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Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #5 – ‘The Prospective’

Sudha Balagopal’s flash fictions and creative non-fiction pieces are always rich and fascinating.

Here’s a story of hers published recently in X-Ray Lit:

https://xraylitmag.com/the-prospective-or-what-i-tell-the-man-in-the-cafe-by-sudha-balagopal/fiction/

In this story, one thing that’s clearly in the foreground (for me) is the interplay between the past and the present, and the way this influences how “story” is cleverly revealed AND delayed (for example, the recurring, interrupting motif of the potato chips).

Also strongly in the foreground is the tension between individual choice/agency and social conventions – the constraints that families, communities, societies place upon on us. Some such constraints are of course written and explicit – for example, written into national law or policy. And some may be implicit pressures, unspoken codes or informal expectations. Many of these unwritten expectations, nevertheless, follow inevitably from broader social structures imposed by government policies, laws and judicial systems, religious doctrines, or organisational constitutions. A kind of trickle-down social ergo-nomics that permeates all behaviour.

Many writers consider that part of their role is to highlight social conventions, and ask questions about them, as Sudha Balagopal does here. This story, notably, ends on a question. One of the most radical things about this flash fiction, for me, is the fact that the narrator has seemingly agreed (in later life) to discuss exactly the kind of decision on behalf of her children that was made for her by her parents when she was young, and which she resisted at that time. Balagopal lets readers draw their own conclusions, and figure out how they feel. How might you do that in your own novella?

Invitation: Once you’ve read this story, consider the following:

• Explore an identity to which you are connected. (Or else do this for one of your novella characters.) This might be an aspect of national, religious or cultural identity. Or an aspect of identity to do with work/other responsibilities. Single out a social convention or expectation related to that identity – some unwritten code or formal requirement that is imposed by others. Work this into a flash fiction that fits your novella’s situation, exploring the push and pull between social expectation and the individual impulse to resist convention. Put pressure on the protagonist and their personal values, and see what unfolds. Does the pressure of convention/expectation affect the way they behave/speak/dress, their life decisions, their feelings about themselves or the world, and so on? What sparks of tension, disagreement or conflict might arise?

• Write a flash fiction for your novella that braids a scene from the past with a scene from the present, breaking each strand into sections, so the ongoing story alternates between fragments of the present and the past. OPTIONAL: Let one character be (in the past) a child or young person interacting with their parents, and then (in the present) the same character is a parent themselves, having to make choices on behalf of their child or children.

• Write a flash fiction for your novella about a disappointing date.

• Write a flash fiction for your novella about being a witness to (or on the receiving end of) the actions of an inconsiderate or capricious person. OPTIONAL: Characterise that person as sleazy or unpleasant in some other way.

• Write a flash fiction for your novella in which a character goes to the cinema with another person. Let the movie scenes on screen have some relevance to the relationship between the two people, creating a subtext that draws attention to an underlying tension between them (for instance, what’s shown on-screen might highlight a difference between what the two individuals each want or yearn for). OPTIONAL: Choose another cultural event or performance that’s not a film.

Above all, have fun and make it new!

More about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: https://novella-in-flash.com/about-the-course/

You can sign up to this novella-in-flash writing prompt series here:

Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #4 – ‘Supernumerary’

One of my favourite writers of flash fiction is Jonathan Cardew – over and over again, his stories are inventive and surprising, often in remarkable ways.

Have a read of this flash by Cardew, published in Passages North:

https://www.passagesnorth.com/passagesnorthcom/2021/10/22/supernumerary-by-jonathan-cardew

What do you notice happening in it?

Of course, there’s the very strangeness of the scenario – it’s both macabre and surreal. Flash fiction is a good vehicle for that combination of gruesome weirdness and absurdity. Another notable feature is the sheer quality of the detail, the sentence-making itself. The language is conversational – we imagine a voice speaking, and yet it’s expressed with precision, invention, and relish. Lastly I’m struck by the move towards an unusual image at the end – taking the story in a completely new and unexpected direction (how did we get to hippos??) , and creating an unresolved, resonant quality by deliberately juxtaposing and not explaining. For a moment, we’re really there on the savannah (on a “blisteringly gorgeous day” – a lovely touch).

