Flash Writing Series Collection: A Writer's Companion for Flash Fiction, Poetry, and Image-Making

By Melanie Faith

Real-world flash fiction, poetry, and image-making advice each step of the way from a teacher and fellow writer and photographer with twenty-years publishing experience. This book is equally inspiring for classrooms, workshops, and individual writers excited about polishing and expanding their craft.

As flashes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781925965520

Melanie Faith

Melanie Faith is an English professor, tutor, and freelance writing consultant whose writing has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. She loves writing and teaching in several genres, including flash fiction and nonfiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, novel-writing, and craft articles about the writing process. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Her photographs have been featured on literary magazine covers and on books of poetry. In her free time, she collects quotes, books, and shoes; learns about still-life photography and the Tiny-House movement; and travels to spend time with her darling nieces. To learn more about Melanie, visit: melaniedfaith.com

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In a Flash!

Writing & Publishing Dynamic Flash Prose

Melanie Faith

Vine Leaves Press

Melbourne, Vic, Australia

Introduction

Welcome, and step aboard. To the right, please. You are about to take a literary elevator shooting straight to the top floor of a genre that intrigues readers, writers, and publishers alike. Make sure you’re all in as the doors close. There we go. I’ll just press this button right here, and we’ll be off.

In this genre, you’ll explore rooftop vistas of human emotion, experience, questioning, and (sometimes) humorous quipping. It might seem like an ordinary, confined space—with a few chairs, a plain table or two, some plants—but don’t be fooled: the very act of compression creates a powerful dynamic that will open you and your writing to evocative ways of expressing the human condition in a stunningly compact style. Just a few more floors to go.

By all means, don’t let our final destination throw you: this genre might seem of-the-minute and contemporary, but famed writers for hundreds of years have practiced this form. Hemingway, Chekov, Aesop, Voltaire, O.Henry, Ovid, Russell Edson, John Updike, and Raymond Carver have written short prose that exhibits the qualities of meaningful, impactful flash, even if they haven’t called it by the name flash.

While you take in the view of passersby scurrying below like dust specks, I’ll take this opportunity to fill you in.

Flashes are generally thought to be fiction or nonfiction prose pieces of a thousand words or fewer (often, many fewer). They feature plot, conflict, often characters, and a beginning, middle, and ending—as all narrative—although the endings frequently are quirky, plot-twisty zingers. Many magazines list between 250-750 words as a cut-off, but a brilliant aspect of this genre is that there’s some stretching room in either direction. There are even sub-genres to this genre with varying length requirements, including the infamous six-word stories, such as Hemingway’s: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. Recently, several sub-genres have been added, including 140-character stories inspired by the popularity of Twitter and sometimes called, tongue-in-cheek, twitterature; the dribble (stories of no more than 50 words); the drabble (stories of no more than 100 words); and sudden fiction (whose lengths vary but often are capped at 750 words). As you can see, length and name are often intertwined in the flash-writing game.

Whether you call your piece short short fiction, micro fiction, or something else entirely, several characteristics unify pieces that are classified under the umbrella of flash.

Compression, compression, compression. Flashes omit flourishes and extra words, such as adjectives and adverbs. Dynamic, strong nouns and verbs are a staple of this genre.

Something happens (or has just happened) that sets off a string of other actions or reactions. No, you don’t have to describe them, but something has to be a catalyst—and fast. That is: there is a hot-to-trot plot. I love the way Stace Budzko, writer and instructor at Grub Street, defines it in Becky Tuch’s article, Flash Fiction: What’s It All About? By definition Flash begins at the moment of conflict, when all the action is nearly complete. Think: the final gesture of a love affair, or the start of a good old-fashioned gang fight.

They span the narrative telling of stories with the precision and image-focus of poetry. They are between poetry and fiction, the story and the sketch, prophecy and reminiscence, the personal and the crowd, according to Charles Baxter.

They often include a little aha! moment that longer works of art lack. Flashes are infamous for the bait-and-switch and for surprise or abrupt endings galore.

They are highly focused, with one theme. No room for backstory or divergence.

One of the most exciting facets of the genre for writers is its versatility. Flash fits into the realms of monologues, science fiction, prose poetry, haibun, romance, suspense, and more. Flash is also highly marketable. The advent of constant communication with the internet has provided myriad publications, both online and in print journals, as well as self-publication tools, such as websites and on social media, to submit, post, gather, and glean flash prose. Editors of longer, print magazines want them because they take up so little space and can be submitted in batches that showcase a writer’s varied skills, and editors of online magazines seek them because they sustain readers’ focus and, with some flash fiction markets publishing weekly or even daily, they are always scouting for new talent in the genre.

