Are you a student? Are you a manager? Are you a cab driver? Are you a nurse? Are you a homemaker? Are you a husband or a wife or a boyfriend or a girlfriend? Are you divorced? Are you young, middle age or a senior citizen? Are you retired like me?
Excellent. Your life will make for great flash fiction. Try writing flash fiction. The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is here to help you do just that. Use the subscription tab at the top of the page to take out a free subscription and have every issue of The Gazette delivered to your inbox.
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News: BP Oil Spill Keeps Getting Worse
The coast line from Texas to Louisiana is slowly feeling the impact of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Media outlets are reporting that scientists are warning that oil plumes, some ten miles long, beneath the surface of the water have entered the loop stream and are headed around the tip of Florida for the East Coast of the United States.
Although BP has inserted a pipe in the head of the oil well that is one mile below the surface of the ocean, at least 200,000 gallons of oil is still spilling into the ocean every day. Scientists are expressing fears that the wetlands of Louisiana may not recover from the devastation of the oil spill for generations to come.
The only sure solution for stopping the oil spill is the drilling of relief wells; but these relief wells will not come online for at least another month. In the meantime the destruction goes on as it spreads over an ever-increasing area of coast lines and ocean.
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Building A Short Story
The familiar classic form of a short story is pretty much set in stone. There is the setup, the buildup and the payoff. This is the same form for flash fiction, sudden fiction, short short stories and very short stories.
Or a writer can think of a story as a building. Here are some of the building blocks.
There must be a protagonist. I like to rummage around in my own life and come up with a projection of myself to play this part.
For conflict I pick a situation I have first hand knowledge of. That way I know what I’m writing about.
Locale is either Vietnam or Pittsburgh. Usually it’s Pittsburgh since I was in Vietnam for only a year a long time ago and Pittsburgh has been my home since I was born.
This is how you can build a story one brick at a time.
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In The Shadow Of The Cathedral Of Learning
I was back from Vietnam and discharged from the army. I was young and in college. A light snow was falling. It was night and I could see that farther down the avenue the commercial district was all lit up. I was glad I had decided to stay in Pittsburgh to go to school. I wasn’t so happy about joining the fraternity I had joined.
Well this time I wasn’t going to take any more guff from Tom. It didn’t matter that he had been drunk earlier. It didn’t matter that he was my fraternity brother. When he was sober he was too big to mess with, but he was probably still drunk and getting drunker and I could take him. I was well into the commercial district when someone spoke to me. The person was past me and I stopped and turned to see who it was and it was Joyce Lynn Summerton.
She said, “And where are you on your way to in such a huff?”
“To kick some butt!” I didn’t like the anger in my voice. I didn’t like that Joyce could hear the anger, too.
Joyce Lynn Summerton was in my Monday, Wednesday and Friday ten o’clock. I looked at her hair, eyes and mouth. Her complexion had a slight glow from the chill in the air. There was something in her shoulder bag. I shifted my books and notebook to my other hand.
More calmly I said, “You don’t make it to any of our parties anymore.”
“Not like I use to,” she said. “Some of the fraternity brothers get too rowdy for me.”
“Me too.”
We stood in silence for a moment. Her gloved right hand came up and squeezed her coat together at her throat even though her muffler must have kept out the chilly air. She smiled at me and then looked away.
“I’m headed back to the dorms to sit in front of the boob tube,” she said. “On a Friday night. Do you believe it? I just made a run for some popcorn to pop.”
I nodded and smiled.
“Well,” she said, “have to slide.”
“Joyce?”
She turned back to me.
I said, “Do you think I could come up and watch some TV with you?”
“In my room?”
“I’ll go whenever you want me to.”
“Frank, I don’t know.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
“A boyfriend?” She laughed. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
There was a display window near us. Several mannequins in swim suits were posing on a sunny beach. Joyce was looking at the display window. She put her gloved hands in the pockets of her coat and then looked at me and said, “I’ll have to sign you in.”
We started walking for the dorms.
“So,” she said, “how’ve you been?”
“Great.”
The End
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Short Story Ideas That Work
Flash Fiction Means Never Saying You’re Sorry
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Do You Read Like A Writer?
When I read Hemingway, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald or John O’Hara I read to learn. Or I should say, first I read for entertainment and then I re-read to learn. I read the work of these authors over and over again. I’ve read many other writers, too; but I come back to the work of these writers because their work is the standard that I measure my own writing against.
You no doubt have your own favorite writers. Use them to measure your work against. Writing better means reading better, reading to learn.
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What’s Your Philosophy Of Writing?
Do you really want your writing to be unique? If you do, what is your philosophy of writing? If you don’t have one, let me suggest that you figure out a personal philosophy of writing. If you cannot state in a few sentences your philosophy of writing you probably are not projecting a consistent literary style. And if you don’t have a consistent literary style, your writing will not seem unique to a reading audience.
I write flash fiction the way I do because I try to adhere to a conscious literary philosophy.
Compressionism is the use of words to paint a picture that tells a story.
What is your philosophy of writing?
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Once again, let me encourage you to use your life as a source of inspiration for your flash fiction, micro fiction, mini fiction, postcard fiction, very short stories, short shorts and hint fiction.
Of course you can make things up but if you use your imagination your personal life is a wealth of raw material to form into short stories by your imaginative fire. Find the many small and large significant events in your life. Then just let flash fiction give these events form.
A flash fiction story captures a significant moment in time. A flash fiction story is a significant event with closure. Closure can point to a change in direction, a summation or a realization. The basic form of all short stories is the setup, the buildup and the resolution.
Here are a few links that may help you out.
Short Story Ideas That Work
Creative Writing and The Short Short Story
Ideas for Creative Writing
What’s Your Fiction Writing Style?
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