The Protagonist’s Character Arc

 

In the past couple of years, as if in apology for his failure to pass the bar exam, Todd had become a surprisingly talented cook. Tonight he’d grilled salmon, and it was done to perfection, a vivid tic-tac-toe board of grill marks seared into the flesh of each moist, flaky fillet. He beamed as the compliments poured in.

“This is delicious,” said Sarah.

“You could start a restaurant,” said Richard. “House of Todd.”

“Your wine is terrific,” Todd replied.

“Speaking of wine…” Richard raised his glass. “Here’s to the chef, and to his lovely wife. Salud.”

There was a slightly awkward pause after the toast, a moment of collective floundering they masked with tentative, encouraging smiles. Kathy was about to fill the space by asking Richard if it might be possible for her to film some of his meetings with the Charlie Chopsticks executives. For too long, she’d put off planning a new project, on the assumption that Todd would pass the bar and find a good job, freeing her to take a break for a couple of years, spend a little more time with Aaron, maybe have another baby. But recently she’d come to accept the possibility that it might not happen, and it had occurred to her that it might be fun to do some kind of comic documentary, something lighthearted but socially engaged, a little hipper and edgier than her current project. The creation of a nationwide chain of Chinese restaurants by a bunch of clueless white guys seemed like just the sort of vehicle she was looking for, a way to shine an amusing light on what was actually a troubling phenomenon: the voracious march of American business, its insatiable need to devour everything in its path— other people’s history, their cuisine, their ethnic identities and cultural traditions— and then spit it back out as bland commodities for sale to middle America. But she needed to be diplomatic, to figure out a way not to tip her satirical hand, and while she was pondering her strategy, Richard shifted the conversation in an entirely different direction.

—Little Children by Tom Perrotta

 

Welcome to week one of the “Novel I Workshop: Creating Unforgettable Characters.” Thank you for joining us! This week, we will focus on the protagonist.

In the above film clip and the corresponding text from Tom Perrotta’s novel, Little Children, the viewer and reader are introduced to Todd, one of the protagonists. This work is an ensemble work and weaves multiple sub narratives throughout the overall novel arc. Todd has his own narrative. His wife, Kathy, has her own narrative. Sarah, his lover, and her husband, Richard, all have their own narratives, internal conflicts and arcs. There are several more characters who have their own narratives. Of course, any great novel or short story will include essential characters who have their own internal conflicts, but many narratives will point to one particular character as the obvious protagonist and focus character. In Little Children, one might call Todd the leading protagonist and Sarah the second protagonist with both Kathy and Richard their antagonists. Ask yourself how deeply you dig into each individual character? Do they each have their own internal conflicts and narrative arcs?

Before we explore this idea of protagonist further, let’s review some very wise words offered by Kurt Vonnegut on the art of creating character.

 

Be a Sadist

Kurt_Vonnegut_by_magnetic_eye“Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” (Kurt Vonnegut on Writing)

When we write fictional narrative, especially in our first drafts, we are often so caught up into the world of it, the massive and changing aspects of this world and its relationships, that we cannot focus on one character at a time, not even our protagonists. This is a natural and necessary part of the first drafting phase. However, we must not stop there. We must, at some point in the revision process, focus on one character at a time so to better know the character. We all know this, but we don’t always do it to the level our characters deserve.

In this course we will not be focusing on the overall narrative arc of your book. We have other workshops with that focus. In this workshop, we don’t want a synopsis or an explanation of the book. We don’t want your paraphrased descriptions as to why your character is important. You are going to prove this in schematic mapping and narrative focus writing.

The best way to critically and objectively view our characters is to try and remove ourselves from them while also digging into them. One of the best ways to do this is through analysis, mapping, tracking and coding our character within the narrative. With the following craft techniques, we want your characters to speak only for themselves. If each of the three characters in this course focus—protagonist, antagonist and one supporting character—cannot hold interest on their own, without the support of the fuller setting and narrative behind them, then they are not working hard enough. In this course, we will use character specific and focused schematic and narrative studies to more fully discover your characters outside the immediate context of your novel. 