But let’s not forget you. (Gratification station, anyone? We’re almost there.) Writers love flash for marketing reasons, of course, but also because they are a blast to write and, unlike much longer forms like the novel, you can write them at a single sitting instead of slogging through months or years on end. The day you get an idea you can explore it to its surprising ending—there’s an immediacy to flash that can’t be beat.

Each essay in this book offers real-world writing advice on a host of timely topics related to both flash nonfiction and flash fiction that I’ve gleaned through almost twenty years of teaching and writing flashes. Each short flash essay ends with a prompt designed to give you a taste of each topic, motivating you to pick up a pen or tap on a keyboard and dive in.

You could read this book chronologically, or peruse essays and sections based on topics that interest you. Your approach is up to you.

Ah, here we are. Tip-top floor. Exit to the right, please, and enjoy the views as this genre inspires and razzle-dazzles you and your future readers.

1

Why Flash?

From Flashbulb to Snapshot on the Page.

The Three F’s: Fast, Flexible, Fun

You are about to embark on practicing a genre that is both compressed and limitless. Flashes come in many genres—from contemporary lit to women’s fiction to sci-fi/fantasy to romance and surrealism. Flash lends itself to just about any theme and topic, from personal narrative—your life stories, in memoir or more journalistic styles—to fiction.

Why write flash? The Three F’s:

Flash is FAST: Having taken many months and sometimes years to write novels and novellas, I can tell you that flashes are a breath of fresh air. You can write flashes on your lunch break, while your kids or grandkids nap, on your commute, early in the morning or late at night. There is a feeling of accomplishment, of getting somewhere (at last!), in completing a flash draft. So much of writing long projects is slogging through numerous drafts, hoping and waiting while the narrative arc accumulates, before revising again over many days and weeks while wondering if the piece is cohering at all or just circling itself, but flash is just the opposite. You don’t need a huge time commitment—15 or 20 minutes for a first draft will usually suffice. Since they are anywhere from a few words (Tweet-length, in some cases) to a few hundred, they are focused. You spotlight just one specific scene or happening—a quick vignette centred on a conflict.

Flash is FLEXIBLE: Flashes accommodate both your personal stories (creative nonfiction, often called CNF) and your made-up ones (fiction). You can alternate, writing CNF flashes one day and switch to fiction the next. You can take a break from your other, longer projects to write them and then return to your former projects with a refreshed perspective. As noted earlier, flashes come in many styles and genres. They can include sections and sub-titles, or be composed of several formats—flashes may even be set up like acrostic poems, with each paragraph’s starting letter forming a word that is thematically important to the piece. The possibilities are limitless!

Flash is FUN: Perhaps the best reason for writing flash? They are wildly entertaining and easy to market and share. Since they are so short, you can free your imagination and not worry about subplots and supporting casts of characters. There isn’t time for leisurely exposition, foreshadowing, numerous rising actions, multiple antagonists, fleshed-out flashbacks, or falling actions. You have to get to your point, pronto! Start in the middle of the action (in media res). Drop the reader with a parachute as if the first time descending from a jet plane as the jungle canopy’s green glimmers below, streaks of red birds with banana-yellow beaks coming closer as, heart in throat, the shoot is pulled just in time; no looking back, fully engaged in the now. Few reads are more intriguing than being transported to another time, place, and character in the hotbed of conflict, and all within a few succinct paragraphs. Flashes also invite rereads. How’d they do that with so few words? Finally, they inspire more flashes and are très addicting. Betcha can’t write just one!

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Try this prompt: Which of the three elements—fastness, flexibility, or fun—draws you most to writing flash? What appeals to you more: writing your true experiences and experiences of people you know/have read about (nonfiction) or making up characters and settings on the fly (fiction)?

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Begin Where You Are

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Anne Lamott

You’ve been carting around this idea for months, or years. The idea that returns to you while drifting off to sleep, or driving, or showering, or walking the dog, but you know you don’t have the skills to do it justice. That idea that came to you in an up-all-night-finals-week-coffee-and-exam-studying binge in college in 2002 that you added to your mental topic list over fifteen years ago, but you don’t know how to start the first sentence. Or whether it’s better to use first-person or third-person or second-person for some flair. So you wait and wait some more.

That idea. Today is the day. Let go of your I’ll-do-it-soon-I-promise mentality. Step into the possibility. Even if the draft veers off course from your expectations, accept it. Or change it later (key word: later, alligator.).

