Episode 7

Stories form Carolyn Eddy and Michelle Heatley.

That's it for this year, but we will be back after the break - January 10 - with more stories.

I have a healthy submissions pile but please keep them coming in.

Happy Christmas and a productive New Year.

All the best
Bill

Episode 5

Stories from Norma Powers, Anna Lunk and myself.

Here are the contact details for the three competitions I mentioned on the show.
The Fish Short Story Prize: info@fishpublishing.com
Closing date 30th November

The New Writer Prose & Poetry competition: www.thenewwriter.com
Closing Date 30th November

Chudleigh Phoenix Short Story Competition www.chudleighphoenix.co.uk
Closing date 31st January


Also, from the next show on, we have a new time of 7.30pm on Tuesdays, so no clash with The Archers!

Episode 4

Stories from Laura Denning and Jean Grimsey and a bit more music than I usually stick in but I simply couldn't resist!
As promised, here are the details for the poetry workshop coming up in a couple of weeks. Led by Chris Waters this should be of great interest to any writer keen to develop their skiils at portraying and interpreting landscape.

Voicing the Landscape

A poetry-writing workshop with well-respected poet and writing tutor Chris Waters

Recent poetry collection 'Arisaig' published with Mudlark Press (2010), prize-winning finalist in the Plough Competition 2010 and Poetry Wivenhoe 2011, poet-in-residence at the Appledore Book Festival September 2011.

at the Barefoot Barn, Chagford
Sunday Nov. 6th 11 am - 5pm

Your chance to give voice to your experiences of the landscape through poetry, word-crafting and wordplay with a very experienced and accessible poetry tutor. Workshop costs £15 – 30 for the day including teas/coffees.

Run by Moor Poets (www.moorpoets.org.uk)

Episode 3

Stories from Jean Grimsey and Michelle Heatley and, as promised, here are the tips I heard during the presentation of the BBC Short Story prize:

"I set up a situation, then things go terribly wrong – as they always do in my books."

"Scientists and artists seem to make incongruous bedfellows, but they are closer than you think, both are engaged in seeing the world as honestly and clearly as possible."

"I like to grab the reader quickly, give them a lot of information quickly and also to use the voice of the character to give out a lot of information about that character’s background and mood and tone of the whole piece. I also like to be able to control the pace at which the reader takes the story in – all in one sitting."

And from the winner:
"I try and hit all the five senses every two pages – it’s just a rule that’s ingrained – to make it visceral and authentic."

And comments from the chair of judges on waht she looksfor in a short story:
“stories that drop you straight into the middle of the situation and have forward momentum. They need to be page turners, you must want to know what is going to happen.
"Also, since this was a radio competition the story had to read well on air, it had to progress logically, because a listener can’t refer back."

All useful stuff

Keep the stories coming in - a great response so far but always room for more.

season 2 episode 2: Dystopia

As promised on the show and as a follow up to the talk about Dystopian writing here are a few tips and guidelines I have gleaned from the web and my 'buy me and you won't have to do any work yourself' writing books. As always with these sorts of things they should be treated as suggestive rather than prescriptive - a bit like the Pirate's Code. In fact, one of the most creative and productive responses to any statement about writing that proclaims to be a rule is to prove it wrong.
Anyway:
Dystopian Writing

Potential story elements

a story set in the future - near or distant - but often written in the past tense

a focus on a current emerging trend that the story will put out front as the overpowering norm in society

The story might have a central governing power that is omniscient

the society is somehow dehumanised and lives in fear and ignorance

the protagonist somehow refuses to conform

the outcome shows how the protagonist fails in their attempt to rebel/escape or change society

Things to consider

Where and when is the action taking place?
What is different about technology?
Who is in charge? How did they get there?
How do the rulers rule?/control?
How does society view sex and violence?
How does society view religion?
How does the economy work? How does the workforce function?
What is family life like?
What happens to disobedient people?

Hope this all helps and look forward to seeing a pile of dystopian submissions coming in - it could be fun!

Show #1 - Flash Fiction compilation

Launched the second season last night with an episode devoted to some of the great flashes from the last series. It was all quite cathartic really, feeling like an ending and a beginning, a clearing of the way for the new stories that are coming.

While I have a healthy pile of submissions there is always room for more, so please keep the work coming in, details at the top of the page.

New Season

I am happy to announce that Soundart Stories is back for a second season on Soundart Radio. As before, the show will go out every fortnight on a Tuesday evening, but at the earlier time of 7pm. This is good, because the Archers is usually rubbish on a Tuesday . . .

