We had a really enjoyable couple of hours with Anne Howkins on Thursday as she took us into the world of Flash Fiction. Flash stories are generally anything between 100-1000 words in length and have been growing in popularity in recent years. There are regular competitions run by sites such as adhocfiction which is closely associated with the Bath Flash Fiction Award.
Flash gives a writer complete freedom of genre and form, can imply things or give a complete picture. Anne’s first task for us was ‘defamiliarisation’ – taking something well known and applying a different perspective, as in this example (something I threw together in a few minutes as part of the workshop):
It’s not fair. I know that mum won’t let me. She’ll say that I’ve got Jimbo and we can’t afford another mouth to feed. But it’s not the same. They won’t allow Jimbo into school and besides he’s no fun. He doesn’t follow me around. Well, he might, but he moves too slow for me to notice. And he’s ugly, not springy and cute. I don’t want to take a tortoise to school. I want a lamb like Mary’s.
Anne also gave us an exercise involving the use of newspaper clippings and images as prompts, to which we had to add various listed words. Alice’s heroic frog-riding squirrel is definitely something we need to hear more about!
We had been asked to provide some slightly nonsensical prompts using an animal and a random word to test our ability to let the impossible and the fantastic a route into our storytelling.
Finally, we tried our hand at writing a story in the guise of something else, such as a recipe or a shopping list (also known as ‘hermit crab fiction’, i.e. a story pretending to be something else).
We all enjoyed the session and had a few laughs at some of the results; it certainly gave us a deeper appreciation for the plasticity of Flash Fiction – it’s not just ‘a very short story’. What is implied but left unsaid is sometimes more powerful than the written words.
Anne has had work published on these sites, which are worth looking at:
Flash 500; Retreat West; Reflex Fiction; Lunate Fiction.
It was also great to see a few new faces for the start of the New Year and we hope to catch up with everyone again in the back room of the Organ Grinder on 23rd January.
Keep practising the Flash Fiction because we’ll be launching our annual Flash Competition later in the year!
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