Last weekend I attended a two-day virtual workshop, The Art of Compression, run by Nina Schuyler. The workshop was well-run and provided lots of (12?) clear, easily-employable techniques to squish your word counts down to flash size.
I signed up on a whim. I’ve never focused on writing flash. I’ve never worried about word counts or pages. When I write I think I mostly find myself preoccupied with finding the end. I don’t usually know where the end is when I start or even what the story’s about. I discover it as I go. Having the conclusion magically appear at word number nine hundred ninety-seven seems about as likely as flipping a florin ninety-two times in a row and having it always come up heads.
But there are so many opportunities for flash (and micro and short shorts and nano and…) and the feedback comes back so quick. Send a story out Friday and have it rejected five times by Tuesday. It’s so much more fast-paced. No checking your inbox incessantly for months.
So, I took the class and I wrote a story. I followed the advice. I compressed and intensified. I skipped through narrative weeks with a “then” and some habitual action. I alluded with objective correlatives. And I composed a complete story that landed right at one thousand words.
Craft-wise, a week later, I still think it’s pretty solid. There are things I’d do differently without limitations. But it’s good. Craft-wise.
But, as a story, it kind of sucks. It’s missing something. That thing. The thing that makes you go “that’s interesting”. It has tension. It has color. It has momentum. But it’s boring.
Now, this isn’t meant to be a bash on flash. I’ve read lots of excellent flash. And I still think I might be able to write some myself. And I might even enjoy doing it.
My point is more about the limit of craft and what it can do for you. Craft can help you polish a good story into a great one but it can’t turn something that’s not a story into a story.
Often, when we read and analyze great stories (flash and otherwise), we ask, “why does this story work?” and we identify different elements of craft and we say, “this story works because the writer employed (blank).” And then we walk away thinking that by adding in these elements and following those guidelines we’ll build a great story.
But that’s not enough.
There is another thing. An angle. A perspective. An approach. Something different. Something interesting.