Right now, no second guessing. Get going—it’s frightening at first, yes, but also liberating.

A quick free-write for the writer is what scales are for the vocalist or instrumentalist: warm-up and preparation. In college choir, our director used to make us do ten minutes of vocal scales for every fifty minutes of singing. (Ma-me-mi-mo-mu, anyone?) It could be annoying at times, not getting to leap right into the sheet music, but it was also necessary to get into the mindset of having a special time frame devoted to exercising the vocal chords. Similarly in writing, fifteen minutes is the perfect guideline for a free-write, as it’s long enough to create an antsiness that brings us to the page or screen but not so long that we cave in to the harsh internal editor, kicking and sobbing on repeat, You talentless hack! Who told you you could write? You’re kidding yourself. Imposter! Who would want to read anything this trite, let alone publish it? Better off saying nothing than this garbage!

As you sit before the blank page or screen, take a deep, cleansing breath and:

Let go of the need to know how this draft will end. Yes, some authors already know the ending before they start (and it’s perfectly fine if you do), but many of us don’t. If you’re writing, the ending will come—even if you write past it or around it, you’ll feel it as you draw near. Trust.

If you make a mistake on paper, lightly cross it off and continue, without stopping. If you don’t like a sentence on-screen or run into a block, skip a few spaces and keep typing. A new thought will rise. Follow the new direction. You can always go back later and begin with this new part, omitting the other parts for another day’s draft. You can keep a scrap pile file of ideas and omitted passages from other drafts saved to be of use later; you’d be surprised just how many times those little omitted pieces from one project fit new pieces later.

I mean this: write without stopping. Once the timer goes off, feel free to stop OR to keep writing. Many times, my quick free-writes bulge and stretch for another ten or twenty minutes. When the ideas are hot—keep going. If the ideas aren’t—no worries. Stop, save, and move on. You’ve clocked in writing practice for the day.

On another day, pull up the file and read with cool eyes what you’ve written. Highlight the one phrase or sentence that you like or that resonates as truth for you. Open a new notebook page or document onscreen—you have a new prompt. Begin the free-write with this passage.

Remember the free in free-write. Write what you please. No one ever said you have to publish it, share it with anyone, or do anything else with it.

Try again tomorrow—whether you like or hate or feel somewhat lukewarm about today’s draft. Just as in choir practice, consistent writing practice leads to better prose—not instantly, but month-after-month, year-in-year-out. You’ve got this.

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Try this prompt:Fifteen minutes on the clock. That idea you’ve been carting around for a while. Without stopping. Go!

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To ‘I’ or Not to ‘I’

While much of what we write is based on our own, first-hand experiences, the flash genre includes many vantage points. Perhaps you are writing about someone else’s life you’ve observed or read about (flash biography), in which case third-person POV may be most useful. Although we’ve probably all been warned against using second-person, you can work well to situate an audience close to a life experience we’ve lived through while providing a bit of distance from the first-person. Second-person may work especially well with universal struggles—cancer diagnosis and treatments, life transitions such as separation and divorce, and losses of hope, possessions, or friends. An excellent example is Lacy Johnson’s White Trash Primer, at whitetrashprimer.com.

How to decide POV? Here’s a quick self-quiz. This is by no means exhaustive or specific just to nonfiction, but it will help you to decide which POV may best serve your narrative:

How important is immediacy? First-person is most immediate and drops your reader directly into the observations, images, and thoughts of the speaker/author. It’s also the least artsy or gripping at times, since we often relay our daily lives via I-statements.

Did this happen to me directly? While most writers immediately go to first-person for real life events, second-person can work well with universal events that are milestones, and third-person can give distance to the event that may be the best for including details we otherwise might have self-censored or felt uncomfortable expressing.

Do I have to use third-person for an event that happened long ago? No, and in fact, first- or second- person may help you and your readers to delve more directly into the event or occurrence, as it provides more emotional immediacy than the slightly more reserved third-person.

Do I feel comfortable using a different POV than usual? If not, why not? I highly encourage authors to try various POVs, especially when editing or creating a different draft. Yes, second-person, for example, is considered somewhat intrusive, as it overlays one’s own experience onto the reader, but depending on the subject matter, that intrusiveness may open up the reader and the writer to new facets that a first-person may not, since first-person tends to be easier to tell but not often as gripping to read.

