Flash Fic Friday

I love the concept of flash fiction; given a writing prompt and a variable amount of time, write a story. I've done it a few times (ok, twice!) and found it to be fun to write, funny to read, and sometimes pretty amazing.

My friend and fellow writer (I keep wondering if there are just a lot more writers than I might have thought, or if us weird, wordly types are just drawn to each other because it seems like I have a lot of writer friends) did some flash fiction the other week that I enjoyed, but while I'd meant to send her a prompt, I fell face-first into my own work and never quite got around to it.

Here's what she came up with; (content warning, contains strong language, sexual themes, gay themes)

Yesterday, when I was out to dinner, I was idly skimming through the beer menu and came across this:

The first thing you notice when pouring a glass of this seasonal beer is the color. Samuel Adams® Octoberfest has a rich, deep reddish amber hue which itself is reflective of the season. Samuel Adams Octoberfest masterfully blends together five roasts of malt to create a delicious harmony of sweet flavors including caramel and toffee. The malt is complimented by the elegant bitterness imparted by the Bavarian Noble hops. Samuel Adams Octoberfest provides a wonderful transition from the lighter beers of summer to the heartier brews of winter.

I promptly sent her a text; I found your beer!

I was, however, driving, so I didn't sample it. (The husband had a terrible couple days at work and he drank a Long Island Iced Tea that was making my eyes water from across the table!) But I am seriously tempted to go over to the Total Wine and get some. It sounds lovely; and I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never actually HAD any Sam Adams, despite being told it's one of the best American beers that exist. (I'm bigoted against American beer.)

Anyway...

Having started thinking about her flash fiction, I followed up with yet another text: Write me some flash fiction! Your prompt: airhorn, hockey stick, sushi, guttermouth. (Confession: I took those from four commercials on the radio, one from each commercial. Except for Tread Quarters, which was the "airhorn" one, I can't remember any of the commercials. Advertising semi-fail?)

She gave me a lovely little blurb, and then gave ME a prompt: phone, seashell, caramel, balloon. Tune in - hopefully later today - to see what I come up with (feel free to leave me additional prompts in the comments!). UPDATE! Here is my Flash Fiction...

I give you Liz's flash fic:

(Contains strong language, sexual themes)

Plotting, 101

So... now that I'm a "published writer" I've been dealing with a whole new world of weird. I'm sure that it's nothing different from what every new author has to go through. I mean, I don't feel any different - as a writer - than I did six months ago. I do what I do, when I do it. There's nothing any more or less magical coming out onto the page than there was last year. Just now, someone's paid me to do it. This apparently gives me some sort of fairy dust, and it seems like half the universe is trying to shake me up and get some for themselves.

Maybe I'm being unfair. I know my friends - and friends of friends, and neighbors of friends, and almost perfect strangers that someone passed my business card to - are excited.

But I'm no more the expert than I was. Nothing has changed. I know very little more about publishing than I did.

And I'm a terrible teacher. I discovered that years ago when I firmly decided that teaching high school English was not what I wanted to do with my life.

In the last few months since I've become "a published writer", I've been given several short stories, poems, incomplete manuscripts... "Just take a look..."

When?

I already am writing part-time, housekeeping part-time, being mom part time, trying to raid part time, and I'm beta-reading for a couple of friends already. Plus I have a huge stack of books that I want to read for pleasure.

I've done a couple of reads for people anyway. I never got thanked. They said nothing about my suggestions. This doesn't incline me to do it again.

And again, I'm not a good teacher. I'm not a writing coach.

Yesterday I spent some time with a newbie writer wanna be. (I say that because he hasn't actually written ANYTHING. He might be one step up on the circle of words than people who say causally at parties, "Oh, I've always wanted to write a book." Maybe. But in my view of the world, until you actually have written something. Anything. TO completion. You're not a writer.)

"I have a main character," he says. "And a BBEG -"

"A what?"

"Big Bad Evil Guy??" he says, like I should know this. Really? I usually call that person the antagonist. Or the villain.

"Ok."

"Now what?"

What do you mean, now what? I mean, maybe it's a legitimate question... it's not one that's ever occurred to me. But I've been writing stories for as long as I can remember, so maybe... back when I was eleven... it did, and I've forgotten...

"Well," I said, tapping my fingers against the desk, "What does your bad guy want?"

"I don't know."

"Then why is he bad?"

"Huh?"

"Plot is about conflict... " Hasn't this been covered in some basic high school English class? "You're telling me your story has a protagonist and an antagonist; that's a classic formula; man vs. man."

"Well, they're cats."

"Same thing..."

"No, it's not, they..."

"THE SAME THING for the purposes of PLOT DEVELOPMENT. Man vs. man. Cat vs. Cat. Character A vs. Character B. So the first thing I suppose you need to start with is defining the conflict. Why are they fighting? What does A have than B wants? Or what is B planning that A wants to foil?"

Long silence.

"I guess I need a new bad guy."

Like I said, I'm a bad teacher, but I fell over laughing at this point. How can you have an antagonist that doesn't want anything? Even if they're the evil dictator and they have everything in the world under their paw, they want something - to stay in power, to crush the rebellion, to marry the sweetheart of the hero... they have goals, desires, plot devices.

* at this point I'd like to say I'm exaggerating part of this conversation for effect, grabbing bits of other conversations I've had recently to emphasize, and that we got cut off from our chat at this point, so I wasn't actually able to give him any helpful advice.

The best advice I ever got on plot development didn't come from a Creative Writing class (I've taken three...) or another writer. It came from a gaming book; Storyteller's Guide to Vampire, the Masquerade, 2nd edition. It is, by far, my favorite gaming book. In addition to having more rules, nifty items for your characters and the typical stuff found in all role-playing books, this one included a couple chapters on HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR STORY.