I have received a good haul of stories over the summer, but, as always, would welcome more, so please keep them coming in.

One thing that strikes me about the earlier time is the opportunity it provides to broadcast some stories suitable for a younger age group - so if this a a genre that interests you, pleae do not hesitate in submitting. Child and teen fiction might make an interesting topic to cover in the show in the same way we discussed flash fiction last season.
Anyway, looking forward to it immensely.

Show #13 12 - 07 - 2011

The last show of the season, and packed, with stories form Anna Lunk, Michelle Heatley and Jennifer Moore.

I would like to make a further call for submissions for the autumn season. Obviously, the show feeds on your words, without which you would just be listening to me banging on in some sort of weird vanity show. Not that you would be listening, if that ever came to pass, so it would be a great boon to us all if I was able to gather up a few good armfuls of submissions over the summer from which to draw upon for the next set of shows, so please keep the stories coming in.

Riptide opportunity

a publishing opportunity that should interest many of you. Riptide is a highly regarded literary journal put out by Exeter University and it is currently accepting submissions for its next issue. Now the deadline is the end of this month, so you need to get your skates on, but what makes this particularly relevant, is that they are looking for Devon-themed stories, up to 5,000 words, and short Devon-based memoir pieces. This is a submissions guideline from their website:

Interpret ‘Devon’ as you wish – Devon past, present and future, Devon from the outside or the inside, its topography, its cities, towns, villages and people. Set your story in a real part of Devon or in your imagined version. We want to be surprised. As always we’re looking not for the obvious, but for the undercurrent.

Anyway, for more details look at the website on www.riptidejournal.co.uk

Well, that’s it for now. Thirteen shows, 31 stories from 18 authors covering so much territory and so many viewpoints. It has been a privilege to present them. I would also especially like to thank all our readers for the great effort and professionalism they have given the show, to Chris, Jan, Jonathan, Martin, Jenny, Dot, Veronica, Alan and, of course, Amanada.

I hope we will all be back in the Autumn, but, that will depend on your contributions, so keep them coming in.

Have a great summer

Collective Perspectives

Here is some more information on the Collective Perspectives project I mentioned in the last show. Well worth a visit.

SpinDrift Dance Company presents
Collective Perspectives Week

11th–16th July across the South Hams
• Forging connections between art forms •
• Facilitating creativity for local communities •

Photographers, dancers, musicians, print-makers and singers offer their interpretations of Dartmouth Harbour and Church of St Peter, Revelstoke, near Noss Mayo


Exhibition of all professional and schools work
11th–16th July • Kingsbridge Community College • 3.30–7pm • Free

Installation
Wednesday 13th July • Dartmouth Harbour • 5pm • Free

Performances of artists and local schools
Friday 15th July • Kingsbridge Community College • 6pm • £3

Performances of professional and community groups
Saturday 16th July • Church of St Peter the Poor Fisherman, Revelstoke
• near Noss Mayo • 6pm • Donations on the door

For more information, contact Suzie West at: suzie@spindriftdance.org.uk

Show #12

Stories from Jane Sawyer and Hana Sklenkova

I mentioned a web-based short story competition that might be well worth considering- the deadline is September 15 and the word limit is a generous 5,000. Details can be found on the website www.theshortstory.net

Also, there is an opportunity to hear one of tonight's authors, Hana Sklenkova, reading some of her work as part of the Collective Perspectives Project, drawing inspiration from local sites to inform a variety of pieces and performances. Hana will be reading at Kingsbridge Community College on July 15/16.

One more show to go before the summer break but please keep the work coming in. It would be great to have a solid pool of stories to draw from for the autumn season.

Show #11

Stories from Dot Spink, Alan Brown and Carolyn Eddy.

Two of the stories were a product of a Soundart Radio workshop helping writers work with sound recording - there will be another one of these workshops in the Autumn so contact Soundart Radio if you are interested. (www.soundartradio.org.uk)

Also, details of the writing competition held by the Kingsbridge Oxfam bookshop can be found at www.addmysupport.to/oxfamkingsbridgebooks/

For more information on the Chudleigh Literary festival on Wednesday 13 July, which looks like being a great day, and includes a morning workshop with poet Chris Waters - who I can highly recommend - email huxbear_barton@btopenworld.com

For anyone interested in the book I recommended on the show - it is The Art of Writing Fiction, by Andrew Cowan - out in paperback now.

Show #10

A story-packed show tonight - two contrasting and powerful shorts from Anna Lunk and a trip back to wartime Dartmoor and a farmyard crisis in The Cowman by James Stevenson.
Now up on the listen again service.

