by
Christopher Savio
I have to admit that when given the theme
of this blog I had to look up flash fiction.
Maybe I have my head so buried in the books I read, writing and
marketing that it passed me by. Perhaps
I am just out of the loop? Whatever the
case, upon finding out I have quickly grown a deep
respect for it.
As an author I know how hard it is to get
just the right word on the page. Many of
us live by the notion that we should use one word where others may use two or
three. When painting a picture within the reader's mind, we must be complete, yet concise. Only a few authors can get away with overdrawn descriptions. Not everyone is Steinbeck and able describe how brown the corn was in the 1930's setting of The Grapes of Wrath. With all due respect to one of the all time greats, that doesn’t work for every author or every reader. That being said, enter flash fiction. A genre where one has not only to tell the detail but develop the story in less than one thousand words or less. Some people ask me how I can write a book of 90,000 words, and most authors can accomplish that with ease, What would be hard for me would be to write a short story.
Even though, I would find it difficult to
write a short, but complete, story, I truly feel that flash fiction can be
an incredibly important tool for any author.
In the name of making one’s writing more concise, I feel that if each
scene in a book were to be written as a series of flash fiction stories that
linked together, the end result would be an incredibly fast paced and engaging
book. After all, we all know that some
authors (not trying to be critical simply stating
what we all know) can drone on and kill a scene because they lack sufficient
brevity.
I hesitate to use one of my favorites as an example, but Stephen King has been criticized for his most recent release of 11/22/63. I personally loved the book, but when his character falls in love with a fellow school teacher in Jodie Texas it seemed to be a never-ending two or three hundred page act. If flash fiction had been employed here, the act would have been trimmed down (but then again who am I to judge? He’s sold millions of books and I haven’t. Yet!).
I hesitate to use one of my favorites as an example, but Stephen King has been criticized for his most recent release of 11/22/63. I personally loved the book, but when his character falls in love with a fellow school teacher in Jodie Texas it seemed to be a never-ending two or three hundred page act. If flash fiction had been employed here, the act would have been trimmed down (but then again who am I to judge? He’s sold millions of books and I haven’t. Yet!).
Looking at The Daguerreotypist I feel
that taking elements of my book and making a series of flash fiction could be interesting. My favorite scenes were those that dealt with Isaiah Whitfield and The Devil. I made The Devil less scary on a physical
level and brought it to more of an emotional level.
The Devil likes to play mind games with my antagonist (I got a chuckle out of the scenes as I wrote). Taking these two characters, Isaiah Whitfield and The Devil, out of the book and creating a piece of fiction story with them could be a very interesting enterprise.
Imagine the stories one can come up with involving a paranoid serial killer lamenting his choices in life and a character who has the power to mess with the other’s mind! They would make very dark and entertaining short-stories.
The Devil likes to play mind games with my antagonist (I got a chuckle out of the scenes as I wrote). Taking these two characters, Isaiah Whitfield and The Devil, out of the book and creating a piece of fiction story with them could be a very interesting enterprise.
Imagine the stories one can come up with involving a paranoid serial killer lamenting his choices in life and a character who has the power to mess with the other’s mind! They would make very dark and entertaining short-stories.