Invitation: Write a new flash fiction, made relevant to your novella’s story situation, in which:

• Something gruesome, macabre, or strange happens, yet the narrator considers it entirely normal or routine (OPTIONAL: let them explain their unconvincing justification for it).

OR:

• Someone is conserving or setting something aside for future benefit (it doesn’t have to be surreal or macabre). What’s their motive?

OR:

• Someone alters their physical appearance for a particular purpose or ulterior motive. (This could relate to their clothing, jewellery, tattoos, make-up, or hairstyle, for instance). What’s the expected benefit and does it pay off for the protagonist?

OR:

• Two people conspire in an activity that contravenes a perceived “norm” (whether a formal law or a social code, tradition or expectation). What’s at stake? What are the consequences?

OR:

• Identify and isolate some other ingredient of this story (one that you admire or are interested in), and transpose this aspect into your novella’s story situation, making it entirely new in the process, by thinking laterally.

OPTIONAL: For any of the above, end the story by moving towards an image (a metaphor, simile or comparison) that is unexpected yet apt. Don’t explain or spell out the relevance. Expand into description of physical details. Let the image and its sensations linger in the reader’s mind.

More about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: https://novella-in-flash.com/about-the-course/

You can sign up to this novella-in-flash writing prompt series here:

Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #3 – ‘Cimarron’

Have a read of this story, ‘Cimarron’, by Natalie Teal McAllister, published at the excellent online journal Pidgeonholes.

http://pidgeonholes.com/2021/10/cimarron/

Then write a story for your Novella-in-Flash in which:

a long-awaited change in the weather affects how characters behave, what they can do, or how they feel.

there’s a contrast between one protagonist’s parent and another character’s parent (as here, between two different fathers) – they behave differently, have different values, or there’s some other kind of friction or tension between these two representations of parenthood, which is noticed by a protagonist or narrator.

there’s an exploration of contrasting experience between genders (for example, as happens here, a female narrator observing a male character, or otherwise another gender contrast).

a community of people (any kind of social group) is prompted, cajoled, inspired to act collectively in response to an event or a change

a character is actively interacting with the landscape or physical environment (for example, as happens here, a character wading into a river, catching fish)

identify some other ingredient or tactic in the story that you connect with or admire. Transplant it into the context of your own novella. Write a flash fiction using some twist or variation upon this particular element. Make it new.

http://pidgeonholes.com/2021/10/cimarron/

More about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: https://novella-in-flash.com/about-the-course/

You can sign up to this novella-in-flash writing prompt series here:

Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #2 – ‘Sylpha’

Here’s a story by Juliana Lamy, published at Pidgeonholes magazine.

http://pidgeonholes.com/2021/01/sylpha/

Have a read, then…

Write a chapter about a character yearning passionately/desperately for something – some kind of yearning that’s a “big, wild thing”

Write a chapter in which a narrative event is prefigured in a night-time dream

In this story the main character Sylpha has a baby. Write a chapter in which a character makes something else/brings something else into the world, or wants to do so.

This story refers to twins (three sets of twins in fact!) Write a chapter featuring two of something – a pairing, or a doubling, or a mirroring. Think beyond human twins – for example, consider objects, animals, features of the natural or human-made landscape, events/actions, etc

Draw some other kind of inspiration from the example story and use this as a springboard for your own writing.

