Category: Writing

Learning from prize anthologies and magazines

Today, the postie delivered not only the latest issue of The Stinging Fly – I’ve just subscribed–but also five copies of Fish Anthology 2014. I was so excited to see my runner-up flash fiction, ‘The Lottery’, in print that I ate six apricots one after the other.  Both books have absorbed me most of the day and it’s been fascinating reading such a variety of sparkling prose and poetry.

I began writing Flash Fiction after the short story writer and Arvon Tutor, Tania Hershman led a session on Flash at Mr B’s Emporium, Bath a couple of years ago which we organised at Writing Events Bath. I learned that Flash stories are one thousand words maximum and fifty words, or sometimes less, minimum. There are many different names for the form –smoke fiction, short shorts, drabbles, prose poetry, to name a few. Carrie Etter, a poet and senior lecturer at Bath Spa University, writes prose poetry and teaches the form. Her new collection,’Imagined Sons’ is written as a sequence of prose poems. In  a short conversation I had with her, she suggested that flash fiction works well if you write a scene with one or two characters with the action taking place over about ten minutes.

My story ‘The Lottery’, follows that structure, but it’s interesting to see that the winning fictions in the Fish anthology sometimes use  longer time frames, and a variety of structures. Robert Grossmith in his story ‘First’  achieves this by the use of  headings followed by short descriptions of events from a whole life. Roisin O’Donnell’s  powerful story about a man who blew himself up, is in three numbered sections, each one from a different perspective – the mother, wife and child. The time frame ranges from immediate to an unspecified time in the future.

In The Stinging Fly magazine, the flash fictions are longer and more expansive as a consequence.  Alison Fisher writes an historical tale  set over several years and develops a strong lead character in under one thousand words. Danielle McLaughlin, in a similar number of words,  writes a  strongly evocative piece which encompasses a short time span, but successfully includes a flash- back sequence.

It’s been a great reading and learning day. I recommend buying both books.

Emerging Characters

I sometimes co-run ‘pop-up’ writing events in Hall and Woodhouse Cafe, Bath with my writing friend and co-founder of Writing Events Bath, Alex Wilson. We run similar sessions in four week blocks at Bath Central Library. Last week we ran a pop-up session, focussed on developing characters. These sessions are designed to get participants writing. We devise exercises and people write for five or ten minutes then share in pairs and often read out their pieces to the whole group. It’s always amazing to see what can be produced in such a short time.

During the session, we were considering how characters change and develop as you write and how it is necessary to show several aspects of a character in order for them to be interesting. Obvious stuff, but staying with the obvious is always important. Who likes a nicey-nicey character anyway?

I used to be a Gestalt Psychotherapist and one of the theoretical concepts from Gestalt Therapy suggests that we do not have a fixed ‘self’. The self is fluid and changes according to the environment or situation. For example, if you are talking to your MP at a local surgery, you will be different from when you are talking to your best friend in the Boston Tea Party.  A different aspect of your self is called for. With the MP situation, you might surprise yourself if you have never been to a surgery before. If your MP is Jacob Rees-Mogg, like mine, you could  suddenly discover a barely contained rageful self (or character). We won’t go into the finer distinctions between definitions of  self and character here but I think the Gestalt Psychotherapist, Irving Polster, did say that the character is ‘the one who wears the boots.’

So as a writer, if you are not sure how to deepen your character, put them in a different situation and a different part of them will emerge. (Or a different aspect of you, the writer, will emerge?).  The different situation can involve another, or it can be a different environment.