Woman As Art
Explanation, better known as exposition, is a useful and necessary device in every flash fiction writer’s tool box. What you don’t want to do is to explain too much. When you explain too much, what you are really doing is spoon-feeding the reader.
And that’s no fun for the reader.
Flash fiction is so short that you need the story to be fun for the reader, because the reader has to help you complete the story. And to get the reader to help you complete the story, you have to make reading the story fun.
How do you make reading the story fun?
One way is to make the story a stream of revelation. Which means the less you have to explain the better. And this means you present much of the story in real-time. You the writer must use all your skills to paint a moving picture that tells the story. Concentrate on what your characters say and do.
Reader of novels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If the moving picture that you create engages the imagination of your reader, he or she will complete the story, adding all the necessary things that you had to imply. Revelation lets the reader “discovery” what is going on.
This is why in the writing of the flash fiction story, revelation is usually, not always, but usually better than explanation.
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Memory
The writer listened
He heard voices calling him
He wrote them all down
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Be sure to check the front page for the latest updates. The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is an online magazine of serious writing and brazen sexuality. This is the Old Soldier reporting from Pittsburgh.
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Creative Writing: Ways To Recharge Your Imagination
I’s the Old Soldier here with another issue of the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, the most fun reading you can find in a publication that deals with flash fiction.
How’s everyone doing?
It’s around noon in Pittsburgh. The high will be 85 on a lovely, sunny day. I haven’t been out yet. I want to get this post up first. So far I’ve had three cans of beer, a fish sandwich with lots of hot sauce and I’ve watched Face The Nation and some other Sunday news show on television about the 2012 American presidential election, the Euro crisis and Facebook’s IPO (Initial Public Offering).
underword: flash fiction (Photo credit: piglicker)
What does any of this have to do with writing flash fiction?
Well, a flash fiction writer does not live in a vacuum. So, it has a lot to do with writing flash fiction. But a writer’s personal life (family, friends, job, school and significant other) has even more to do with his or her flash fiction.
The Old Soldier would like to leave you with this: live your life to the fullest. That’s the best way to recharge your creative batteries. That way, you’ll have something to write about.
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The discouraged Nenene suffering from writer’s block continues to lament the disappearance of Yomiko (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here’s another way to recharge your creative writing batteries. Click the follow button or take out a free subscription to the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette. This publication is definitely not for everyone. There’s too much sex. But it might be just right for you.
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