As always, with such prompts: “Make it new.” (Ezra Pound)

http://pidgeonholes.com/2021/01/sylpha/

More about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: https://novella-in-flash.com/about-the-course/

You can sign up to this novella-in-flash writing prompt series here:

Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #1 – ‘Triptych’

I love how the following story (at Pithead Chapel) by Kyra Kondis suggests a whole story-world in a compressed space, through the use of vivid, specific details. (A novel might be constructed from these beginnings!) The title too is neat – offering more than we might take from it at first glance.

https://pitheadchapel.com/triptych/

Taking this story as a springboard, why not write a scene/chapter for your novella in which…

a character gets involved in an affair (as revenge?)
OR: a character is propelled towards risky behaviour (of some kind) after experiencing a loss
OR: a character does something “wrong” but feels justified or has fair motive (you decide the justification/motive)
OR: a character checks someone else’s text messages or some otherwise confidential or private information (you decide the reason why – and what they find when they do)
OR: the story is split into a three-part “montage”, set at different times (use past/present/future as you see fit, and consider focusing on three primary characters)
OR: find some other angle that you unearth from the example

Here’s the story itself:

https://pitheadchapel.com/triptych/

More about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: https://novella-in-flash.com/about-the-course/

You can sign up to this novella-in-flash writing prompt series here:

What can Novella-in-Flash writers learn from Something in the Potato Room (2009)?

Something in the Potato Room, by Heather Cousins (Tucson: Kore Press, 2009), pp.69

Subject Matter – A somewhat hypochondriac museum administrator, who is also a collector of Victorian cutlery and reader of rare books, moves house and discovers a mysterious hominid hiding in a small room under the stairs. “A chief of the Inner Station”, Cousins writes, parodying Heart of Darkness.

Structure/Style – The presentation of this book is unusual, with large margins, and paragraphs as thin columns running down the middle of the page. The language has the strangeness, intensity and compression of poetry – although it has a narrative impulse, it’s clearly calling attention to itself as out of the ordinary. The book was classified as poetry by the publisher, but there’s surely a kind of novella-in-flash here, in all its quirky glory, with a clearly defined central character moving and acting through time and place in a linked sequence of narrative fragments. Something in the Potato Room might be categorised as a ‘novella-in-prose-poems’ – and a magnificent one. The book’s central crisis taps into that universal, childlike fascination: the possibility of a creature lurking in the dark of the wardrobe.

What can novella-in-flash writers learn from this book?

(1) Prose Poetry: Something in the Potato Room is full of unusual prose, more akin to poetry. Cousins is a fan of the quirky, verbless sentence that teeters on the verge of logical sense: “Wasn’t I just ‘stuck in a rut’? A standard pattern? A Federalist? A Simple? A Plain?” (p.11). And again here, in a passage that is broken into lineated verse: “What has been placed / here // has been placed here // to DORMANT. / to STILL. / to STULLIFY.” (p.44) This style of writing makes sense in a more intuitive way. Meanings are forged through the interplay of unusual sentence structure and word choice. And even amidst the more routine syntax and vocabulary, the descriptions still make metaphorical leaps: “Dr. Paul stood behind my desk. Looming. A reconnaissance balloon. A zeppelin.” (p.29)

Invitation: How might the flash fictions in your novella adopt some of the rich language strategies frequently used in poems: metaphor or simile, musicality, strange sentence structures, surprising word choices?

(2) Illustrations – Something in the Potato Room is also made strange by being peppered with odd, Victorian-style illustrations: extravagant moths and butterflies, a woman downing her head in a bowl of water, a detailed display of teeth, rows of kitchen utensils. Each one is captioned in a way that associates the picture with the ongoing story, yet the images themselves feel only tangentially relevant. This adds to the eerie atmosphere – a feeling that something is out of sorts. The visual experience is further estranged by the prose poems being presented in very narrow columns, centred on the page, surrounded by an expanse of blankness.

Invitation: How might you express your visual imagination through your novella? Is there an opportunity to do something unusual with layout or spacing? Might photographs, illustrations or diagrams appear at any point? (This won’t be relevant to every novella, of course, but these questions might spark ideas for some writers…)

(3) Off-kilter/quirky style: The narrator’s voice is delightfully off-centre, expressing anxiety and a quirky perspective, and the story itself is wilfully unpredictable. An increasing pressure on her job at the museum alternates with scenes at home describing the encounter with the hominid. These domestic scenes are creepy and fantastical, revelling in macabre sensory detail. The narrator adopts a stance towards her house guest that is maternal, forensic, and apparently sexual, all at once. “I called and called. We had so many more things to discover. To unearth. I yearned to rub his mandible.” (p.63)

Invitation: Would it be interesting to shift your novella into unsettling genre territory – for example by introducing magical realist, horror, Gothic, or fantastical elements? In what other ways might your novella grapple with elements of strangeness?

