Clients quite often ask me for recommendations of novellas-in-flash featuring speculative, fantastical, magical realist, or science-fiction elements.
The honest answer is that — as far as I’m aware — there have been only a few so far.
This means there’s a huge opportunity for all you writers out there!
An opportunity to be pioneering the growth of a developing genre within the novella-in-flash — because, as you’ll know from the market for more traditional genre novels, speculative / fantastical / magical realist / science-fiction styles of writing are enormously popular and have very devoted audiences who are always hungry for new books!
So here’s a list below. While the list may be short, there are some superb books here.
If you personally know of others that could/should be in this list, please comment or let me know, and I’ll add them to the record here…
This email is part of a regular blogpost series containing writing prompts, novella-in-flash book reviews, workshop/mentoring offers, and other announcements related to all things novella-in-flash.
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William James, brother of novelist Henry James and diarist Alice James, was a leading 19th century philosopher and one of the founders of modern psychology.
In his book The Principles of Psychology(1890), a publication that is often credited with making the idea of “stream of consciousness” more widely known in Western culture, one of the things he does (in Chapter 10) is name and describe three distinct aspects of human experience: the material self, the social self, and the spiritual self.
Story writers can have fun exploring fictional characters via the triple lens of these categories, and using them to uncover new insights:
(a) The material Self, for example…
the body
clothes
possessions
home
family (as we share common genes)
things we have made
Invitation: When you consider the material aspects of your main characters’ lives (as listed above), what specific details of their experience might you newly identify and describe? Feel free to indulge all five senses, where relevant, as you write, and include sensory details. Try writing a good page or two (or three!) of notes that you might use as texture informing (explicitly or implicitly) the stories/chapters themselves later on.
Notice how Hills describes the narrator discovering new things about the character, through the objects she encounters in his room. The narrator feels she ought to have known these things already, and her sense of the other person is therefore destabilised. Notice too, how before the microfiction reaches its end-point, the narrator starts envisioning the other person within the context of the objects in the room, and then how the real-world situation suddenly changes for the narrator, in a surprising shift of the action. Also note how the key physical object of the mixtape in the story is naturally imbued with an emotion that has parallel relevance for the wider story context, as a mixtape is associated with nostalgia, obsolescence (of a technological kind), and relationship (since mixtapes are often given as gifts), and sothe emotions inherent in the object have resonance for the overall themes of a story about loss.
Invitation: Pick one of the following writing prompts and create a new scene/story, or (if you prefer) try sketching out some “notes-towards-a-story”:
Today’s blogpost develops the recent theme of going further with the settings you use in your writing. We’ll approach the topic from a fresh angle by exploring the work of the Anglo-Irish poet Michael Longley, to see what can be learned from him more generally for writing about physical environments of all kinds. (NB See here and herefor two other recent blogposts about making the most of settings in your writing).
For those who don’t know Longley’s writing – a brief intro…
Longley was born in Belfast in 1939 and worked in Belfast, Dublin, and London before retirement. Along with Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and others, he has been celebrated as part of the remarkable cohort of Irish writers revitalising poetry from the 1960s onwards. Although all of his books contain outstanding poems, his collections during the period from Gorse Fires (1991), through The Ghost Orchid (1995), to The Weather in Japan (2000) are – for this reader at least – particularly worth seeking out, as they contain perhaps his most consistently brilliant work. He is known for his poems responding to The Troubles, for his translations of Homer and other classical poets (often speaking obliquely, as in this example, about modern conflict through ancient texts), and for writing about the First World War (in which his father fought), but if there is one subject he has returned to even more frequently than all of these, it is the physical landscape of Carrigskeewaun, in County Mayo in the West of Ireland, where Longley – throughout his life – has made regular visits to stay in a remote cottage belonging to a friend.
Michael Longley, Collected Poems (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007)
Over the years of reading Longley’s poetry, I’ve returned to his poems about Carrigskeewaun repeatedly, wondering what it is that beguiles me on the page and keeps me reading. What is it that elevates these poems beyond the routine tropes of pastoral poetry?