Show #9

Stories form Martin Sorrell, Barbara Butcher and Jennifer Moore.

Recommended Reading
Two bits of recommended reading on the show.
There is an abundance, perhaps an overabundance of material devoted to the art & craft of writing, including a fair few magazines. I have shelves full of books on how to write, but I only subscribe to one magazine, which, surprisingly, is one supposedly published specifically ‘for women who write’. The magazine is Mslexia and I have always found it a useful resource. Not just for the articles and exercises, some of which are very good, others not so very good, but definitely very good is the extensive directory and listings section at the back, which has up to date details of hundreds of magazines accepting submissions, closing dates and submission guidelines for competitions, info on courses and events. And not many writers have yet found a way to be published without submitting anything, at least, not while they still live. So, Mslexia, highly recommended. It comes out quarterly and is priced £6.95.

And remember, if there’s anything out there you’d like to recommend for our listeners, just send in an email and I’ll publicise it.

Paris Review
As I mentioned above, I have hundreds of books on writing and how to write. Why? Because there it is, on the bookshop shelf, promising it holds the secret to my writing desires, assuring me it will turn me into a bestselling author for just ten minutes a day.
Well, no, perhaps even I’m not gullible enough to be taken in by that. But I think I do use these books as a sort of displacement activity, as if by reading them I can skip past a few of the thousands of hours of actual writing that I need to do to get there.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against these books, not really. I believe creative writing can be taught, as long as there is some desire and talent there in the first place. I wouldn’t have spent so much time either teaching or being taught myself, otherwise. The growing number of universities offering Creative Writing MAs and such like would seem to back up the idea. And if a subject can be taught, we need textbooks.
A few, and only a few, of the books I own on creative writing truly are excellent, inspiring works. Some others are very good, and well worth reading. The vast majority, however, are dull and repetitive with little new to say, while many others are so bad they do more harm than good, stifling any natural ability with clichéd exhortations and overly prescriptive writing rules, demanding a formulaic approach to the craft, suggesting that writing success is simply a matter of solving a puzzle.
And, what is more, and this should be a dead giveaway, these writing books at the lower end of the scale are always written by people I have never heard of, and certainly never read. Which, rather circuitously, brings me on to my next recommendation.
I believe you can’t be a decent writer without being a decent reader and the best books from which to learn to write are the novels and stories that inspire us in the first place. And if I want to hear writing advice, I prefer to hear it from writers I respect. Which is why I love the Paris Review Interview books.
The Paris Review started life as a small literary journal set up by a bunch of expatriate Americans in Paris in 1953, including George Plimpton, who edited it until his death in 2003. As well as growing into a major literary journal, publishing many great authors, it also became famous for its long running series of interviews with writers, often conducted by other writers. The results are usually meticulous and fair and tend neither to eulogise or criticise, but simply give the author the chance to reflect on the writing life: his or her habits, routines, processes and concerns, and as such they provide a true insight into what goes into producing a final manuscript, and show how different every author is. (although noone so far has revealed they got their first break after reading "How to be a Bestselling Author for Ten Minutes a Day".)

The best of these interviews have been compiled in various publications: the old Writers at Work series and, most recently, a polished set from Canongate, published from 2007 onwards. Featuring interviews with authors as varied as Hemingway, Oates, Faulkener and Stephen King. Can’t recommend them highly enough – truly inspiring, and you can probably pick them up pretty cheaply second-hand now, particularly the Writers at Work editions, while some of the interviews are available for free from the Paris Review website.
Here’s a taste, one of my favourites, part of an interview with EL Doctorow in 1983.

The interviewer mentions that Doctorow had once told him that the most difficult thing for a writer to write was a simple household note to someone coming to collect the laundry, or instructions to a cook.

To which Doctorow replies

What I was thinking of was a note I had to write to the teacher when one of my children had missed a day of school. It was my daughter, Caroline, who was then in the second or third grade. I was having my breakfast one morning when she appeared with her lunch box, her rain slicker, and everything, and she said, “I need an absence note for the teacher and the bus is coming in a few minutes.” She gave me a pad and a pencil; even as a child she was very thoughtful. So I wrote down the date and I started, Dear Mrs. So-and-so, my daughter Caroline . . . and then I thought, No, that’s not right, obviously it’s my daughter Caroline. I tore that sheet off, and started again. Yesterday, my child . . . No, that wasn’t right either. Too much like a deposition. This went on until I heard a horn blowing outside. The child was in a state of panic. There was a pile of crumpled pages on the floor, and my wife was saying, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” She took the pad and pencil and dashed something off.