 

The Golden Rule

If at anytime you feel you must explain your character to us as an introduction to your assignment submission, then your character’s narrative details are not working hard enough and/or they are not accessible enough on the page. Do not attempt to explain or describe your characters as introduction to your schematic and narrative assignment submissions. Do not attempt to explain or describe your overall book project as a way to help us understand your character. Just complete the assignments as given—this is a proven and successful method, promise—and give your characters all the information they need within the specific assignment parameters so that we will connect with them. In this course, our characters speak for themselves. You, the writer, are merely their bard. You must get out of their way. 

NOTE: Some writers will initially have difficulty with this “getting out of the way” of their characters and letting their characters’ needs come first. Some writers will want the workshop instructor to provide more immediate, step by step “fixes” for their characters, manuscripts and craft in general, but the reality is that there is no quick fix or “answer” to great writing. It is hours, days, weeks, months, years in the chair and writing story after story then cutting the stories up and rewriting them again. You may find the schematic exercises to be difficult and/or uncomfortable. There is a primary reason why this happens. Writers are by nature right-brained thinkers, and so using the left brain/logical as a primary means toward exploration and research can be disconcerting, especially at the beginning. When you learn to employ both the right and left processes in rewriting and revision, great things will happen to your stories. Please work your way through these first steps, even if they are painful, and trust that this method is not only successful, it has time and again, turned skeptics of schematic processing into practitioners of schematic processing. 

Flannery O’Connor is infamous for having made statements about not being able to teach good writing to other writers. She was right in one respect: a successful writer and teacher cannot teach great writing to other writers, but the successful writer and teacher can help support writers in teaching themselves the nooks and crannies of their own organic voices. When writers are willing to do the hard work of writing, rewriting, revision and schematic exploration and are willing to receive honest and pointed feedback then start the rewrite and revision process over again, writers can teach themselves to be excellent writers. 

I will be reading and giving direct feedback on both schematic and narrative submissions. Be warned. I will be honest and pointed, but always with your characters’ best interests in minds, which also means I will always have the development of your craft and best interest of craft in mind as well. I will point out the successes as well as areas for further exploration. 

 

Interviews & Background Checks

Say you had an important job for someone to do and you must hire someone new to do this important job. Would you hire just anyone? Would you grab some stranger off the street and give him or her a look over, identify hair color, eye color, a few gestures or habits then offer this person your important job?

No. You would not. You would do background checks, interviews, perhaps even tests and then after they’ve been on the job a few days, weeks, months… you would touch base and observe, identify whether this person is still a good fit or needs to go. If this person is a good fit, you’d not try to do his or her job. You would give this person the room he or she needs to shine. And you would support this person from your appropriate position.

Our characters are no different. You must interview them, hang out with them, observe them, analyze their performances, go to dinner with them, drink with them, share intimacies with them, ask the intimate questions to which they don’t want you to know the answers. And you must do it all again and again. The first few drafts of a story are merely first dates, initial interviews. When you think you know them, you do it again. If you find, after writing this character and interviewing this character and interviewing this character again, that the character is worthy of his or her position, then you let the character tell you how he or she wants to do the his or her job within the overall story. To ascertain what this job is, you must pull out of the overall manuscript a bit, hold it lightly in your mind, while you schematically dissect the details of the character.

 

On the Proper Relationship with Your Character

In literary fiction, there is no room for writers to have proper and polite relationships with their characters. Literary fiction is not nice. Literary writers are not nice. They are honest and detailed and never gratuitous. Sex and violence must be earned and must be perfect. Essential. You need to know your characters’ dirty secrets and how far they are willing to go to realize their goals.

Remember: In getting to know our characters, we aren’t looking to fill our expectations of what we think our characters must be, but rather, we are looking to discover our characters for what they are. And don’t be mislead. Just because you’ve given your characters birth, does not mean you know them. Your characters are hiding secrets and you must dig. Each decision you make about your character plants seeds for further secrets you have not yet discovered. As much as we think we drive this character development, at some point, your characters will be in the drivers’ seats and this is when you know your characters are moving from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.

In this lesson, we’ll focus on your protagonist and bringing your protagonist to a fully three-dimensional realization. 

You may likely feel you’ve already investigated your character to ad nauseam. And hopefully you have. However, you have not yet explored the character with group feedback or enough feedback, which is why you are here. It’s time to make your protagonist earn his or her keep within your book. Consider this your protagonist’s coming out party. And we are the firing squad, the mentors and the cheerleaders. We are going to make your protagonist work harder than you ever thought he or she could!