Flexible Novella-in-Flash self-study course: https://novella-in-flash.com/4-module-short-course/

What can Novella-in-Flash writers learn from Charmaine Wilkerson’s How to Make a Window Snake (2017)?

How to Make a Window Snake by Charmaine Wilkerson, published as part of the three-novella anthology How to Make a Window Snake (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2017), pp. 120.

Subject Matter: A woman looks back upon the death of her younger sister and the effect this event had on her family. Issues relating to gender and race supplement the domestic tragedy in the foreground, as the narrator reflects upon her African-American identity and male/female contrasts ripple below the surface of the story. This award-winning novella-in-flash was published in an anthology alongside novellas by Joanna Campbell and Ingrid Jendrzejewski, as part of Bath Flash Fiction Award’s inaugural Novella-in-Flash competition in 2017.

Structure/Style: 19 chapters, each one 1-3 pages long and each a full-fledged scene or story. We encounter a small ensemble cast of characters – the parents, three sisters, two neighbours – via a first-person narrator (one of the sisters) and occasional chapters presented from other characters’ third-person POV. Written in classic “novella-in-flash” mode: a brief book of self-contained chapters that link to suggest a broader tapestry, namely the community (and history) of one family.

What can novella-in-flash writers learn from this book?

(1) Certain Plot Events as “Obsessions” – Wilkerson uses an interesting device of recurring references to the younger sister’s death on a lake and to red paint splashed on the steps of the mother’s art studio. These feature repeatedly in the midst of chapters ostensibly devoted to other topics, as if they are traumas that the novella is obsessed with. The novella, of course, need only inform the reader once of these two events, but instead it mentions them repeatedly. It’s a bold technique that subverts accepted practice, since it’s generally understood that individual stories within a novella-in-flash don’t need to repeatedly re-establish the plot context. But Wilkerson’s innovation has a powerful effect that has nothing to do with plot. It’s a form of haunting. Gradually the reader accumulates information about the context for the family tragedy. It’s wonderful sleight of hand, and an object lesson in how to tackle fraught emotional trauma in a story – as Emily Dickinson wrote: “Tell all the truth / but tell it slant.” It is also done without melodrama or cheap sentimentality.

Invitation: Might there be certain elements of your story material that haunt your characters, such that they can’t help but keep thinking/talking about them? Might these, in a productive way, be obstacles inhibiting your characters from moving forward, struggles that they must overcome?

(2) Haunted by a Location – One landscape in particular – the lake – recurs as a liminal location several times. At least three (or arguably four) significant, life-changing events and transitions happen there during the story. This is another way in which the novella is haunted – not just by the sister’s death or the splashed red paint, but also by a location. It’s a good example of making the most of a setting in a story.

Invitation: Might there be one particular location in your story where major transitions and experiences repeatedly occur? A landscape/setting that haunts your novella as a liminal place of change?

(3) Secrets and Point of View – The novella uses an ensemble cast tethered by one main narrator at the centre. This narrator delivers five chapters in a self-addressed, second person “you”; the rest of her chapters she narrates using a first person “I” (which often expands into a plural “we” when recounting family stories, especially of the sisters). We also get to know a select number of secondary characters, via occasional chapters from their third-person POV (one by the father, two by a sister, one by a neighbour). These flashes take us away from the central narrator and help to build our understanding of events by uncovering unexpected truths – overall in the novella, at least four or five things are revealed that are secrets unknown to some of the characters. In another writer’s hands the chapters in other people’s POV might seem like arbitrary jumpcuts, merely functional chapters designed to fill in information from the plot. However, since Wilkerson focuses on several key events in the distant past, it often feels like the novella is not moving forward methodically to fill in gaps but proceeding via an intricate spiral or web, as we gradually go deeper into the story situation. There is nothing laboured about the writer’s unfolding of events – we discover the facts of the family situation in a very natural way, almost as if by accident. The novella treats its storyline as a series of important secrets to be revealed, and the intricate and gradual unfurling of these is achieved with breathtaking skill.