I had been trying to write the perfect absence note. It was a very illuminating experience. Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

Show #8

A packed show this week, with stories from Anne Willingale and Carolyn Eddy, an interview with Martin Sorrell about his approach to writing flash fiction as well as another great example of his work in this form.
Don't forget the listen again service on mixcloud - see above for the link.
Keep those submissions coming in!

Show #7

Stories from Phil de Burlet and Martin Sorrell

Workshop News
I didn't have time to mention this on the show but thought it might be of interest. One of our featured writers, Phil de Burlet, passed on the details of a workshop to be run by Clare George, the writer in residence at Exeter University. Entitled ‘The Sea, The Sea’ the one day workshop takes place on Thursday 19 May as part of the Daphne Du Maurier festival in Fowey, in Cornwall. It costs ten pounds and looks very interesting, aiming to explore our relationship with the sea and the plants and animals that live there, and taking an imaginative and sometimes lighthearted look at the ways in which this relationship may change in the future. here is the link:

http://www.dumaurierfestival.co.uk/devents.php?session=1928825&ev=128

Competition News
I thought I should plug the Bridport Prize. For anyone who doesn’t know the Bridport, it is one of the country’s leading short fiction competitions and has categories for flash fiction as well as poetry and short fiction up to 5,000 words, which is a pretty generous length. The deadline is the end of June.

www.bridportprize.org.uk

Thoughts on Competition Judging
Writing competitions can seem a strange thing, at odds with the ethos of art. How can stories compete? On what basis can one be rated higher than another? Is there such a thing as a ‘competition story’, that piece of work designed to tick all the boxes?

The novelist Simon Mawer was this year’s judge for the Fish prize, another major short story competition, and this is his take on the process, which might be instructive to anyone considering an entry.

"Short story writing is a bit like painting in water colours. It's an art of precise strokes in which you need to be deft, accurate and sensitive to the faintest imbalance. And if it's good then the finished whole is somehow more than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, novel writing is more like painting in oils. You can layer, rework, scrub things out, move near, stand back, live with the thing in your studio for a year or more, counterbalance a lapse here with a successful passage there. And all too often the whole is somehow less than its various parts. As a writer I feel I can do the oil painting, more or less; it's the water colours that make me feel inadequate.

So it was with some trepidation that I received the stories that had made the cut in the Fish Short Story competition this year. No committee decision from now on: it was up to me alone. Aside from being a novelist I have also been a teacher - not of English or Creative Writing but of workaday Biology - and as soon as I turned to the first story I found the teacher in me asking questions: what are the criteria? where is the mark scheme? how can you be objective about this? The answer is, of course, you cannot. Assuming all the stories are competently written (they were) any further judgement must be purely subjective. So, feeling guilty, I threw years of pedagogical conditioning out of the window and sat down to read. I wasn't a teacher marking exams, I was a writer doing the impossible: trying to rank works of art. And the only way I could do it was by deciding which of these stories I liked best.

What struck me forcibly was the preponderance of family anguish stories. Isn't this theme a trifle hackneyed? Perhaps it comes from that injunction of the Creative Writing course, that you should write about what you know. I'd say, write about what you imagine. Let your imagination take you to places and inside people whom you couldn't possibly otherwise have known. Imagination is the key, the crux, the hinge on which all art turns.

Good advice, I’d say.

Show #6

Stories from Ken Ashby and Julia Howarth

Competition News
I think it might be worth publicising competitions that listeners might want to try their luck at. Obviously they tend to be a bit of a lottery but they are also an important outlet for writers, with many competitions also publishing anthologies of the shortlisted entries.
One that has been brought to my attention is the Aesthetica Creative Works competition - deadline is 31 August and has categories for short fiction and poetry. Further details at http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm

Feel free to contact the show with details of competitions,magazines and journals that accept short fiction and I'll post the details here.


A Note on Submissions
On the show I made a quick point to clarify the submissions process. In answer to several queries I have received from writers who have sent work in to me, I’m afraid I cannot reply to submissions with a critique of the work. I promise I will read everything sent in and obviously I’ll let an author know if the piece has been accepted and when it will be broadcast, but I regret not having the time to go beyond this. One thing to bear in mind though, if your piece has not made it through the selection process this is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of the work. Often it is simply because a piece does not necessarily read aloud well. There may be too many viewpoints involved, for example, or too many voices. Sometimes the text simply seems too complex. These are the stories that can work for a reader, who has the luxury of being able to go back over any passage they do not instantly comprehend, but for a listener who only gets the one chance to grasp a story such complexities can lose them.
One thing to consider, and I think this is a good piece of advice for any form of writing, whether or not it is intended for broadcast, is to incorporate a read aloud of the story as an essential part of the revision process. I don’t mean reading the story to an audience, but just to yourself. I always do this and, no matter how finished I think a story might be, first draft or fourteenth, when I hear the story voiced I always seem to find some weaknesses that would otherwise have been missed.
If you read your work aloud and find yourself struggling over a sentence or a paragraph, you can usually be pretty sure that your reader will struggle too. Not only things like needless repetitions and overlong explanations, but subtle effects like rhythm and pace, that deeper pulse of a work that, when properly attended to, can really elevate prose.