In what follows, I’m aiming to uncover some strategies we might apply to writing about landscapes and locations of all kinds, including the urban…
Invitation #1: As writers, whether we are most drawn to write about rural or urban settings, we could be inspired by Longley’s example to become fascinated by a particular kind of territory, and to root our writing somewhere recurringly (even if, as with Longley, it’s not where we live). What might happen in our writing if we explore a particular type of physical situation especially deeply? What might that specific location be in your case? Or maybe instead it’s a type of location you’re fascinated by – ports, airports, churches, mosques, rivers, bridges, hospitals, nightclubs, schools, factories, farms, solar farms, and so on. How might you develop what might be called a “productive obsession” in your writing?
(2) Another part of the answer, for me, is that Longley scrutinises landscapes with the triple-eye of a botanist, ornithologist, and zoologist all rolled into one. In his poems he is a model of good practice for “the writer as witness”, a mindset and responsibility that transcends subject matter, genre or literary form. Such a detailed witnessing and understanding of landscape, including a deep knowledge of its associated shapes and vocabulary, is not a skill we are born with – it’s something acquired through diligent study and a lifetime of accumulation. Longley, for example, gained much of his knowledge of botany via a 40-year friendship with the painter of orchids Raymond Piper.
Invitation #2: How might we as writers become more devoted to learning about the physical world we inhabit? If you’re interested in urban spaces, might you research cities as a physical phenomenon? Or the architecture of individual buildings? If you’re interested in rural places, how might you be inspired to strengthen your knowledge of natural forms? In short, how might we all delve even more deeply into the phenomena of the physical world, as Longley has?
(3) Furthermore, Longley is particularly good at manifesting competing impulses within his depictions of landscape: abundance and entropy, tenderness and brutality. Time and time again, his descriptions of settings contain shades of nuance, doubleness and complexity.
And here, in ‘Between Hovers’, what could be purely a bleak narrative about a dead badger and a dead otter is suspended within a balanced framework that is “floodlit… [with] filament[s] of light… [and] sparkle…”, includes reference to “a spring tide”, and moves towards a closing image suggestive of transcendence.
Invitation #3: Where might you find opportunities, in your own writing, to remain open to complexity, by finding in your landscapes/locations contrasting aspects of both vitality and decay? Or a fluidity between gentleness and harshness?
(4) Lastly, Longley often places human experience within the context of the natural, or frames the natural world within the context of the human. He does this by effortlessly setting human and natural objects side by side within his landscapes, or else by deploying particular verbs or nouns as metaphors to make the natural and the human seem even more deeply intertwined.
Here, in ‘The Strand’ (part of the ‘Carrigskeewaun’ sequence again), the trails of a bird, children, and the narrator are all shown to be physically interconnected with and adjacent to the sand dunes and the seashore:
”….a sanderling’s tiny trail, The footprints of the children and my own Linking the dunes to the water’s edge…”
And here, in ‘The Leveret‘, we can see Longley toying with individual word choices to mix up ideas of the human (or human-built) and the natural: the conception of a baby is a “fire-seed”, young birds are a “sootfall”, and the leveret takes “breakfast”, an image that seems, in this context, very humanised.
Invitation #4: In your own writing, might you experiment with juxtaposing/blurring the natural and the human, through your choices of objects, symbols and metaphors? Might you, for example, experiment with using verbs that humanise your physical settings, or make your descriptions of people seem more animal-like, in an artful way?
One Final Invitation: In the coming days, why not carve out a bit more time to linger with Longley’s poems (there are some further links below…) and then return to your novella-in-flash (or any other writing project – a short story, a set of poems, a novel), and explore ways to transform your writing. In what new and subtle ways might it become a treasure house of encounters with the physical world that surrounds us…
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Recently I’ve been considering this principle more than ever before: the action of writing about place is always political. This truth perhaps feels like it has even greater and more tragic resonance in our current era, where landscapes are territories strongly contested by multiple forces, yet it has manifested in so many different ways throughout centuries of world literature.
Some writers already have an inherently politicised relationship with landscape because of their personal connection to a particular location – whether as a birthplace, or as “home turf”, somewhere that a person has rooted, or somewhere our ancestors were rooted.
Not all writers feel they have a readily personal link to physical landscapes that contain deeper, political resonances. Depending on where we live or have lived, we might feel like the physical settings we’re most connected to are too ordinary.