Invitation: Might you embed a small number of significant “secrets” within your story material – events, facts and hidden stories that some characters know and other characters do not? How might you reveal these to the reader gradually, in an interesting way, such that the novella becomes a process of gradual revelation?

Flexible Novella-in-Flash self-study course: https://novella-in-flash.com/4-module-short-course/

What Novella-in-Flash writers can learn from Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays (1970)

Play it As it Lays by Joan Didion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970; London: 4th Estate, 1998), pp.214

Subject Matter – Maria Wyeth is an actor, in her 30s, divorced from film director Carter Lang, and headed into a whirl of prescription drugs, alcohol and anorexia in a 1960s Hollywood of intoxicated, B-list parties and disillusioned romantic liaisons. The novel primarily describes the events that led up to Maria being treated in hospital following a breakdown, from which location she narrates the introductory chapter. It explores how Maria experiences “peril, unspeakable peril, in the everyday.” (p.100). An appealing cocktail of ennui, glamour, tragedy and spiky dialogue, depicting life on the margins of the movie industry. One of the classic novels – Time magazine included it in its list of the top 100 novels of all time.

Structure/Style – Compared to many “classic-form” novellas-in-flash, Play it As it Lays feels particularly novel-like. Over 200 pages, there are 87 chapters, varying in length from half a page to six pages. Some are impressionistic moments; others run in sequence, picking up where the previous one left off. Thus, not all the chapters are fully developed to become self-standing stories, and a narrative momentum builds that makes it feel close to being a continuous novel. Many chapter openings establish a strong sense of “joined-up-ness”, e.g.: “In November the heat broke, and Carter went to New York to cut the picture, and Maria still had the dream.” (p.98) The first chapter, a kind of prologue or introductory piece, runs to eight pages. It is written in the first person, as Maria recovers in hospital in Los Angeles. There follow two brief chapters also in first-person POV (spoken by other characters), and then there are 84 numbered chapters in close third person POV, following the events in Maria’s life leading up to her time in hospital. Even the longer chapters are broken into discrete sections or scenes, and chapter length overall feels deliberately varied– short follows longer, longer follows short etc. Dialogue, often full of conflict or tension, is used frequently throughout. Towards the end of the novel, the linear narration of Maria’s pre-hospital experiences breaks up slightly, as Didion deliciously delays (and prepares us for) a key plot event.

What can novella-in-flash writers learn from this book?

(1) Significant Events – Play it As it Lays is particularly dominated by two major plot events. The first begins to be announced on p.47 – roughly one quarter of the way through. At once, the whole novel’s energy lifts, and something is urgently at stake in the main character’s life. This plot ingredient casts a shadow over the next 100 pages. One could argue that that until p.47, the novel has almost meandered through the main character’s relationships and situation. Suddenly now, it catches fire, and everything changes. The other major plot point is actually referred to in passing in the second chapter, but isn’t shown happening in real-time until the penultimate chapter. Again, it’s a momentous event, and it retrospectively changes how we interpret the whole novel. Everything else – the divorce from her husband Carter, the casual affairs, the descents into drunkenness and self-medication, Maria’s half-hearted Hollywood career, her eventual breakdown and hospitalisation – does matter, but these ingredients almost feel like supporting context for the two major plot points that shape the meaning of the novel.

Invitation: Depending, of course, on the kind of novella-in-flash/novel-in-flash you want to write, might you include one or two seismic plot events that irrevocably change the course of your story? And is there enough at stake yet, in your story situation (again, depending on the aims of your novella)?