 

What is a Protagonist?

As writers, we already know this definition, but we’ll review it quickly here for academic’s sake. The classic definition of a protagonist is the character who is the focus of the overall narrative and undergoes the most significant change. A literary protagonist is rarely ever considered to be morally “good.” Literary protagonists are complicated and will often challenge the reader’s concept of “good” and “bad.” Keep in mind that the best literary protagonists are usually also his or her own antagonists to some degree—i.e. person versus self internal conflict.

You might have more than one protagonist, such as in Tom Perrotta’s novel, Little Children. In the below film excerpt, Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), navigate an uncomfortable dinner with their spouses. As you watch this scene, consider your own curiosity about these characters. It is this curiosity that drives the narrative and dramatic tension. We will be looking for opportunities of this within your character arcs.

 

Some Great Literary Characters

Do any of these characters look familiar? As you complete this week’s assignments, consider how some of these familiar characters would compare to your character’s attributes. Some of these characters are obvious protagonists. Some are not. Some are a mix of protagonist and antagonist, such as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Patrick Bateman falls into a special breed of character. He both embodies decorum and rails against it. He is a walking irony, a satire of modern decadence. This makes him a ripe character for study and we will focus on him in next week’s lesson.

 

Writing Assignments

Below are two assignments. One is a schematic exploration and the other is a narrative exploration. This is a system for character revision that I have developed and have used in my own revision processes. It includes many revision strategies I’ve been taught by other, more accomplished writers than myself, but with some twists and combinations of my own that I’ve found to be helpful. It includes a revised Freytag’s Pyramid and a character questionnaire that will help you track and analyze the character. 

Suggested Reading: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French. 

By considering your character in both schematic and narrative forms, separate from the context of your novel, you will begin to flesh out your character’s individual motivations, details, strengths and needs. Much of what you discover about your character through this exercise might never be written on the pages of your novel, but all of it will add to the complexities of the character arc overall. Or, you may find that you will have developed an excellent additional scene or chapter for the longer work. You might have a new short story. Eventually, when your novel is picked up by a publishing house, these character studies can make excellent spin off stories to send to indie editors, who will be helpful in getting the word out on your book.

I cannot stress enough that the schematic character arc should never be the starting point for any character. Characters should birth from messy, narrative first drafts. Overly structured or outlined birthing of characters will too often truncate characters. Begin with messy first draft(s) then once you have the messy and beautiful creature in front of you—a novel or short story you plan to expand into novel—start analyzing the protagonist via the below system. You’ll see that this system can be practiced on your own, and perhaps you have done this already in some form. This workshop experience, however, will give you group feedback in a multi-tier approach or what I like to call the triad approach—protagonist, antagonist, main supporting character—in a progressive character interaction. 

For this lesson, we will focus on the protagonist, probably the most developed character in your story to date, but I encourage you to use this pyramidal structure for each of your main characters as you revise your work over the next months/years. You will not only flesh out details, you will build visual profiles and create a character scrapbook. You will be amazed at how much clarity you will gain from this repeated character exercise. The magic of it lies in the isolation of the characters. As much as we want to believe we know our characters, until we’ve isolated a character and analyzed the character, our knowledge is blurry at best.

This is a patient process. Give your character arcs time to develop, revise and marinate. This single character focus is the heart of an excellent literary narrative.

*Don’t forget: Sometimes our settings and/or iconic items want to be treated as characters, too. Not always, but sometimes. Keep your eye open for this.

The below character arc exercise will force you to schematically study your character. You will recall details you’ve already written and you will consider details that maybe you’ve held lightly in your mind but not actually put to paper. In this exercise, you will be forced to actualize your character on and off the page so to isolate and deepen his or her character arc. Complete the following exercise by clicking on the NEXT button and completing each prompt. After you are done, the schematic will be emailed to you. Please add this emailed information at the end of your “Assignment 2: Narrative Exploration.” 

