Week 2 Reading and Writing Prompts

Flash Fiction Workshop

Week 2                        Welcome to the dollhouse: building a world and peopling it.

Discuss: how does one create a character that generates empathy in the reader? Which details make a character ‘real?’ How can we reveal, in limited space, the inner life of a character?

Read 3 flash fiction pieces: “Doghouse Dreams,” (James Claffey, from Camroc Press Review), “Fire Island, 1977,” (Tara Masih, from Apollo’s Lyre) and  “Thirty-Nine” by Meg Pokrass (from Damn Sure Right; also in Salome).

Notice how each story features a narrator at a specific moment in life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood) and how this narrator’s innocence or experience is framed by what they know or learn about themselves, about other people, or both. Do we become closer to a character by “seeing” them (what this character looks like) or by seeing through them (the character’s perceptions of the world)?

Exercise: Write a story, scene or character sketch in which we see a character as if through a telescope, with the focus zooming in from distant to close, from external to internal.  For inspiration, try these prompt words:  The story must be no more than 750 words and include a minimum of THREE of the following: envelopes unopened, olive oil, hips rocking, Missouri in the rain, disposable razor, hardening nipples, unfiltered Camels, floating in the pool, crushed Dexedrine, Tupac Shakur, glow of tongue, gas station wine, nacho stands, stands of pines, vibrators, purple lips, hummingbirds, 4 a.m., symmetrical cleavage, diet whatever sodas, touch of rum, throwing smoke, handstands, scratchy wool, a dog’s howl, a dog’s black head, a dog’s way of thinking.  [This prompt is from Thumbnail Magazine's 2013 Flash Drive No-Fee Flash Fiction Competition, judged by Sean Lovelace, which will accept contest submissions until July 1, 2013. https://thumbnailmag.submittable.com/submit.]

Take-home read: “How Could a Mother?” (Bruce Holland Rogers, from What If?) Also at Vestal Review.

Homework: Choose a person you’ve heard about or seen but don’t know personally and try to live inside their head for twenty minutes. This character could be a tabloid celebrity or the mumbling homeless guy you pass on your way to the bus stop every day, but never talk to. It could be a dead relative you know through family stories, the defendant in a notorious court case, or a legendary figure like Helen of Troy or Lancelot. Put this person in a tense or uncomfortable fictional situation and write a first-person narrative in which he or she confronts difficult emotions. Don’t worry about making up details you don’t know; those are the details will bring your story to life.  

Variation:

Try this piece again, either with the same character or with a new persona. This time, instead of first-person narrative, write from a close third-person point of view, so that we are still privy to the person’s thoughts but have one layer of distance. Or write from a secondary character’s point of view, someone who observes or reports on the main character, but does not have access to their innermost thoughts. Notice which voice feels more natural, more truthful to you.

 Please bring 8 copies of one (or both) of your pieces to next week's workshop.