 Drama: May 25, 2022 Issue [#11363] |
This week: Drama in Flash Fiction Edited by: Joy  
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“We disconnected. And I wondered if we had ever truly connected.”
Eric Jerome Dickey, Dying for Revenge
“The next thing I knew, I was falling. I dreamed I was being thrown into an open grave, but jerked awake and landed on a bed.”
Eric Jerome Dickey, Finding Gideon
“Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored."
Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about putting the drama in flash fiction.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Please, note that there are no rules in writing, but there are methods that work for most of us most of the time.
The ideas and suggestions in my articles and editorials have to do with those methods. You are always free to find your own way and alter the methods to your liking.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Flash fiction is a popular form with readers, writers, and publishers alike. It is the type of fiction that is bright, short, and easy-to read, and it has been around as parables, myths, jokes, and brief fairy tales for a very long time. Then, there is the famous, told-and-retold event with Ernest Hemingway about when he won a bet by writing a short story fewer than ten words: "For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn." That sort of challenge is great for honing our writing skills, but I am prone to preferring a bit longer short-fiction. Besides, what we call flash fiction is more liable to lend itself to the movies and theater arts.
Flash fiction today is considered to be not more than 2000 words, and because of its brevity, it is falsely thought as something that is very easy to write. This brevity makes it acceptable only because of limited space in most publications, but flash fiction is probably the most difficult form of writing if the writer aims to do a good job.
Talking about Ernest Hemingway, his distinctive style possibly is more conducive to producing drama in a flash fiction story, as he has written in Chapter V- In Our Time:
https://biblioklept.org/2012/08/12/chapter-v-in-our-time-ernest-hemingway/
Then, here’s another one Sticks by George Saunders. Although the writing style is much different than that of Hemingway’s, the story has all the drama of a full-fledged novel.
http://www.unm.edu/~gmartin/535/Sticks.htm
What makes a good flash fiction is not in the shortness of it but in its contents and in the delivery that keeps in mind that flash fiction is plot-driven. Thus, a halfway decent flash fiction piece needs to have these elements.
 A quick moving plot with a beginning, middle, and end
A powerful punchline, epiphany, or ending
A setting for focus, even if hinted at and not described
Strong characters with their backstory and development kept to a minimum or only implied
Staying away from clichés
With these elements of flash fiction in mind, flash fiction stories are most dramatic and touching if they have strong human elements in them. Any good dramatic writing is about people, their relationships, and their motives, as these give the story understanding and life.
Then, picking on the everyday events and encounters and looking at them in a new light through your own unique insight helps create drama, too. Most ordinary things hide something extraordinary in them and it is up to us writers to find that.
One way to make the story more dramatic is accomplished by thinking of a conflict and beginning the story closer to its climax. After that, keeping the count of characters to a minimum helps, too; however, you can give the impression of a crowd if you address them in groups, such as in the Hemingway’s story above. “They shot the six cabinet ministers…”
One writing advice by the writing instructors is: Try to transform a story-telling poem of yours, as most poems have a story hidden in them somewhere. Then, another way is loosely composing the story as a poem first. This could be rhymed or unrhymed. Next, you can rewrite it, making every word as vivid and expressive as possible and fixing your story to perfection.
May all your stories shine like bright suns in the literary universe!
Until next time! 
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 Enjoy!
| |  | Playing with Dolls (13+)
300-word short story that includes, "I can't find it anywhere." Daily Flash Fiction entry.
#2179776 by Jeff  |
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This Issue's Tip: In any story, short fiction or not, stick to the theme and do not preach.
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Feedback for "Linking Characters to Theme"
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iKïyå§ama 
Excellent newsletter as always and thanks so much for featuring my short story! 
Thank you!  I love your stories.
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