Remember the new listen again service on mixcloud. See the top of the page for the link.

Listen Again

The show now has an internet-based listen again service. You can now hear all the episodes of Soundart Stories at your convenience on the mixcloud site.

Either follow the link at the top of the page or simply go to the mixcloud site and type in a search for Soundart Stories. I am not sure yet about how long I will keep each episode up on the site, but there appear to be no time restrictions so I have no immediate plans to take any down.
Enjoy!

Show #5: Twist Endings

NEWS

Recommended reading for lovers of flash fiction: the magazine, Flash from Chester University. Available from:

www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine

Open for submissions of up to 360 words so definitely worth a look.

A recommendation for all lovers of the short story. To celebrate its 50th year as an imprint, Penguin Modern Classics has released a series of fifty slim volumes of short stories and novellas, each devoted to a single author. They are a great way to discover writers you haven’t looked at before. They cost £3 each and Totnes bookshop has got a three for two deal going on them. Get them while you can.

COURSES

As promised in the last show, I also want to publicise courses that might interest any writers in the area. Chris Waters, one of our readers and a great tutor is putting together a six week short fiction course – Telling Tales – which starts at the WEA in Exeter at the end of May. If you are interested please email the show at submissions@soundartradio.org.uk and I will forward your details on to Chris.

The show had two chilling and evocative stories, from Laurence Green and Carolyn Eddy.

One of the many things I really admire in the stories is the way they avoid the temptation to put all the effects into a surprise ending, to deliberately mislead the reader during the bulk of the narrative just to go for some cheap twist on the end to provide the punch.

There is something about writing short stories that seems to invite some sort of twist ending, the big reveal in the final line that turns the story on its head.
There is nothing wrong with twist endings. Writers from Maupassant to Roald Dahl made an art form out of them. But they are difficult to do well. And, even if they are expertly crafted and entertaining, these stories often feel a bit two-dimensional if the whole thing relies on the effect of the punchline.

One of the problems with the weaker twist stories is that they often keep back crucial information from the reader. Information that the main character must know, but we don’t, or information that would be obvious to us if we were in the same setting as the characters. Of course, stories create suspense by the judicious withholding of information, just parceling out enough to keep us turning the page, but, as in life, timing is everything. If the reader feels they are discovering in a natural way the story, the characters, the motivations, the bigger picture, they will take it on board, suspend their disbelief. If, however, they have to battle through to the end of the piece just to find out that it was all a dream, or the whole thing took place in another dimension, or that the narrator was, in fact, a zebra, without any prior warning, the reader will feel cheated.

The opposite is also true. If there are so many clues given out that the twist is predictable, and the story has nothing else going for it, then the reader is simply bored and disappointed. Not good.

The one thing that will make one story like this stand head and shoulders above other stories with similar payoffs, is simply that they do not rely on the twist for their power. They rely instead on engaging the reader on a much deeper level, through characters and their relationships and our empathy with them, through observations of human society and human nature.

One of the authors featured in the Penguin series I mentioned in the news section is Shirley Jackson. I had not read any of her stuff before but just couldn’t resist. Anyway, this is the opening of her story, The Lottery.

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke out into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix – the villagers pronounced this name ‘Dellacroy’ – eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.

Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away form the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times.
Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother.

I can't give away the ending to the story, because everything you need to know about the ending is there in the opening. There is a lottery that someone must win, and there is a big pile of smooth, round stones, as we are told repeatedly. We may resist it, we may prefer to ignore it, hope that it can’t be true. But we can’t accuse the author of hiding anything from us. What makes this story so chilling is not the ending, the twist, but the way the characters behave in such an appalling yet totally believable fashion, applying a mirror to ourselves and asking some pretty uncomfortable questions.

And perhaps this is the secret of the best twist endings, It’s not the surprise that shocks us, but the inevitability.

Looking forward to the next show on April 5.

(And feel free to add your comments and opinions to the blog, especially if you want to disagree with something!)

