Writers: People Who Need People

Posted on March 23, 2013 by pittsburghflashfictiongazette
Richard S. Caliguiri City of Pittsburgh Great Race

Richard S. Caliguiri City of Pittsburgh Great Race (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s a lovely spring day in the City of Pittsburgh.  The Old Soldier went for a nice walk to visit his brother.  It was sunny and mild, around 42 degrees.

My brother lives in an assisted-living facility.  I’m five years older than he is and every time I visit him I realize how lucky I am to have my health.  He has over $15,000 in the bank because he doesn’t do anything or go anywhere and the money keeps building up.  He has few visitors.

He was happy to see me.

*****

People Who Need People

Then I marched back home, turned on the radio, put some vanilla cookies with creme in the middle on the low table next to the sofa and took up my favorite position: on my back on the sofa with two fat pillows under my weary head.

Phipps conservatory in Pittsburgh

Phipps conservatory in Pittsburgh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Outside, the sun was still shinning and I started to read my new book from the library, The Soldier Kings, The House Of Hohenzollern by Walter Henry Nelson.

The Old Soldier was all caught up in the book when “People” by Barbara Streisand floated over from the radio.  I haven’t heard that song in years.

One line of the song goes, “People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world.”

It just made me think of how we writers would be lost without our readers.

*****

This blog is about flash fiction, serious writing and brazen sexuality.

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Flash Fiction And The Element Of Time

Posted on October 16, 2012 by pittsburghflashfictiongazette

 

Woman As Art

No, this post is not about Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.  It is about the passage of time in the flash fiction short story.

Time slows down in the best flash fiction stories.  That’s because the writer wants to capture those few moments when something significant is about to happen, is happening or has just happened.

The “happening” is the significant event of the story, and without it the story has no reason for being.

And the significant event should be played out in “minutes.”  Not hours.  Not days and certainly not weeks, but in minutes.

Sure, there are always exceptions to every rule; but the more time your story tries to cover, the more it will read like an essay. 

English: Albert Einstein, official 1921 Nobel ...

English: Albert Einstein, official 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics photograph. Français : Albert Einstein, photographie officielle du Prix Nobel de Physique 1921. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A time frame of minutes is usually the best way to present your story.  Oh, you can divide your story let’s say into one or two blocks of minutes, but minutes are the best.  If your story is, let’s say, 1,500 words long (and it covers several hours or days) it could probably support three or four blocks of minutes.  If it’s 600 words long, one or two blocks will probably be enough.

If you divide your 200-word story into more than two blocks of minutes, the story will probably start to fragment.  You want the story to feel like a whole. 

(The Old Soldier hopes he’s not confusing you.  We will cover time in the flash fiction story again.)

Keep reading and keep writing that flash fiction.

*****

The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is an online magazine of serious writing and brazen sexuality.

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Writers, Don’t Make This Fatal Submission Mistake

Posted on September 21, 2012 by pittsburghflashfictiongazette

Woman As Art

This is the Old Soldier with another insight on how to write flash fiction and on how to get published (and paid) in the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette.  The readership of the PFFG continues to grow.  As of this morning, the magazine is averaging 664 hits every day for this month.

And as the readership grows so does the number of flash fiction submissions.

The Old Soldier is beginning to see a pattern in the submissions.  The #1 reason for rejection is that the writer tries to cover too much time in his or her story.  When this happens, a flash fiction story becomes one paragraph after the other of summation.  The story reads like an essay.  It’s all exposition.

The way to avoid this mistake is to have the action of your story take place over a period of minutes or hours at most.  Not days, weeks, months or years.

Of course, there are exceptions to this suggestion; but that’s exactly what they are: exceptions.  Don’t think that your story will be the exception.  The odds are against you.

take flight

take flight (Photo credit: Pedro Moura Pinheiro)

So, for the best chance of being accepted for publication (and for being paid) in the most exciting flash fiction magazine on the Internet, have the action in your story take place in an hour or two.

If it takes place in a few minutes, that’s even better.

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