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Try this prompt:Write a 200-word flash in first-person about something that happened to you the last time you went on vacation. As soon as you’ve finished your draft, immediately shift to second-person POV, changing or adding any new details that spring to mind to clarify the draft. Then, take the flash through a third, third-person draft, repeating the addition/subtraction process you used in the second-person draft. Compare and contrast. Which version includes the kind of details that resonate for you? If you’re unsure, ask a trusted friend to pick the draft they like best, and explain why they liked that specific POV. Take the stronger draft further, adding another 100 words that heighten the conflict within the piece.

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Quotation Power! Gateways to Imaginative Prose

Comedienne and actress Lily Tomlin once said, We’re all in this together alone. What makes this quotation so effective? Like flash, it is succinct. It gets to the point. No extra detail. No subplots. Just punch line and that little jolt of double-meaning at the end of the quote. It takes a cliché idea, we’re all in this together, and reverses the meaning with one pointed word—alone.

Such thrust and parry carries over well into prose, which is one reason why I recommend writers collect favourite quotes and proverbs. Even quotations you hate will be great flash starters, as disagreement with what you feel and believe will irritate and motivate you to the page to prove them wrong. Many times, these wise sayings are thematic and focused, which makes them excellent prompts, since they naturally gravitate towards symbolism, main ideas, and the ironies of life. Good writing dismantles clichés and pokes at them, making them the perfect vehicle for carrying a flash forward because clichés beg to be reversed, to serve as reference points for refuting commonly-held beliefs that might not apply to personal experience.

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Try this prompt:Write for 15 minutes based on one of the three quotations below. Agree or disagree with the quote via a concrete example from your own life. When you’re finished, see how far or close you are to the original theme. Keep the quotation as an epigraph if you like, editing your prose to stay thematically close to the quote. Alternately, you may omit the quotation entirely, trusting that your reading will intuit the juicy tidbit you borrowed.

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Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. Arthur Miller

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must let go of the life we planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell

Flash, You Say? Four Tips for Compressed Dialogue

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have all day to hang around the house? You wake at ten or eleven, take a leisurely shower. No one beating on the bathroom door to hurry, no deadlines looming, no class to teach in two hours, no commute, no emails proliferating like rabbits out of a hat. You noodle around on Pinterest, peruse a few other favourite websites, before leaning back to read—uninterrupted—forty or fifty pages of the latest page-turner. Then you make an unhurried lunch. You hang out at the pool with your best friend from 1-4, chitchatting away the day about your art, your latest favourite reads, and deliciously funny updates about people you know in common, with only the need to slather on more SPF and remember to turn at regular intervals so one side is not crispy critter, before a nice dinner out where someone else labours away in the kitchen making, delivering, and doing up your dishes. Then home for another forty or fifty pages before an easeful snooze.

Whose life is that placid that they get to focus on just one thing, chronologically, at one time? Who has time for that? Precisely.

In the age of sound-bytes, YouTube-attention spans, and social media posts, it’s more important than ever to get to the heart of the matter, stat.

Make sure there’s conflict or tension. Without conflicting or tension-riddled comments, there’s not much pizzazz to flash dialogue. Every single thing a character says has to add conflict or shed light on the situation—if not, omit it. Even if you have one character making a single comment, make sure that it’s one that heightens the tension or drama within the scene. It might also shed light on the character’s internal struggle or the dynamic setting

No hesitancy. In real life, we often clear our throats, pause, change the subject, or meander back to attempt what we wanted to say. In flash, you have neither time nor space for such throat-clearing. Direct dialogue only.

Omit clunky dialogue tags. After you establish who is talking, you no longer need he said, I remarked, or other dialogue tags. Instead, at those spots, include a quick body language cue: my shoulders tensed, or he scooched to the end of the bench. The body language shows emotions and does much to increase tension in the scene.

No side-shows. One topic, one focus. One of my favourite birthday gifts I receive every year is a real-time conversation with my best friend from college. After playing phone-tag and leaving e-mail messages for days to establish a time, we manage to land on a giant, two-hour extravaganza with multiple threads about our freelance businesses, our teaching, our memories, her child, my family, basically: 365-days in one wallop. Anyone else listening might not be able to follow half the threads as we meander in and out of time, details, half-explored thoughts, and laughs. While this is a delightful present, catching up as only long-time, far-away friends can, such dialogue—with starts and stops and multiple plot threads—would be disastrous to a flash piece. Focus is the name of the game for flash. One topic, one treatment, one theme in the conversation. Not two; one. If you have more than one focus in your dialogue—decide which is the most important dialogue thread and let the other go. You can always use the omitted part to write a new flash.

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Try this prompt:Construct a scene where two characters argue over something or someone. Follow the four tips outlined above.