That's all Roleplaying is; group story-telling. You have one person leading the events, and a bunch of other players reacting/acting/developing character... I highly recommend role-playing as a way to sharpen your writer's eye. Because while we all joke that our novel characters don't listen to us, that's nothing - NOTHING - like what a bunch of truly independent characters will do to your plot. Anything you haven't thought of, they'll try it. Any area you haven't developed, they'll go that way... any NPC (non-player character) that MUST NOT DIE will get shot in the first act for being rude. Players will run rough-shod over you, force you to think faster and more creatively than four to seven other people, and your reward is that years later they'll tell stories about the "good old days of your campaign" and you can sit by and smile.

Anyway, I don't think the Storyteller's Guide is available anymore... in fact, I think Vampire's current edition (4? 5?) isn't even called "the masquerade" anymore. Which is too bad, because this is a great book.

It's divided into 6 chapters: The Story, The Chronicle, The Setting, The Motive, and The Enemy. Yes, that's only 5. But the sixth chapter is mostly game mechanics, and is therefore not relavant to today's lesson.

Story discusses the parts of a story; concept, plot archetypes, themes and mood, incentives, story structure, beginnings, middles, ends, loose ends, aftermath.

Chronicle includes what are technically game details, but can also be really useful for ideas like a story map (outline! I am NOT a pantser writer. I need a road map or I'll never freaking get there. Other people don't, and that's great, I envy them.), troubleshooting, consistency, handling time, the web (not the www, but what the character does affects people that he may not ever notice, but that can come back to bite him in the ass later.) tension and humor.

Setting: where does your story take place? Who lives there? What is life like there regularly? Questions like these come up in games, they also come up in novels; particularly if you're writing a novel in a world not our own. In our world, people assume things like toilets and toasters and telephones. What is it like somewhere else?

Motive; here we come back to what I was saying earlier; What does your character want? Who's preventing him from getting it? What does the villain want? Why does your hero care? Everyone has motives; even wild animals have motivation (they're hungry, you're scaring them, you're too close to their den). People don't act in a vacuum. Even if the motive is; like a six year old who broke the windows by throwing rocks at them, and the parent is going, "Junior, WHY did you do that?" and the only answer is, "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

Enemy: How to create a memorable bad guy. Yes, in both games and novels, you can send hundreds of redshirts (sorry, star trek term) in to die or get in the way... but that gets boring. So you frequently need a bad guy; and you need to love your bad guy. If, as a writer, you hate him, he's just not going to be very much fun. Love your bad guy. Feed him, talk to him, canoodle with him. Find out what he wants, what he loves, what he hates. Discover that, despite being an evil overlord, he's got a soft spot for his Aunt Mabel. Real people are seldom all bad or all good.

And those are the things that make them interesting.

Picture This!

So, I did this the other day, and Andrew came up with the following web-page and story. He's very excited about it, which is always fun to see.

Before my daughter was born, I used to live quite a bit closer to my good friend, Liz. Trust me on this, no matter how few or many miles you put between you and someone else, adding a bridge-tunnel into the mix divides the number of times you see that person by at least 2, if not 3. (Which is my way of saying living in southside instead of on the peninsula means I don't see anyone who lives north of Newport News without there being a rather lot of effort involved.)

(I went up to have lunch with a girlfriend of mine up there on Friday. For a 56 mile drive - each way - I was in traffic for 90 minutes on the way up and 2 hours, 14 minutes on the way home. FOR an hour and ten minutes worth of chat!)

Anyway, that's all beside the point; which was this: There's something enormously fun about watching a writer be inspired/get an idea/have an epiphany.

I miss those moments. I used to see Liz get them all the time.

Now... well, who remembers to go look in the mirror when they're jumping around like a crazy woman going "THIS THIS THIS!!"

So, my point - long, rambly, under-caffeinated as it is - is this: Go Andrew!

Thanking Buddha

Social networking is interesting, isn't it?

One of the things I love about social networks is the ability to meet people that I might not normally talk to; for instance, I'm not a fan of green things (plants, you know) but one of my favorite blogs is written by a man who reviews people's lawns and gardens. I don't know half of what he talks about, but his style, my friend, is what's important. He's brilliantly funny.

I don't always, however, remember how I met someone.

Talking with my lovely editor - who is just lovely, have I said that? I had the hardest time not touching her hair while we were talking - recently, we were discussing how we had met.

I didn't even know this story, so it was pretty fun.

We frequent the same coffee shop, the Bean There. Last year, it was located just up the street from me. Then it moved. Tragedy! Have I mentioned I loathe downtown Norfolk? Well, I do. (It's slightly less loathsome now that I know my way around better.) But while they were in the process of moving, I was sans coffee for three months.

Do not get between a writer and her coffee.

Amy, the owner, and I had these drug-trade meetings in parking lots. I would hand her an envelope containing cash or a check, and she would hand me a cloth bag containing a pound or two of her custom blended and roasted coffee beans.

Apparently at some point I commented on this exchange on the Bean There's facebook page.

Kristina, my editor, was looking on the page to see when the shop would be re-opening and saw the comment. She clicked on my link.

Kristina is/was doing some "connecting" through her Buddhism enlightenment - forgive me if I get this wrong, I don't really know much about Buddhism - and was entertained to learn that we were born very close together. Her birthday is exactly a week after mine, although she's almost exactly five years older than I am. Further prodding on my Facebook page and she discovered that my husband and her husband have EXACTLY the same birthday.

She decided to write me an email to see if I would mind taking a Facebook friends request from a perfect stranger.

I didn't mind. I like meeting new people.

A few weeks later, she put a call out for a place to do a book reading/signing. I suggested the Bean There. It was a raging success!

Kismet Happens.