Connie's Corner

Reviewing high school English....

As I type this, I am eating seedless black grapes and inhaling divine vegetarian chili bubbling in the crock pot. Supper is chili and cornbread .

I have spent most of today reviewing syntax, basically, sentence structure, a very important item in micro fiction. Before sentence formation, one must be familiar with the parts of speech, and I have been reviewing that, too. Remember, it has been almost fifty years since I was in school, but I can still hear Mrs. Pollitt saying, "That's a dangling participle, don't use gerunds like that, never end a sentence with a preposition, Connie." She always picked on me .

Plus, in micro fiction, adverbs,metaphors and similes are out the window, no room. Make images (show) with active verbs and concrete nouns, stick to one plot line, one or two characters, and get rid of all the the's and that's you can. Use no superfluous words, known as elliptical speech, let the words used imply the meaning. This is something we do normally and automatically when we are in a tense situation, such as, "Get out." You is implied.

Forget back story (exposition), try to imply that, too. Now, with all that and only a few words, tell a story with all its components, setting, characterization, conflict, and resolution, like we attempt to do in our very own "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  .

Oh, and did I mention we have to reduce our stories to ten words for our next class !

until next time...c