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Villains and Vamps: Crafting Realistic Antagonists

Behind every villain is a truth, whether it be perceived or actual. Dalton Frey

Foes: we’ve all had them. The wielder of the catty comment, the group gossip, the backstabbing co-worker, the frenemy, the ex who broke up via text or just never returned calls, the horrible roommate. The list could go on ad nauseum (with an emphasis on the nausea!).

While it’s tempting to wield your pen like an axe of revenge, that likely won’t yield the most meaningful literary results. Worst case, it makes the writer appear bitter and jaded or mean-spirited. The reader has no way of knowing if the antagonist is really as bad as they are being portrayed. Best case scenario: vengeful writing makes a writer appear small-minded or stuck. Neither of these options is great for readers or writers.

Look, we all deal with messy life. Things happen unfairly, even to rotten people—perhaps especially to them. Antagonists are every bit as conflicted as protagonists and should also have a slight redeeming quality to offset their other less-than-stellar qualities. The teen who bullied me for a year when we were kids had fantastic fashion flair, did volunteer work, and was a talented singer who could have gotten a recording contract if shows like America Idol had been around then, I can admit that. Does that lessen her cruelty or make me any less happy she transferred the next year? No—she was still a mean-spirited brat who was insecure and baited people against each other, sniffing out the slightest weaknesses to her social advantage. See, get a few digs in (you earned it through tough experience, after all!), but don’t make the whole purpose of the piece to settle scores.

How should we fairly treat adversaries we’ve been unfortunate enough to encounter?

Balance the bad with at least one affirmative. Sure, we may yet shudder at their very names, but someone, somewhere, loves them and sees their redeeming quality. Reach for it. Be the better person, even if you want to brandish the dagger pen.

Consider your own part in the situation. True, it was totally, horribly, drastically unfair—I get you. Still, think back on it: what would you like to tell your younger self to do or not do to try to assuage the situation? If nothing could have been done—and it often happens—skip to the next part.

Think of the bigger picture. Rather than making a grocery list of your antagonist’s many rotten qualities (awfully tempting, I understand!), highlight one or two and then look for how this person might be symbolic for the antagonists your readers have had to experience. In this way, you will be making a positive connection with your reader, rather than writing for the sole purpose of settling scores.

Aim for reflection, not wallowing. Once you’ve adequately painted the hideous things your antagonist said or did, step back and move on. What’s the bigger message you want to share as a connection with your readers?

If you can’t find any redeeming features in your antagonist (hey, it happens—it’s also possible enough time might not have passed yet to write about this person without pain) consider changing the antagonist’s name and some identifying details, or combining two or three bullies into one composite.

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Try this prompt:List at least three rotten things your antagonist did or said. Now, from the bully’s friends’ POV, list at least one reason they liked or hung out with the antagonist. When you write about your antagonist, acknowledge this one characteristic in your draft to briefly flesh out the antagonist’s character.

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Impressionistic Leapfrog: A Prompt in Naming

My four-and-a-half year-old niece created a game last summer that never fails to amuse. One night at dinner, after I said, I love you, Sunshine, Cora Vi looked around the room as she bit into her pizza and impishly challenged, I love you, Television Set. After we both laughed, we raced back and forth, eyeing items around the room and outside the window to call each other. I love you, Glasses Face, I love you, Wrench Head, I love you Squirrel Face, I love you Swing-Set, I love you, Stuffed-Monkey Chin. I love you, Dinosaur Breath.

Think of integrating such imaginative leaps into your flash. Life is often quirky, so why shouldn’t your prose express that reality? While you could include details chronologically, you don’t have to. Why not shake it up a bit? Here are a few fun ideas for how you might do so.

Divide your flash into two or three sections, with abrupt and playful changes in settings, tone, imagery, or dialogue.

Think about the names for ordinary things that you’ve always taken for granted. Why are they called what they’re called? Do some investigating and work that knowledge into your draft in a phrase or sentence of its own.

Consider adding a humorous or amusing situation or detail. Better yet, include two incongruous situations, symbols, images, or dialogues in the same piece. Jessie Carty, author of Shopping after the Apocalypse, does this perfectlyin the following flash where her struggling, rag-tag protagonist is thrilled to discover Jiffy Pop, a cultural food icon for Gen X kids, and feels the need to write a glowing letter to customer service amidst the rubble.

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A Letter to the Makers of Jiffy Pop after the Apocalypse

I stumbled across a carton of your wonderful product in the back of discount grocery store and I was so excited! I used to love rattling a pack of Jiffy Pop over a stovetop. Far more fun than waiting for the smell of microwave popcorn just before you’ve left it in too long.