Show #4: Flash Fiction

The show started with a poignant story from Anna Lunk, Dragons, inspired in part by her holidays in France. The story touches on many themes, as a daughter who cares for her ageing and widowed father approaches a moment that is sure to change her life.

I am sure many of you know Anna as an excellent creative writing tutor. Anna is currently seeking a publisher for her novella Flight, and is currently working on a novel about a lost garden on the welsh borders.

Many of you may also know that one of our regular readers, Chris Waters, is also a superb tutor who, like Anna, has been a mentor and inspiration to many, including myself. It would be nice if this show could be a point of meeting for writers and tutors and writing groups. If you are a tutor with details of courses, a writing group looking for members, or a potential student, please don’t hesitate to contact the show, either through the blog or privately on submissions@soundartradio.com and I will endeavour to bring everyone together.

Flash Fiction

I talked on the show about flash fiction. It would be great to broadcast more short short stories. I have a few submissions that fit this description but it would be nice to have the occasional show devoted to this shortest form, maybe broadcast five or six stories in a single episode.

So, what is flash fiction?

Well in short, it’s short. Really short. One definition of a standard short story is that it is a piece that can be read in a single sitting. Flash fiction is something that can be read between blinks of an eye.

Despite the current flowering of flash stories, it is by no means a new category. Hemingway was famous for his brevity, as was Raymond Carver. Borges wrote many stunning short shorts. We can go back further. Miniature stories were all the rage in 16th century China and I think old Aesop would make a claim for his fables as a foundation stone for the form.

Anyway, the new demand for the shortest stuff sparks the need to define, in terms of word count, what constitutes flash fiction. Some collections allow up to 1,500 words, some reduce it to 250 words, which is the current limit in the Bridport Prize’s flash fiction section, or even less.

Obviously these specific word limits are pretty fluid and meaningless, at least until you come up against a publisher or a competition that demands these constraints be met. For the purposes of Soundart Stories I’m hitting the middle ground and asking for pieces up to the 750 word mark for the flash fiction broadcasts. This is the target length for the stories that appeared in the influential 1992 Flash Fiction compilation and I see no reason to change it.

So, what are the secrets of writing flash fiction?

Precision and concision, basically. It’s a short piece, so you need to make every word count, and to get to the heart of the matter without too much messing about. There is no time for multiple, detailed scenes and an extensive back story for each of the characters. If you are writing a straightforward narrative, think of a single scene or moment that encapsulates the story, start in the middle of the action and go from there.

So far, so obvious.

There are common forms of flash fiction – the anecdote, the fable, the fairy tale and the story with the surprise twist at the end. Straightforward stories, perfectly pleasant, but often pretty forgettable. The truth is that this shortest form of fiction can aim for the same depth of emotional impact and connection with the reader as a longer piece.

You would not dismiss a poem as trivial because it was short. The same applies here. It is true you are limited to a few lines, so this is when you have to make the spaces between the lines do so much of the work. The best flash fiction connects through implication and suggestion. What is not said is as important as what is. Just give the readers enough information to get the hooks in, then let them run with the lines themselves. Let the reader tease out meaning by inhabiting the characters and the moment, seeing things through their eyes.

Try this for size. Hemingway claims it as his shortest ever complete piece. You could argue over whether or not this six word sentence constitutes an actual story, but even if it has no beginning, middle and end, it certainly creates a great deal by implication. Here it is:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So many potential stories planted there in the reader’s mind, probably more than Hemingway envisaged, a different shade of story for each reader, the power of implication.

Precision, efficiency, economy of language. Are these techniques particular to flash fiction? I don’t think so. To start in the middle of the action, to make every word count, to engage the reader by making them work a bit, by not serving out all the information on a plate – this is as relevant for the novel, the novella and the longer short story as it is for the very short story. The beauty of flash is that it forces the writer to engage with these techniques, making them a perfect exercise, even if the stories are not destined for a wider audience.

Of course you can set out to deliberately write a flash story from scratch, that central scene with the telling yet enigmatic detail. But, if you’re anything like me, you will have quite a few old and dusty and mediocre short stories lying about that never really got anywhere. Have another look at them, think about converting them to a flash piece. It might seem impossible, cutting a three or four thousand word story down to 750 words or less. Believe me, it isn’t. And I can almost guarantee that if you succeed, the story will be much the better for it.