(2) Cast of Secondary Characters – Didion locates her central character in a web of relationships – there are at least eight significant secondary characters, each with desires that compete with Maria’s, values that conflict, and motives that tug her in different directions. Didion keeps three prominent secondary characters close to the centre, repeatedly returning to their relationship with Maria over time. But at least five other minor characters still have a significant effect upon Maria. Each of them is prodding her, provoking her, telling her how to live or wanting something from her. Dynamic energy arises from this – and it’s a testament to Didion’s skill that, within 200 pages, she conjures Maria’s network distinctly and somehow keeps a grip on all the moving parts.

Invitation: Do your secondary characters crave something from your main character(s), and if so – what? Without overloading your novella, would it help to establish some conflicting desires in your story situation, a tangle of motives and values surrounding your main character(s)?

(3) Dysfunctional main character? – Maria Wyeth is a zone of turmoil: a jumble of addiction, anorexia, sleeplessness, and avoidance of responsibility in work and relationships. She goes AWOL while filming, she vomits drunkenly into a friend’s lap, she casually sleeps with people without being fully present to the experience. Didion is a writer unafraid to explore demons and dysfunctionality, and yet she still salvages something positive and admirable in Maria by the close of the book.

Invitation: What elements of vulnerability could you explore within your main character(s)? Would it help the story to make them damaged, in some way? Alternatively, if your characters do feel like a wreckage, what positive qualities can you salvage?

Flexible Novella-in-Flash self-study course: https://novella-in-flash.com/4-module-short-course/

What Novella-in-Flash writers can learn from Calum Kerr’s The Audacious Adventuress (2014)

The Audacious Adventuress, by Calum Kerr (Southampton: Gumbo Press, 2014)

Subject Matter: A comical adventure about Lucy Burkhampton, who is repeatedly thrust into situations of extreme peril and risk of death at the hands of her nemesis Lord Diehardt. Lucy was due to inherit the Burkhampton estate following her father’s death, but Lord Diehardt has other ambitions. The book primarily offers the reader scenes in which the protagonist’s life is threatened and she must enact an archetypal “thrilling escape from death”, over and over again – dangling from a cliff-face, hanging onto the rear door of a moving train, locked in a crate on a sinking ship, tied to a burning rope above the stage of an opera in mid-performance, etc etc.

Structure/Style: 36 short chapters, following the formula of heroic adventure stories. Written as a brisk, readable, good-natured romp, it deliberately toys with the genre tropes of mid-20th century radio or film serials. Each story is prefaced by a recap (beginning “Last time:…”), then delivers a short scene of Lucy’s life under severe threat, followed by an (often far-fetched or miraculous) escape, and closing with Lucy falling into a perilous situation once more. Endings are self-conscious “cliffhangers”, with the editor addressing the reader and speculating as to what might happen next: “Will our plucky girl be consumed in a fiery inferno? […] To find out, come back next week…” The “editor” (Kerr, of course) also becomes increasingly tired of the absurd lengths to which the story is going to keep placing Lucy in peril then rescuing her. The chapter numbers run from 1 to 199, so the 36 parts of the story Kerr provides are merely a partial account of Lucy’s adventures: there are “plot holes” everywhere, as we see the protagonist abandoned in one impossible situation after another, only to find out, in the next section, that she survived (but with precious little explanation given as to how!). In other words, exactly half of the book’s story is unresolved. The author revels in not bothering to fill in this information – “[s]uggesting plotlines that the reader never actually sees is a lot of fun to write”, Kerr says in an Afterword. And he revels, too, in exploiting as many clichéd conventions as possible in this affectionate and breathless literary parody. Our heroine is an intrepid solo adventurer; the antagonist is villainous yet charming, etc etc. The book is tremendous fun, as is Kerr’s equally remarkable sequel The Ultimate Quest (2014). (NB Kerr is one of the pioneers of the UK flash fiction scene, establishing National Flash Fiction Day in 2012.)

What can novella-in-flash writers learn from this book?