I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to make Jiffy Pop over a real fire since the handle is metal and short so I found some grilling utensils and rigged them to hold the Jiffy Pop over the flames.

It worked like a champ!

Although I wish I’d found a carton of Jiffy Pop without butter flavouring. As much as I like your product I probably need to find a way to make my own without any additives because the butter topped version was so salty and almost made me choke with the artificial taste.

If you start making Jiffy Pop again, please consider making an all natural version.

After all, taste buds change.

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Talk about a quirky situation that adds to the humorous tone, and what a great use of a product that symbolized entertainment, snacking at leisure, and cosiness for Boomers’ kids now juxtaposed against a hard-scrabble landscape. Her speaker’s complaint about the butter flavour is an added, quirky detail that enhances the humorous tone, and all in compact piece under 170 words.

Write a piece in which you purposefully mix the order of events. Use repetitions if it feels natural or fun to you.

Begin at the ending and work your way back. You might also play with numerals/numerical order.

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Try this prompt:Did you ever know someone who was called a nickname? Did he or she enjoy it, name himself that, or not like it at all? How do you feel about this nickname now? Was it fair? Fanciful? Mean? You may also write a piece about nicknames you’ve had. What do they say about you? What do they say about people around you?

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Brava, Pecunious, Grapple, Skulk: Jazz up Your Writing

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave V words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. Robert Piros, 1930s copywriter and screenwriter, from Letters of Note

I am that most magical of peeps: a word nerd. Colour me word-saturated, and I like it that way. If I haven’t written for a few days, the ideas and sentences froth over like a fountain’s burble and I run for a keyboard or pen.

You’re reading this book, so you’re likely obsessed with words—their sound, their connotations, their spelling—too. Three of my favourites: epiphany, lovely, halcyon. There’s just something about the soft, sibilant f and c, the luscious ls, and soothing long e sounds.

One of the most fascinating courses I took as an undergrad was called Structure of the English Language. Not only did we study dialects, regional accents, and the various ways in which English is a polyglot (there’s another yummy word!), swallowing words and parts of words wholesale from other languages and immigrant groups, but we broke words down to their basic components. We learned about fricatives- consonants composed of narrowed breath producing harsh airflow, such as th-. We practiced plosives, such as the hard-sounding k, p, d, g, b, and t. Long before Google, we looked up what a glottal stop was. We also discussed how soft sounds, like m and n, have softer meanings or create a softer tone in a sentence compared to words and sentences littered with plosives. It was inspiring to learn why gargantuan was interpreted as negative while lilt was positive. To a room full of soon-to-be teachers and writers, it opened avenues for diction choice and word manipulation in our communication.

How can you apply this knowledge to your own writing?

Reread children’s books. Children are highly sensitive to word combinations and the average picture book is well under a thousand words, so children’s authors choose very specific, imagistic terms and direct, action-oriented verbs. The Fancy Nancy series focuses on a little girl who is also obsessed and amused by words, especially French terms. Dr. Seuss crafted terms we now consider part of our lexicon. Grinch, anyone? When I was a child in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, the Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish were popular. They centre on a maid protagonist who has a series of misunderstandings, such as making cake out of cleaning sponges when asked to bake a sponge cake. My young nieces love Mo Willems’ fanciful Pigeon books. Read widely and find your own favourites.

Read poetry. e.e. cummings liked to play with words and spellings, just like the humorist Ogden Nash who frequently tacked on comical endings to make his verse rhyme. Peruse a variety of poetry: rhymed and unrhymed, modern and ancient to get a feel for pacing, sound patterns, and connotations—from succinct yet wonder-filled nature poets like Mary Oliver to rambly-lined, word-drunk versifiers like Walt Whitman in his Song of Myself and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Try children’s poet and entertainer Shel Silverstein. Amble through Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.

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Try this prompt:Read several poems or picture books in a row. Notice and write down specific words that call out to you. Note what kinds of sound patterns made your heart race, which sound patterns were hard or soft, and the types of sounds that affected each sentence’s pace. Apply to your own writing.

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Colour Magic: The Power of Hue Imagery

My elder niece, Cora Vi, and I play a guessing game when we video-call each other.

What colour are my nails today? Can you guess? I ask, archly.

Cora Vi puts on her thinking-cap face, kewpie lips pursed or an eye scrunched under her glasses, and then begins the guessing.

Yew-o?

No, not yellow.

Poi-ple? she asks as she shifts the iPad to such an angle that I’m now seeing more of her forehead and the ceiling than her face, before my sister rights it for her.

