writing prompt – Page 2 – The Novella-in-Flash

Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #15 – The Power of Triangles

The following three-part flash fiction – ‘Clean Magic’, by the stellar Francine Witte – offers the reader three different windows into its story-world.

The first part, from the third-person perspective of a jilted male lover, includes a non-realist element that feels like it’s been drawn from the territory of dark fairy tales, or some magical realist novel that’s playfully grotesque or absurd. The physical damage described is so fantastically extreme that it transcends literal meaning – it is signalling that it is meant to be interpreted playfully and symbolically.

The second section, in the first-person voice of a female aggressor mentioned in the first part of the story, enriches part one by revealing, through backstory, that the woman’s violence (as reported by the man) was enacting a kind of “pay-it-forward” retaliation.

And the third and final perspective in the story, arguably the strangest, gives voice to a “magic[al]” rock. It explores some of the thematic material of parts one and two from an unexpected angle, and reaches for wisdom (“it has to pass in its own measured way”) in a way that transcends the limited views of the man and woman in parts one and two.

The three part structure makes the story-world “three-dimensional”, as though this story were a chair that wouldn’t be fully itself if it had only one or two legs. Each perspective feels different in dramatic terms, because each of the characters has their own motives, values, and needs. Each character is given, at the very least, a hint of a backstory. There is variation between first- and third-person voice. Each new part takes an element from the preceding section and develops it. And the first and third sections are notably strange, conjuring an uneasy atmosphere in the midst of the playfulness (even the talking rock, something that might otherwise seem like a device for comedy, is “trapped”, “trick[ed]”, and “gag[ged]”).

Triangles of connected characters are useful to introduce into our writing, perhaps especially for longer stories, novels, or novellas. The push and pull of power dynamics (loyalties, allegiances, rivalries, hierarchies) between three people can be in flux more often than feels possible with only two people. Harold Pinter’s play ‘The Caretaker‘ is a classic example of a writer exploring an unstable triangle – one in which a visitor to someone’s home is never quite sure where they stand, because they have to deal with two brothers whose relationship always seems to be changing.

Invitation: How might you introduce/develop a triangle of characters within your novella? What might be the shifting power dynamics between those three figures, over time?

Here’s Francine Witte’s story again to enjoy: ‘Clean Magic’

After reading Francine Witte’s flash fiction, adapt any of the following prompts to fit your novella’s storyline. Write a scene/chapter/story that features:

• Three radically different points of view. (As your focus, find and use a key moment in the action of the overall novella, a decisive event that merits investigation from multiple angles.) Give each character their own differentiated motives, values, and needs in relation to this decisive event. Conjure a backstory for each figure, even if only a small part of their backstory features in the final draft. OPTIONAL: Let the second and third perspectives gradually reveal something new about the limitations of the previous perspective(s), in terms of how they understand the decisive event.

• Write a story including an element of “cartoon violence” drawn from the world of folk/fairy tale, where bizarre, macabre injury, mutilation, blinding, or physical disabling, which would be tragic in all other contexts, is grotesquely commonplace as a deliberately playful or subversive device. (If it feels like this element might not suit your novella’s tone, consider featuring it within a dream or vision, which may helpfully lighten and justify the effect.)

OR

• Write a story featuring a non-violent retaliation that’s paid forward – where someone is passing the parcel of emotional suffering. OPTIONAL: Write it in such a way that the reader sympathises with both the victim and the aggressor.

OR

• Write a story entirely from the point of view of a non-human object – a spirit trapped within an inanimate physical form. OPTIONAL: this object is a witness to some of the human characters in the novella’s story-world, and it offers opinions about them, as well as foregrounding its own priorities.

• If it helps, use the symbolism of the following picture as a way into the material:

Above all, “make it new”!

More about Francine Witte’s writing here: FrancineWitte.com.

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Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #14 – Rich Complexity in One Breathless Sentence

The following flash fiction – ‘Mirror’, by Claire Polders – reads like a one-page novel, so neatly does it pack a lot into a small space. Its complex mix of action and reflection is also written as one sentence – a form that some flash fiction writers refer to as the “single, breathless sentence”.

A remarkable aspect of Polders’s story is the way that the story-world gradually shifts and modulates, even though the core action – the attempted stealing of a shoulder bag – is quite simple. (The simple clarity and boldness of that action, I think, help keep this piece grounded.) New clauses in the developing sentence introduce subtle moral shifts and character nuances as we keep reading. The young, wannabe thief is initially placed within a moral framework as the first-person narrator contrasts the thief with (a) children stealing wallets (b) teenagers picking pockets (c) herself. And then as we find out more about the narrator and her past (line 4 and line 12/13 in desktop view), we start to understand more about her feelings towards the young girl, and why she responds to this attempted theft in the way that she does. Polders makes sure we are on the narrator’s side – this “contender” who is a “gray-haired” woman with a scar “on [her] cheek” – such that we trust her judgement in the final words of the story.

