The Secret to Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a great way to craft a story without it becoming so daunting that you spend most of the time procrastinating. At Watford Writers, our Flash Fiction competitions are around 300 words, but other groups and competitions will define it somewhere between 50 - 1000. We have a competition about once a month, so I've had some practice now at this form of art.

The ones that tend to win have:

• Immediacy (we know where we are and who we are with within in the first sentence or two - and we aren't confused by too many characters or settings)
• A subtle twist (but pandering to a punchline at the expense of good writing and solid grammar will lose you marks)
• Every word working for the author (including a carefully considered title)

This month I won third prize in on the theme of REVENGE. Congratulations to Cynthia and Steve who came first and second. My entry is below.

For some extreme flash fiction (140 characters to be precise), get involved in #1lineWed on Twitter.

 

A Close Shave

“Are you wearing false eyebrows?” Charlotte asked, squinting at me.

“No.” I raised the menu higher. She nudged it down with her index finger.

“You are!”

I said nothing.

“Why on earth are you wearing them?”

I sighed, shielding my face but being careful not to dislodge the eyebrows. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m listening.” She leant back, laying her menu down on her plate.

I felt my face redden. “Well, I was giving John a trim, you know, with the clippers.”

“And you accidentally shaved your own eyebrows off?”

“No!” I shot her a look.

“Sorry. Carry on.”

“I didn’t realize the guard wasn’t on, and took a really closely shaven strip out of the back of his head.”

Her mouth formed an ‘o’. “Was he mad?”

I shrugged. “Quite possibly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t know how to tell him, so I just pretended everything was normal.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And then nothing happened, he went to work and nothing. Came home – nothing.”

“No-one noticed?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Until…?”

“Until I looked in the mirror yesterday morning and I had no eyebrows.”

“Oh my God! He shaved them off?”

I nodded.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. He had already gone to work. So I bought these and let him wonder how I had miraculously grown my eyebrows back during the course of one day.”

“Oh dear. You two are a right pair.”

I raised a false eyebrow and shrugged, thinking about the permanent marker I had picked up from the stationary cupboard at work. I leaned back, took a sip of wine and plotted my next move.

When is it time to stop re-drafting and move on?

Today I got a reply from a literary agent to a submission of KEPT.

Not quite her thing, she said. (Heart sinks).

BUT she'd be interested to read the psychological thriller I mentioned I was developing in my notebook.

Heart leaps! Then I realise that this means I actually need to write the damn thing. It means leaving behind the novel I have toiled over for the last five years and moving on before I've seen it grow up in the world.

It got me thinking: when is the right time to move on?

Most authors become better writers over time. Some people believe it's a gift, but you only have to read the early work of Curtis Sittenfeld to see how she developed from Prep to American Wife. Better writing comes with practice. Editing is a different kind of discipline.

That's not to say that we should abandon our first work completely. But we should not let our emotional attachment to it hold us back. Even if it does not get picked up ever, it is not wasted, because every sentence written took us forward to becoming better writers. It may not be the first novel that catches the agents attention. In July 2015, Harper Lee published her second novel Go Set a Watchman, which was written before To Kill a Mockingbird.

There are many more literary agents I could (coulda shoulda woulda...) contact, but I also see the value in coming back to editing with a more critical eye from practicing.