(1) Connective Tissue: Most novella-in-flash chapters tend to start in a new situation, place or time, with fewer seamless links joining the dots between chapters than would occur in a more traditional, continuous novel. And each chapter tends to create a world of its own, offering up a meaningful standalone story experience – with the overall effect of the book seeming like a “constellation” of stars (Beckel and Rooney, eds., My Very End of the Universe: five novellas-in-flash and a study of the form (Brookline: Rose Metal Press, 2014) pp. VIII). However The Audacious Adventuress radically subverts this model by drawing connecting lines between the individual stars of each story. It spends time at the beginning of each chapter explicitly referring back to preceding elements of the plot, as if to remind the reader of what has happened so far. And each story ending looks ahead and imagines what might follow, preparing the reader for what comes next. It’s the very opposite of what the novella-in-flash has usually done, and it’s done very self-consciously (as an adventure serial parody). One strategy it does borrow from the “classic-form” novella-in-flash is to set each story at some distance in time from the next – the narrative is a gap-ridden patchwork of fabric with holes in between – indeed there are arguably many more “gaps” here than a novella-in-flash would often have. Kerr is therefore toying with the very idea of the connective tissue existing between stories – deliberately leaving big plot-holes (and drawing the reader’s attention to these absences), then also stitching together what remains of the piecemeal design using thin, joining threads (each chapter’s “preface” and “cliffhanger conclusion”). Meg Pokrass’s analogy of the novella-in-flash as a “crazy quilt” composed of scraps of cloth (Beckel and Rooney, p.47) is here taken to an extreme – the scraps placed some distance apart, with the tiniest threads of cotton left dangling between them.

Invitation: How will you deal with the gaps between each star in the constellation of your novella? Will you join the dots between chapters, referring back to other parts of the novella? Or will you make each chapter stand up on its own, as self-contained a story as it can bear to be? The latter may be the dominant, classic method, but Kerr’s novella shows us that the novella-in-flash can be approached in different ways.

(2) Page-turning effect: Part of the enjoyment of this publication (by the independent publisher Gumbo Press), is that it is written as an extreme parody of the mainstream/commercial potboiler mode. It is informed by a postmodern awareness of literary conventions, and generally moves at extreme high pace towards its climax via a series of cliffhangers. Most “classic-form” novellas-in-flash published to date haven’t operated this way – they proceed more gradually and in a more straightforwardly literary style, at times lingering on moments of epiphany, lyricism or revelation, even encouraging us not to turn the page, but inviting us to pause and “celebrate small moments” instead. Kerr is engaged in deliberately different game here, using preposterously action-driven storylines and an energetic style in the sentences to propel the reader onwards quickly.

Invitation: Kerr may be adopting this mode for comic, playful purposes. But for the writer-as-reader, this novella invites us to ponder questions of pacing and tension. At what pace do you want your novella to proceed? Are there times when you want to speed the reader onwards – perhaps towards a dramatic climax? Are there times when it would be good to slow the story down? Do you want your novella to grip the reader with action and a strong sense of drama – with an engine of conflict between a protagonist and an antagonist in the foreground? Or are you aiming for a quieter effect? There are no right or wrong answers here, only strategies and style choices for you to explore, ones that will influence which kinds of readers (and indeed publishers) your novella will appeal to…

Flexible Novella-in-Flash self-study course: https://novella-in-flash.com/4-module-short-course/

What Novella-in-Flash writers can learn from Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation (2014)

Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill (London: Granta Publications, 2014), 177 pp.

Subject matter – A fraught novella about infidelity. The wife/mother who narrates the novella is a creative writing tutor, the husband/father is a sound archivist; other characters include a philosopher and an almost-astronaut, and all four of these roles feed into the rich themes of the text. The story arc moves from married bliss, to the rupture caused by an unexpected adultery, and ultimately towards an uneasy resolution – compromised, saddened by wisdom, and authentic to the realities of adulthood.

Structure/Style – 46 chapters, each consisting of a haphazard collage of fragments, sequenced through free-wheeling free association and jarring juxtapositions. The narrator leaps from thought to thought, letting loose a torrent of observations, incidents, quotations, aphorisms and facts. Some of the fragments have the compressed narrative arc of micro-fictions, offering urgent present-tense reports to describe the characters’ actions; others are simply single-sentence quotations from philosophy and literature, or information from science and astronomy. Sometimes the material flows in a continuous narrative stream; more often, Offill places disparate material side by side, sparking it like tinder and flint. A devastating implication about infidelity might be followed by a quotation from Yeats. Initially the novella moves briskly through incidents as the narrator’s daughter ages rapidly, then as the plot rises towards its crisis, the story slows down to linger over narrative details.