 

Assignment 1: Schematics

 

Assignment 2: Narrative Exploration

Now that you have explored your character schematically and individually, aside from whatever intention the longer work may have had for the character, you are ready to flesh your character out in his or her own narrative. Write a 1000 word scene or flash fiction about your character. You might center this short short narrative on one of the schematic arc details—i.e. worst or best night. This story must not already be part of the written words in your longer work. This must be new, whether or not you’ve already been thinking on this event in your character’s history.

You might find that this character narrative will become part of the longer work, or you may find it will not. Either way, writing this character narrative is essential to knowing your character better in narrative form, and this will help you write your character with more feeling and interest in the longer work. 1000 words. This word count is firm. Please copy and paste your Schematic Arc at the end of this Narrative Exploration. Both Assignment 1 and 2 should be submitted by the following Sunday, below in the forums, as one MS Word document.

 

Guidelines

  • Due Date: The following Sunday, 6 pm. 
  • Submit to below forum.
  • Character Arc Schematic Submission: Please submit your character arc, along with your writing assignment, to the forums as one document
  • Narrative Submission: 1000 words or less. (The schematic is separate and does not count in this word count). The narrative word count is firm. This is  not only a practice in characterization but also in precision and brevity, the soul of good writing. If you are usually a “wordy” writer and haven’t had a lot of experience with short short forms or flash fiction, this exercise is going to do wonders for your overall craft. Promise. MS Word format, double-spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman, 1 in margins, heading with name, address, email, website (if applicable), and phone number on page one. Page two and forward should have in the top right corner your last name and page number. You can use this template: Universal Manuscript Format. Follow first, second and third draft techniques below. After you’ve completed revision, please submit to the forums. Link below.
  • First Draft: As you write the first draft, let your creativity go where it needs to go. First drafts are meant to be messy and creatively uninhibited. After writing the first draft, lay it to the side for at least a day before revising. Please submit the finished third draft to the forums. Link below.
  • Second Draft: Read through again, and revise for language and lyricism. Remember, we don’t answer questions for our readers, we simply prompt them to ask good questions. Giving our readers room to make meaning for themselves within our narratives is a sign of artistic literary excellence. Now, lay the work aside for at least a day before your next revision.
  • Third Draft: Now read this revision aloud as you record yourself. Upon listening to your recording, consider any language issues in your revision. You might also ask a trusted reader to read the manuscript aloud to you as you sit with your own copy and make revisions. Hearing our language aloud is one of the quickest and surest ways to improve our pacing, tone, and cadence.
  • Please make sure to contact me directly with any questions regarding assignments and technology. The fastest way to get ahold of me is by text to 301-514-2380. 

 

Discussion

In the comments section below, briefly introduce yourself and describe one of your favorite protagonists. Feel free to discuss and have fun with this. At some point in time, you might find it helpful to create a schematic arc and 1000 word narrative for your favorite protagonist for your own critical study and comparison’s to your own protagonists.

 

Forum

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Labeling, Mapping and Coding

Welcome back! This week, we are going to analyze the entire narrative, to date, and critically consider how the multiple settings work together in the overall “setting arc.” This week, our work will be organizational and critical, almost mathematic. Previous to this point, we have been in a generative state, the happy and messy process of creating the draft. Now, we are going to put on our analyst hats, and we’re going to use digital tools in order to “trick” our minds into viewing the narrative from an analytical and logical point of view.

We will be using Google Maps and MS Word to track, label and code the settings to date so that we can critically consider the characters’ movements, the seasons and landscapes, how the setting supports the characterization and how the setting might complete a cyclical course throughout the narrative. Each step in this process can take as little or as much organizational time as you are willing to give it. For writers who thirst for left brain processes within the primarily right brain craft of writing, this week’s activities might very well give you the moment of “aha” you’ve been waiting for. For writers who avoid left brain activities, do not fret. This process is a step by step set of tools that will guide you through the nasty business of analysis and make it comfortable for even the most devoutly right-brained. Give it a chance, you might find this to be your editorial best friend.