Close, I say. Try again.

Red!

Yes! Then I dangle my fingertips close to the webcam, with razzle-dazzle fluttering, probably more for my amusement than hers, and inquire about her own kiddie-polished phalanges.

The colour spectrum is so simple and yet evocative. Remember learning ROY G BIV in elementary-school science class? Hues play a central role in the basis of our knowledge of the world around us.

Shades are elemental cues that allow us to:

denote emotion,

develop characterization,

develop conflict and tension,

foreshadow,

develop tone in a scene.

Many stories use colours to underscore characters’ emotions or actions. Red denotes passion, impulsivity, misunderstanding, and anger. Purple is often thought to be royal or sumptuous as a sign of plenty, and blue denotes sadness, peace, harmony and the celestial. Yellow has stood for happiness, lightened moods, and joy along with heat and even fear. Even lack of colour—black and white and gray—as well as combinations of colour—pink-red—can add impact to a flash and give the double bonus of being succinct. A reader’s mind fills in the pop of colour and its symbolism within a single word or two. How’s that for economical?

You certainly don’t need to list just a plain-old hue, either. Why not incorporate distinctive blends? I used thesaurus.com for a search on green and found 27 synonyms—from chartreuse to fir, spinach, verdigris (if I’m feeling retro), malachite, moss, lime, grass, willow, bice, and viridian. Each word has a certain panache, meaning, and feeling, both in the mouth and on the page. Consider pacing and image quality along with the historical or modern setting.

I also like that thesaurus.com includes a setting for complexity and word-length as well as providing terms with similar shades of meaning that don’t mention colour but include the idea nonetheless, such as verdant, bosky, leafy, puerile, juvenile, and sprouting. It’s a veritable gold mine at your fingertips—pun intended.

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Try this prompt:Take a scene you’ve written that has fallen flat and add one or two colour images. After adding in the imagery, omit or shorten nearby passages that are no longer necessary, given the hue’s symbolic value. If you’re lucky enough that all of your flashes are good-to-go, write a new flash with at least two colour images to denote one of the five elemental clues noted above.

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Shrug Your Shoulders. Toss Your Hair.

Suck in your breath. Roll your eyes. Turn your back. What do these actions have in common? They are examples of body language that you might integrate into a flash. What’s so great about body language, anyway?

Compression Power. Body language is shorthand for characters’ internal emotions that they may be trying not to show. With three or four words, on average, you can cue your reader to tension, frustration, plot twists, and more.

Body language shows but doesn’t tell. Our bodies often emote for us. In writing, we’ve all been warned that we shouldn’t just state our characters’ emotions but we should demonstrate them in some way. Body language connotes a range of emotions from anger or joy to sadness, amusement— and even humour.

Swiftly develop character and increase conflict. If I stick my tongue out at somebody, I’m being impertinent. If that person’s back is turned, we have another level of communication. If that person catches me sticking my tongue out and I realize I’m caught—we have two kinds of tension, internal and external. What an efficient way for one action to amp up the tension between two people. Action and character movements create both an insight into the character as well as an intensification of the conflict, as in the following beautifully lyric piece by Penny Guisinger where the speaker’s gardening serves as a backdrop for an absent loved one who used to garden as she does.

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I Didn’t Miss You Until This Morning

I pushed aside leaves in the eggplant bed wishing we had grown just one. Plummy, earthy fruit that tastes like warmth, the floor of the forest, and chocolate. You love these plants with violet blossoms, their leaves interrupted by lines the colour of dusk. They bore nothing but beauty and form, but I suppose that’s something. I did my work while you were gone. I slept hard, stayed sober, weeded. I hauled basil plants out of the earth and plucked them down to bare stems, lifted drooping tomato branches, pulled all the ready fruit. Sturdy kale, pumpkins, butternuts and buttercups. (I can never remember which is the nut and which is the cup, but I know you know.) By now, your tent was stuffed into its sack, the sack into a dry bag, and all of it afloat with you down a fat river under this same coastal sky. I was not irritated anymore. Who does the dishes, who calls the vet, who hangs the sheets out to dry. Trivia. I filled a whole, black enamel canner with tomatillos, sungolds, and slicers, then looked for more.

There were so many mornings when I had my face in a book, fingers in some writing project. You were probably irritated with me, as you dug to reveal potatoes like gold nuggets. I was leaving the garden, carrying the bounty, when there, buried in the shin-high foliage – one eggplant, the size of a fist. I want to tell you.