What can novella-in-flash writers learn from this book?

(1) “Stream of Fragments” – A classic novel-/novella-in-flash might more obviously be a sequence of self-standing stories, but it’s becoming increasingly popular to publish mainstream novels like this one, where the writing is a patchwork of fragmented paragraphs, sometimes as short as one sentence long. We might categorise this as the “novella-in-fragments” form. In Dept. of Speculation, where extra meanings are sparked by laying different types of content side by side, the rapidly changing subject matter is suggestive of a disorganised life teetering out of control. It’s worth comparing Offill’s novella to Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever? (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2001), a book which is more regularly categorised as a bona fide novel-in-flash. Actually, in terms of the style of the content – fragments, microfictions, almost-aphorisms, and the feeling of a chaotic life represented on the page – the two books have a lot in common. But Offill’s book is marginally less scattergun and doesn’t use numerical separators between fragments, so it reads more like a fluid and continuous stream of material.

Invitation: Consider how titles, numerical separators, and also page breaks (or the absence of page breaks), affect the reader’s experience of your material. Dept. of Speculation offers a more “continuous” vision of the “novella-in-fragments”. Could you use “fragments” in your own novella, and if so in what way?

(2) Point of View Shift – This is another novella that uses Point of View in an innovative way. Initially it is written in the first person, and addressed to a “you” – it is confided to the imagined audience of the husband. Then the “you” becomes “my husband” in chapter 9, a small, third-person distancing device. Exactly half-way in terms of chapters (Ch 23 out of 46), the entire story shifts into the third person, with the narrator talking about herself as “the wife”. It is as if the action has become a fable that she’s narrating. Increasingly we are aware of the story as a text the narrator (as a creative writing professor) is exploring, including, in chapter 32, the critical feedback she would give herself about her storytelling. We become vividly aware that the narrator may be selectively cherry-picking narrative details – is her testimony an objective record? It’s a clever shift. Only in the final chapter does the first-person “I” narrator return – as though, in the main, she couldn’t face talking about infidelity in the first person.

Invitation: Although it may be problematic to apply Offill’s point of view innovations directly to our own story situations, Dept. of Speculation does prove that point of view can be played with in unusual ways. If you find an interesting innovation or shift in this respect, and it fits well, it might enrich your material. How might you experiment playfully with point of view as you produce your novella?

(3) Thematic Richness – This is a novella in which the characters’ “work identities” have a huge influence on the text. This holds true for the two main characters – the wife (a creative writing professor) and the husband (a sound archivist) but also the two most significant secondary characters – a philosopher and a man who didn’t quite manage to be an astronaut, who is writing a book about space travel. All four work identities influence the fragments of material that the narrator chooses to include – she throws in facts about sound, about philosophy and about space travel, and there are frequent quotations from literature, philosophy and science. We only really know these other characters through the narrator, especially as there are very few scenes of direct dialogue in the novella. It feels like everything is being mediated through the female narrator, and the narrator has absorbed these other characters’ worldviews and their subject interests, and then the text of the novella is embodying them as a result. The book becomes, to some extent, a tapestry of facts and quotations. Although the narrative of infidelity is itself relatively simple, it feels like Offill is tapping into a deep wisdom about the world, wrapping layers of profoundly enriched context around the basic story.

Invitation: Following Offill’s lead, consider your characters’ “work identities” in particular (NB this may not be formal paid work – this may be as a parent or relative, student, volunteer, carer etc). How might the details and complications of their relationship to “work” (or “responsibilities”, if you prefer) influence the rich, meaningful tapestry of your novella, in terms of the different worldviews we encounter?

Flexible Novella-in-Flash self-study course: https://novella-in-flash.com/4-module-short-course/