 

Labeling the Settings: MS Word

Open your narrative in MS Word and complete the following:

  • Locate the Styles feature in MS Word to create custom headings for your settings.Styles
  • Give each chapter heading in your narrative, a “Heading 1” style. Here is a quick help tutorial on Style Basics in Word.
  • Find the first “place” in the narrative where a setting is described in detail. Create an extra space before this paragraph and give the setting a short title. Make sure to give each setting title a month and a year as well.
  • Give this setting title a “heading 2” style format.
  • Now, continue through the narrative and title each new setting. When the setting cycles back to a previous setting, title this too. You are going to “track” the setting as it moves through the manuscript.
  • When all your narrative settings have been titled/labeled and given a “heading 2” style, open the MS Word doc in “outline form.” Click VIEW/OUTLINE. Tutorial: Use Outline View to Manage Headings and Arrange Text.
  • Open the “sidebar” in the “document map pane” view. Set the “outline tools” to Level 2. You should see a list of chapter titles and setting titles in both the sidebar and the main view screens. You are going to use this lit to not only create your Narrative Setting Map, but also to critically consider your settings and who they flow through the narrative.

 

Mapping the Settings: Google Maps

Use the above link to access Google Maps and complete the following:

  • Create a custom Google map and label it as your narrative title. Set the Google map to show “terrain.”
  • Create pins for each of your setting locations in the narrative.
  • Create travel directions for any trips and travel the characters take.
  • Save this custom Google map to your Google account and copy the map’s site url. Paste this url into the cover page of your narrative or in the header below the page number for quick and easy access to your setting map. Use this map to not only quickly scout areas and local businesses, use it to view the landscape, study the movements of the characters, get a feel for how the setting flows through the narrative.  You can export a pdf of your map, share your map and embed your map. Export a copy of the map either by pdf or screenshot. You are going to submit this map as part of your assignment this week.

 

Coding the Settings: MS Word

Return to your narrative’s MS Word “outline view. Complete the following:

  • Now, you are going to color code the seasons and settings of the narrative. First, identify the season of the opening. If your narrative opens during the fall, you’ll color all the text orange, for autumn, until the narrative moves into winter then you will color all of that text as blue. This color coding will quickly and easily remind you to pay attention to the landscapes as you continue to revise the narrative. Additionally, when you move sections around during your revision, you’ll quickly identify when a spring section has been moved into the autumn section and make the necessary adjustments to place, air temperature, landscape, etc. The following color code is a good one, as it follows conventional assumptions of seasons and will quickly trigger your analyst brain to tap into the season and landscape in each section of the narrative: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer. It is suggested that you keep the color coding and setting labels throughout the revision process as they will make any revisions easier to track.
  • While keeping the Google map handy for reference and critical consideration, study the outline of your settings. How does the ending point reflect the origin point? How do the characters cycle back through the settings? Look up images of the settings at particular seasons you’ve written them. For instance, if you wrote a winter scene in New York, find a Google image of a New York street scene in December. Don’t underestimate the power of actually visualizing the world in which your characters live.
  • Ask if the characters have explored the local surroundings of each individual setting? How do the seasons reflect the character arcs and motivations in either parallel or ironic ways? For instance, do the protagonist and antagonist get into their most “heated” fight during the winter? By isolating the seasonal analysis, you can focus on the layers of the narrative and it’s settings, allowing you to subtly weave and marinate. Your reader may not pick up on all the subtle relationships, in isolation, but your reader will sense the craft and workings and how it affects the overall narrative.
  • As you consider the settings in “outline view,” you can click on the setting titles and open the text and read each section in isolation. As you do this, consider how each of the settings reflect the characters and motivations of the narrative? What can be added and cut in order to give the setting a narrative of its own, within the larger narrative? Use this isolation and outline view to give the setting an arc. For example: in Beloved, the characters travel a great distance from Sweet Home, Kentucky, to 124 Bluestone Road just outside Cincinnati. If a reader were to track Sethe and Paul D’s travels, s/he could Google Kentucky plantations and find one in London, Kentucky. Then s/he could Google Cincinnati farmhouses for sale—built before 1900, land, 1 bath—and find a home and address to map. The reader would know that the walk from London, Kentucky to Cincinnati would be about 170 miles and would take about 60 hours. The reader could actually view the terrain, as it is now, through Google’s Earth map. Submit a screenshot of your narrative’s Google Earth Map along with your MS Word Outline View to the forum below.
  • Beloved Google Map

 

Guidelines, Submissions & Formatting

  • Due Date: Sunday, 6 pm.
  • Submission Link: Submit to the forum below. (You must add at least a short note in the body of the forum in order to upload your attachment.)
  • Submission Format: Attach an MS Word document in Universal Manuscript Format with the following format. Double-spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman, 1 in margins, heading with name, address, email, website (if applicable), and phone number on page one. Page two and forward should have in the top right corner your last name and page number. 
  • Please make sure to contact me directly with any questions regarding assignments and technology. 