Here’s Claire Polders’s story to enjoy:

miCRo: “Mirror” by Claire Polders

After reading Claire Polders’s flash fiction, adapt any of the following prompts to fit your novella’s storyline. Write a scene/chapter/story that features:

• One simple, stark action of misbehaviour or law-breaking (but not attempted theft as depicted in the example story), that is explored through present-tense reflections – either of the person on the receiving end, or of the perpetrator.

• One single, long “breathless sentence” with multiple clauses that explore a main character’s present-day relationship with one other person – perhaps a scene of action, gesture, and/or conversation. Among the multiple clauses, include fleeting references to an incident in the main character’s backstory/past, such that we find out more about their motivations and values in the present-day scene, and what’s at stake for them in this relationship.

OR

• A tense, awkward, confusing or surprising encounter between two strangers in any of the following settings:
– café terraces
– a church
– a canal
– a tram

OR

• A scene in which a character experiences unwelcome actions / behaviour from another person. Before the end, the main character realises that they see something of themselves within that other person, such that they feel a conflicted, nuanced mix of emotions – somewhere between tender empathy and harsh judgement.

• A day that begins worryingly badly for a main character. Let the character salvage some light from the events that unfold, such that they feel, by the end, that there are good omens for the day after all.

• If it helps, use the following picture as a way into the material:

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Above all, “make it new”!

More about Claire Polders’s writing here: ClairePolders.com.

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Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #13 – Entangled in a Network

The following flash fiction – ‘A Way’, by Sarah Freligh – is a brilliantly written example of a story that is more than one narrative at once.

At the very start, ‘A Way’ seems to focus on two young people, Cindy and the narrator, who are conspiring over stolen wine and gossiping about other schoolkids. Quite soon, as the wine “unlatches the hinge in our tongues”, the story neatly swings on its own hinge into another story: about Cindy’s mother. I won’t offer “plot spoilers” here; read it first to enjoy how the story unfolds from one superbly distinctive detail to another, from donkey suits, to a red-ribbonned Bible, to fruit speared through a plastic sword.

In the final six lines, even though the story is no longer ostensibly about Cindy, her name is mentioned three times. The “story-within-a-story” (about Cindy’s mother) leaves the reader understanding Cindy in a more three-dimensional and emotionally profound way. Through the device of a “story-within-a-story”, Freligh has radically enhanced the reader’s empathy for the teller of that story. And one might argue that there is a further layer – because it’s really the narrator telling a story about Cindy telling a story. So we might infer something, too, about narrator’s friendship with Cindy.

Now imagine how it would be if Cindy and the narrator were the two main characters in a novella-in-flash, and Cindy’s mother a secondary character. We would have learned a good deal more about one of the main characters simply through the author focusing most of a story on a secondary character – because the two people are entangled. The behaviour of the mother carries implications for how we understand the daughter.

Allowing certain chapters of a novella to seemingly focus on a secondary character’s life but still subtly say something about an entangled primary character gives a novella richness and variety. There are even whole novellas-in-flash (such as Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street) that focus on a large and varied ensemble cast primarily in order to reveal something about the central narrator who is witnessing that ensemble cast of secondary characters. The trick is that the reader always knows that the main narrator/protagonist remains our primary ongoing concern. The secondary characters do not take over too much.

In summary, then, it can be useful to consider your novella’s main character(s) as entangled in a network of loyalties and obligations to other characters. In what ways are your main characters put under pressure by the words and deeds/drives and needs of secondary characters – directly or indirectly? In what ways are characters invested in or affected by each other’s moral choices and actions, such that the values of one character impose upon the identity of another, creating friction or internal conflict for them? Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays is a useful example of a novel (written in short chapters, a kind of novel-in-flash in all but name) in which the main character is repeatedly put under extreme pressure by what the characters around her want.

Here’s Sarah Freligh’s story to enjoy:

from Fictive Dream, February 2023: ‘A Way’, by Sarah Freligh

After reading Sarah Freligh’s flash fiction, adapt any of the following prompts to fit your novella’s storyline. Write a scene/chapter/story that features:

• A main character gossiping about another character. Let the gossip about that second character lead us to a deeper understanding of the person doing the gossiping. Crucially, let the main character’s identity be implicated/entangled in what we hear the second character has been doing or saying.

• A main character encounters someone who works as a semi-professional in a given sport (whether golf, as in the story example, or any other sport), for example at local or regional club, but not at national level. Let the moral values of that semi-professional be questionable, in an interesting way.

OR

• A character engages in religious activity (for example joining a congregation, community, or prayer group, or undertaking a religious ritual) for some other more questionable motive. What are the consequences and what are the conflicts (internal/external) involved?

• A character’s tongue is loosened after they drink alcohol or take drugs. What secret do they reveal, or what verbal boundary do they cross?

• If it helps, use the following picture as a way into the material:

Above all, “make it new”!

More about Sarah Freligh’s writing here: SarahFreligh.com.

==================================

Don’t want to miss this blogpost series? Sign up to receive each new post direct to your email in-box (and get access to exclusive offers on mentoring) here:

Join 265 other subscribers

Are you working on a novella-in-flash? Or wanting to write one? Find out more about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: here.