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Guisinger imagines her loved one’s actions in the garden once mirrored her own, providing a poignant underscoring of the speaker’s emotions without overexplication. It’s clear that she has taken over the cultivation as a way to connect to this person who has gone.

Sometimes, you can highlight the disparity between what a person says and what a person does. In psychology, they are called tells. For instance, people who are attracted to each other will often mirror each other’s movements. These two characters may never verbally express their attraction—in fact, it’s probably better if their talk is mundane—but body language can highlight the tension between what they want inside but are too afraid to verbalize and the inability to stop the body’s signalling.

Body cues help your readers visualize where your character is in relation to other people or things. As a teacher, I most often see drafts where large blocks of conversation occur without a speck of body-language direction so that characters seem to talking heads, hovering in space. While you don’t want to go overboard by detailing every movement a character makes, body language cues here and there can assist readers in fleshing out your character’s spatial location so that your character doesn’t become a talking head.

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Try this prompt:Take a flash you’ve written and highlight any body language cues you’ve included. Can’t find any? It’s pretty common. Add some in, especially at spots where dialogue stands alone to denote where the body is in relation to other people or things as well as to increase tension. Also consider imagining a conversation where body language contradicted what was being said.

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Stuck in Muck

It happens to the best of us. You’re writing along. Tappety-tappety-tap. Your protagonist or speaker is chatting up a storm. You’re riding the wave of the action. Then, boom! The phone rings or you hear your boss’s voice or someone knocks at the door or you have to leave and pick up your child or friend, and suddenly—where was this going again? Stuck.

It doesn’t even have to be an external interruption (although it often will be); from time to time the character will abruptly stop talking or the next sentence just doesn’t arrive.

How can we get past breaks, sputters, and stops and pick up our narrative later today, tomorrow, or even days from now?

Reread your draft. Sometimes, just getting back into the original mindset can joggle your mind enough to pick the thread back up again. Other times, a word or phrase already in the piece will spark the next ones.

Pick the sentence that has the most action, wherever it is in the draft. Begin anew with that sentence.

Share your draft-in-progress with a trusted friend or other writer. Ask them what sentence they like best. Omit the rest and begin with that sentence. It may not lead where you had originally started, but that’s why they’re called works in progress. Sometimes, the new direction flows even better than expected.

Ask that friend or writer what they had anticipated would come next. If you like their idea, progress from that point and see where it goes.

Ask yourself: What is this piece about? In other words, what is the theme of the piece? Sometimes, clarifying the ground you’ve covered so far helps to continue the thread you’ve started.

If you haven’t yet, include a piece of dialogue and see where it goes.

Pick up where you left off with a strong visual image that matches your topic or theme. You can always write a short transition when you edit. If you find that the two parts of your draft don’t mesh later and transitions aren’t working, you can always omit the weaker part and keep writing the better one. The point is to get words flowing again.

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Try this prompt:The next time your flash gets stuck, try two of these methods. Compare and contrast your drafts. Work on the one you like best. Save the other for another day’s editing or lift a phrase or idea from it for a new piece.

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Spontaneous Song

As I was blow-drying my hair this morning, I heard a noise. It wasn’t rattly. It wasn’t screechy. It wasn’t a boom. In fact, it was rather melodic and soft and cheery. Wonder of all wonders as I blinked into the mirror, it was coming from me.

That’s right. I found myself singing. Aloud. To no external music at all. For the first time in… longer than I could remember. Yep, it was a moment. The wind had died down outside, my chest-cold had given me a reprieve on coughing and sneezing, and I’d had a great tutoring session with my students yesterday on the first day back from break.

Not life-altering events, but something to sing about apparently. Amazing that those lines from a jazz standard by Blossom Dearie that a writer friend I haven’t talked to in ages used to play for me reappeared.

My nieces are young enough that they tend to break into spontaneous song. They don’t need a huge reason, either. Do they want toast with no butter but lots of jam? They’ll sing their request. Would they like to go browsing the thrift store to spend their treat money Nana sent them? Let’s make a tune about that. Do they feel like dancing around the room on the balls of their feet because they’ve just raided the costume trunk? There should be a song for that, so let’s create it.

They are not surprised by on-the-spot creation. They do not get an idea and mull it over for a few days or weeks. They do not wonder if their audience will like it. They do not wonder about pitch or whether they should sing it an octave higher or lower. They are not self-conscious. All ideas are immediately useable.

They sing because they thought of it and they feel like it. Great reasons that we adults tend to discount when applied to our own creativity.

You likely get many ideas for flashes a week. They might not scream, "Look at me! I’m