 

Forum

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Defining Short Short Fiction and Narrative Flash with Meg Pokrass

Flash fiction or narrative flash is usually fiction that falls under 1000 words. You may have heard it called “micro” or “sudden” when under 500 words or less. Flash can be six words, like Hemingway’s “For sale…,” or a much larger word count, like some of the flash links below, but more importantly, short short fiction should be compressed until every word counts. 

I do not mean take necessary components of your story away, such as details, like a vignette. A vignette is a smaller excerpt of a larger story, a cropping of a much bigger picture. Sometimes, so much is removed from a vignette, that the reader cannot ground themselves in the setting or connect emotionally with the characters. In flash fiction, the reader can see each necessary piece of the puzzle connect, from the hook to the “until” happens in the beginning. Or witness firsthand the ending section, the protagonist’s desires changing into the character’s actual change. Keep in mind: What the Protagonist wants is not always what he needs or receives in the end. Don’t make it easy for him either. 

“How will I do this?” You may ask. Easy…the middle of your flash, the thing that drives the reader to keep on reading, the conflict. But in short short fiction’s case―brevity is always key.

In this class, we will write wonderful stories that are vast in meaning, but we will squeeze every word and witness the power of small. You may have heard the old saying, “Less is more,” but never in your writing did you witness this beauty as in the perfectly completed flash fiction piece. I hope above I gave you the components to make a good go at it. I promise that I can make you discover the rare beauty in brevity in your writing.

Are you up for the challenge?

It will be difficult at first to “kill your darlings,” but I guarantee that keeping an open mind will open up great opportunities for discovery in your short short fiction. 

What Happens in Larger Works of Fiction as Opposed to Flash

The following Freytag’s [frī-täk] pyramid (below) illustrates what we consider to be a full narrative arc: exposition, inciting event, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution and denouement. Notice how the conflict in this pyramid focuses on the internal conflict of character vs. self. In literary fiction, the protagonist’s journey will root in this character vs. self inner conflict. You will have various other conflicts, yes: protagonist versus antagonist (external conflict) and many more, but in literary fiction, the main conflict will settle internally. We are not as interested in the external parameters, except in how these external conflicts further inform the internal conflict of character vs. self. A good example is to consider a literary story arc versus a formulaic story arc. In a literary arc, we are more interested in how the protagonist navigates situations and comes to terms, internally, emotionally, intellectually with these situations. In a formulaic arc, such as a romance arc, we end up following the he versus she arc in an externalized format including the “meet,” the “sex,” and the “breakup” or confirmation of relationship and so on. In a formulaic crime arc, we follow closely the “whodunit” paradigm, trying to figure the external conflict of one character versus another character, or rather, the detective versus the perpetrator, etc. In this course, we will focus on the internal conflict approach to writing character-based fiction.  

Also note, below, the “denouement.” The denouement is the “resonance” of the narrative. The ending resonance of the narrative should be planted prior to the ending resolution or last line of your narrative, so that when the reader comes to the last line, the reader is already sensing a cyclical resonance, or to put it another way, when the reader reads the last paragraph and especially the last line, he or she should already be thinking about a larger resonance of the overall narrative as well as the beginning and middle and several moments within the earlier narrative. The denouement, at one time, would be written into the end of the narrative, which was a form that basically handheld the reader and “made sure” the reader felt and considered particular, authorial intentions. Since the Modernists, the denouement has securely taken a reader-focused form, where the author is not force-feeding this resonance to the reader, but rather, more subtly suggesting and allowing the reader to come to his or her own denouement, which is arguably the more connective and artful form of denouement and resonance. This Modernist style as well as this sense of cyclical closure will create in your reader a denouement or resonance that encourages the reader to revisit earlier moments in your narrative, and perhaps will encourage the reader to read the work again while engaging personally. Essentially, you want your reader to want to read your narrative more than once. You also want your reader to invest personal experience, comparisons and so on, as he or she is reading more than once. This is, arguably, how particular narratives gain following. When a narrative encourages the reader to return to it again and again, while also encouraging the reader to feel as though they are comparing self to narrative, then you have a narrative that will be more connective, effective and lasting. In poetry and short short fiction, this inspiration to reread the narrative is essential. Truthfully, all short stories should be read more than once as a rule. Novels, too, but this is less followed with novels and short stories. Poetry and short short stories, however, are built on this expectation that a reader will read again and again so to ascertain more and more subtexts. 