Before you get too carried away with the red pen, look at the story again and ask a few questions. What is it’s key scene? What actually happens? What is it about? How much information does the reader really need to make it work? Keep that scene and cut everything else. If there’s a paragraph of setting, make it a sentence; the same with dialogue. If there’s any description of a character’s background, get rid and replace it with a single telling action that reveals a nugget of personality. If there are any characters who are not crucial, really crucial to the story, make them disappear. Adverbs, unnecessary adjectives, sentences where you’re telling the reader what to think. Slice a big red line through them all. Be brutal, be savage, and trust the process. You might end up amazed.

And one last thing, don’t feel that flash fiction is some sort of constraining form with a specific formula for success. As Leonardo da Vinci said: “Art breathes from containment.” You might be limited by word count, but that’s all. You can be as wild and experimental as you like. In fact, flash fiction lends itself to the more out there prose styles that might not hold up in a longer form. Stream of consciousness, prose poetry, dream-states, rants, extended lists. You can do what you want, be brave and true!

A few titles that might be of use if you want to pursue this - no better way to learn than to read the good stuff:

Flash Fiction: James Thomas, Denise Thomas & Tom Hazuka (eds) (1992. Norton)
One of the early compilations in the current wave of interest.
ditto
Sudden Fiction International: Robert Shapard & James Thomas (eds) (1989: Norton)
Another great compilation drawn from around the world, including several classics from master storytellers.

A useful textbook I looked at was Short Circuit, A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, ed. Vanessa Gebbie (2009. Salt Publishing). This has a couple of chapters devoted to Flash fiction.

Anyway, the response to show continues to be excellent, lots of stories coming in. Keep firing them at me and think about those really short ones.

Looking forward to the next show on March 22

Show #3

Our story this evening was Untouchable by Wendy Clarke, a powerful tale set in medieval France and the winning entry in the 2009 Totnes Bookshop short story competition.
The second half of the show involved a look at lists as a writer’s tool.
Even the most mundane list can be used to present details of a life without telling the reader how to respond, allowing them to make their own judgements about a character. A list engages a reader on an active level, forcing an emotional response to the text, allowing the reader’s own prejudices and opinions to colour their interpretations of the things they see listed - creating an excellent opportunity for the writer to subvert those expectations.
In a functional sense, a list can also get things done quickly. As an example I mentioned F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterful use of a list to create the atmosphere and detail of a lavish party in The Great Gatsby.
I also touched on the use of a list as a way to introduce poetic, metrical rhythms into a prose piece without drawing attention to itself, without breaking that prose illusion of reality.

I suggested an exercise based on all this. Come up with a list for one of your characters, a shopping list, a list of new year’s resolutions, a to do list, or anything really. Try and twist it around, add something unexpected, subvert expectations, tell a story through it. After all, at heart, most stories can be thought of as an expanded list: a list of events and the insights they trigger, one after the other.
This week’s extracts came from two books that rank pretty high on my own all-time list.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Please feel free to submit anything you come up with here on blog. Or if you have any other comments on the show, again, please post.
Looking forward to the next show on March 8.

Keep the stories coming in.

Show #2

A double helping of stories from Veryan Williams-Wynn, which I am sure you all enjoyed.

The response to the call for stories has been fantastic so far. Please keep them coming in.

There was not too much time in the show for the 'talking about writing' bit, but the stories did get me thinking about research, and what this heavy word means to the writer. Both of Veryan's pieces combined a wide range of research and creative sources, from writing exercises, museum trips and bookwork, through to her own childhood recollections and family concerns.

Of course, external research can be vital for effective fiction, and I can see a future segment devoted to this. To create an authentic, albeit fictional, real world setting requires authentic detail. This type of research is often a creative source in itself, throwing up new ideas and angles and personalities we had not before considered as we delve deeper into our chosen settings and time frames. If you feel this is an area you would like to explore further but don't really know where to start I can recommend Ann Hoffman’s Research For Writers. This is an excellent practical textbook for research sources, techniques and considerations. My copy is the 2003 seventh edition and it is still useful. It may well be into its eighth edition by now.

Still, as writers our greatest resource is ourselves. To search out our memories, to clarify our responses to the world and to map out our personal journey through life is how we develop a unique voice. That is not necessarily to say that all fiction is somehow autobiographical (although there are certainly some who would claim that), but that if we do not give of ourselves to our work in some way, then what is the point of it?

Of course, childhood offers a great well of ideas and insights; this is the time when we are formed, when we make the greatest advances along the road from innocence to experience. It is a heavily mined source for short stories – the ‘coming of age’ narrative, the glimpse of the adult world that awaits us and will forever change our perception of it. Without getting into a debate about when, if ever, our childhood truly ends, it is also a time that is seen from a distance. I have heard writers claim they write most effectively about a country once they have left it. I think the same is true of childhood. Only when we have left it, can we truly understand it.

