT 80-100% - Character reacts primally, then emotionally, then logically then decides on next action.

Now obviously, those percentages and beats are suggestions. The rules are not there to hinder us… This is the same discussion we had in WPB about structure. It’s there to clean shit up afterwards. But they are nice goal posts to have like a outline… I mean a roadmap. ;)

Ultimately – it’s a COMMON LANGUAGE for us to judge each other’s work… And force us to improve each other and ourselves.

We can ask questions like…

OK – thoughts on this? What do you think about focusing on beats?

I like this because it prevents us from meandering in description, internal monologue or endless dialogue that doens’t go anywhere. It forces us to deal with tension, conflict and drama right away.

5. APPENDIX: VERBS

If you read the second Save the Cat book… “Save the Cat Goes to the Movies” He talks about how there are really only ten plots in the world. It’s a great book.

And if you break it down to the CORE VERB of each story…You end up with some great starter verbs for us…

And if you think of the opposite of those verbs… From the antagonist’s viewpoint, we also get…

I think Nicholas, you totallly “get this” as an actor. I took some director crash courses this past summer, and giving actors VERBS was the best way to get them in the right state or experiment with different ideas. VERBS are not some woo-woo motivation… It’s something you ACT on.

6. That’s it.

Let me know what your thoughts are about this entire email.