In a longer short story, novella or novel, the pyramid or narrative arc will include all the setting, character and conflict details that provide the reader a fully encompassing experience.

So why, you may be asking, would someone read flash fiction?

Why would anyone read a form that leaves out some of these details, perhaps most of these details? There are many answers to this question, but the one I like best is that flash fiction when written well, precisely, with brevity and virtuosity, is as resonant as a perfectly formed poem, but it is prosaic, accessible, less built on metaphor than a poem, though, perhaps more so than a short story. The narrative voice is accessible and it forms frame, mood and tone, characters and conflict, but it is doing something that a longer work does not do as well. Flash fiction allows the reader a great deal of imaginative and exploratory room within the narrative. For readers who like room to explore within a narrative, room to stretch intellect and artistry, flash fiction can be a mental playground like no other prosaic form. As a writer of flash fiction, the key is giving just the right amount of strategic and precise detail to form this playground for the reader. Just as a child will become bored with a playground too familiar and full of rusty old equipment, or be overwhelmed with too much equipment, so can the reader. Finding the perfect balance will let the reader play and create and then return for more because this form is less about writers showing their geniuses and more about writers who can provide structure and room for their readers to exercise their own emotions and intellects. 

If I still haven’t convinced you, consider this. Even if you are a diehard long form writer, and you simply thought you’d try this flash thing everyone is talking about, imagine how much richer and complete your chapters and scenes will be when you approach them as little works all their own, within the larger context of the overall narrative frame. Writing and practicing flash fiction will make you more aware of your scene and chapter work within the larger work.

And for those of you who are already in love with the flash form. Welcome. Now, let’s stretch your talents and see if we can get you writing some new stories!

Reading Assignments

“Seven in the Morning,” by Max Ruback: http://www.smokelong.com/flash/4706.asp

“The Mime and His Dog,” by Steven Douglas Gullion: http://smokelong.com/flash/stevendouglasgullion22.asp

(More than one soft scene but discusses drawing a house for storytelling like our prompt for the week) “216 East Boalt,” by Jeannie Vanasco, http://www.smokelong.com/216-east-boalt/

Discussion Assignment | What Concerns You Most About Writing Short Short Fiction?

Below, in the Discussion and Comments area, describe your biggest concern about writing short short fiction. Perhaps it is the form altogether. Or maybe you are concerned about a particular craft area. What is your biggest concern? Take time to engage with your course peers and discuss your concerns. You may find you are not alone.

Writing Assignment | Small Spaces, Big Memories

Take a piece of scrap paper or napkin. Draw a dwelling on it with a pen or pencil (it could be your childhood home or an old place of work, but please keep it fictional for now). Take a moment to fill in the details: The individual rooms, the basic furniture layout, maybe a door or two for a closet, a bathroom. This shouldn’t take very long, just a rough sketch of the levels in the dwelling and a few walls and labels. Now pick a room in this dwelling (maybe one of the smaller rooms―if you want to stick with the Kafka theme). Now write a short short fiction about this room with the following formula to get you started: 

A. Protagonist of Your Choosing

+ B. Antagonist the Protagonist is Avoiding

= C. Odd Confrontation

This will be a one-setting narrative flash. You only have 500 words to play with for this first assignment. This lesson is to show me what you can do with the hints of flash construction I spoke about in my intro and the information you took away from the lecture on longer fiction versus flash fiction above. Guidelines are as follows (you do not have to submit the drawing. The drawing is what we workshop leaders/professors call a larger “prompt” to get you thinking about your compressed story). 

Will you be able to fit the deeper meaning of your setting into the smaller space? Will you be able to defamiliarize tired themes?