Here’s an exercise you might like to try, adapted from one in Josip Novakovitch’s excellent Fiction Writer’s Workshop.

Find a bit of peace and quiet and write down your three earliest memories. Try to weave them into a story. Make it someone else’s story and make the links between them something other than your personal history. The memories do not need to proceed in the same order as you recall. Play around, merge, separate, mix and match, cut and paste. In other words, change everything, except for the essence of the memories. Let yourself go!

Feel free to post the results here if you like, or submit to the show, it could make for an interesting section.


I’m looking forward to the next Soundart Stories on February 22. Until then, keep reading, keep writing, and, above all, keep seeing.

(I’m not sure about this closing line for the show. I thought it was concise and clever, both to the point and multi-layered, but I’m beginning to think it just makes me sound like a pompous Edward R Murrow wannabe . . .)

Show #1

Thanks to everyone who listened to the first show, I hope you enjoyed it.

Just a brief recap - the Dartington-set short story was followed by the question, what can writers learn from genre fiction?

Using "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" and the trilogy it spawned as an example, I argued that even if you dismiss the books as over-hyped, badly crafted, exploitative tosh, more akin to typing than to writing, the author must still have got something right, something to pull so many people through so many pages.

I think, above all, Larsson understood the essential combination of character and plot.

The Millenium trilogy succeeds because underneath all the reams of Swedish political history, the outrageous conspiracies and the extreme physical action, it is a character-driven story, propelled by Lisbeth Salander, a jagged, antisocial heroine who behaves in extreme ways according to her own moral code. Unlike every other character in the book, who arrive on the page with their biography and cv attached, information about Salander is given out sparingly. As readers we are fascinated by her behaviour but only gradually come to understand the horrifying background that made her this way. And that the plot eventually turns out to be inextricably linked to the resolution of her own personal battles actually makes the books work.

“Plot is character and character plot,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Without character, plot is just one thing after another. The information we often seek is not how something has happened, but why characters behave the way they do. In his “Letters To A Young Poet” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote “The future enters into us, long before it happens,” later adding “that which we call destiny goes forth from within people, not from without, into them.”

We then moved on to a short writing exercise to come out of this idea of character and plot and destiny entwined.

Think of a traumatic, life changing childhood experience for a character, the more imaginative and unusual the better. Then think of an event in adult life that forces that character to confront the past. How does that character react? How does that character change? Does it sink them, or redeem them?

Be careful how you do this, or before you know it the exercise could bloom into a novel.

If you find the idea of submitting a short story too daunting, feel free to send in completed exercises you have found interesting. It would be fun to read them out on the show.

Anyway, be sure to tune into the next show on 8 February at 9pm.

Until then, keep reading, keep writing, and, above all, keep seeing.

Soundart Stories Press Release

Broadcast Opportunity for Local Writers
Local short story writers will soon have an opportunity to hear their work on the radio.
Dartington-based community station Soundart Radio is calling for submissions to its new creative writing programme, Soundart Stories, which launches on January 25.
Stories on any subject and any length up to 3,000 words will be considered for the Tuesday evening slot.
As well as broadcasting short stories, read by a range of performers, the programme will discuss the art and craft of fiction, and offer encouragement and writing exercises for anyone interested in developing their literary skills.
“There are so many talented and distinctive writers in our area who deserve a wider audience for their work,” said programme host Bill Eaton. “The short story can be an exciting and daring form but there are precious few outlets available for the writer. It is a privilege to be able to offer an opportunity for these voices to be heard.”

Stories should be submitted by email to submissions@soundartradio.org.uk. Further information is available on the Soundart Radio website: www.soundartradio.org.uk.

Notes For Editors
Soundart Radio 102.5 FM is a not-for-profit community arts radio station for the Dartington and Totnes area of South Devon. It also broadcasts live through its website. The station is committed to providing opportunities for local people to make original and creative programmes.

Soundart Stories will be broadcast every fortnight from 9-9.30pm on Tuesday evenings from January 25.

Welcome To Soundart Stories

Welcome to the Soundart Stories Blog.

I have set this up to support the radio pragramme. This is where I will post links mentioned in the show, repeat some of the material and exercises and look forward to future episodes. It will also be a place for comments from listeners.

I am not planning to post stories on this blog or invite criticism of other people's work - although I am sure most contributors would enjoy positive feedback. I would welcome any suggestions on aspects of writing fiction that listeners might like to hear covered in the programme.

Looking forward to next Tuesday!