It’s a surprising truth that what feels like ordinary territory to one person can be astonishing or revelatory to an outsider who isn’t familiar with that place. Our ordinary can be someone else’s extraordinary, because sometimes we overlook what’s notable about the everyday world that surrounds us. Sometimes, too, our families or communities connect us to landscapes in deeper, more entangled ways than we conceptualise when we’re simply going about our daily life.
And ultimately every landscape, whether rural or urban, is inscribed with both a natural and a human history that is fundamentally political – not just the history of animal and plant life that has flourished or waned there, but also the history of our human relationship with that land, and how we have interacted with it over time (through agricultural machinery, or buildings, patterns of mapping, or physical sculpting and reshaping, or sometimes merely in the act of walking through it). Landscape in this way becomes more than only a physical territory: it contains layers of history, politics (local, national, or international), and story.
Invitation #1: Here are some questions to get you exploring your own personal connection to landscape and place. I invite you to find a spare 30-40 minutes or so (this weekend or at another time), and write out some reflections in response. And then whatever themes emerge, be open to the possibility of new ideas percolating their way into your current writing projects:
In what kinds of environments have you lived and worked? (In other words, the places where you have rooted, to a greater or lesser extent.)
To what kinds of environments have you travelled?
Do you consider yourself a rural or urban person, in your upbringing?
Which type of environment – rural or urban – has the stronger or more positive associations for you now, and why?
To what extent do you consider yourself rooted (or rootless)?
What are the racial, ethnic or national identities that have shaped your experience of place, and in what ways?
How have broader environmental issues (climate, food, wildlife, housing etc) affected your life, or the lives of people you know personally?
How would you describe your relationship to the planet as a whole?
What are the key incidents and influences from your life through which place or environment have had an impact upon your identity?
TIP: As well as containing story, a landscape will also inevitably carry layers of emotion. As Graham Mort has written, in his brilliant essay ‘Landscapes and Language’: “A landscape poem or descriptive prose passage is always more than pure description… Landscapes in this respect are psyche-scapes, metaphors representing the yearnings and aspirations, hope, betrayal, anger and bitterness that we see in them.” (from The Creative Writing Coursebook, Julia Bell & Paul Magrs (eds.), (London: Macmillan, 2001), p.180). So as you start making notes about landscapes you’re personally connected to, notice any feelings associated with them, as well as simply trying to witness their physical existence. (If you notice challenging feelings arising, you have the freedom to decide to keep writing through the feeling until it transforms or subsides, or otherwise pause and distract yourself with another activity, chat to someone, or go for a stroll / get your body moving.)
Invitation #2: As a second activity this weekend (or at a more convenient time for you), I invite you to go out into your local landscape with a notebook or smartphone and practise the following two-part exercise as an act of witnessing: (a) observing the physical reality of things closely, and (b) finding vivid and specific language for capturing/evoking those physical things on the page. Consider the following categories of noticing, if they’re helpful:
(1) details of nature (incl. any interaction between “natural” and “human”) (2) architecture (incl. decorative vs. functional vs. culturally symbolic or meaningful; and manifestations of the passage of time within architecture) (3) people – as individuals and people in groups (e.g. why this person with these people as a group? clothes as a statement/unconscious signal; what is the person carrying and why? what are the person’s emotions? what kind of activity are they participating in?) (4) technology/equipment (its purpose, what materials is the technology using, how it might have been made, and by whom, and what effect does it have on its surroundings?)
Again, afterwards, be open to some of this observed material finding its way into your current writing projects…
Above all, have fun exploring the landscapes and locations you personally know. Consider them as if you were seeing the territory for the first time…
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An update for blogpost readers: Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022), has now received recognition in a sixth international book competition – this time winning its category in the Best Indie Book Awards 2023: Non-fiction: ‘How-to’ Books.
The craft guide provides a foundation for my mentoring here at novella-in-flash.com. I poured into it as much as I could concisely offer on the subject of writing fiction, and wrote it sustained by a long-nurtured enthusiasm for creativity generally and the art of writing in particular. I also tried to take plenty of time to care about small details of the reading experience as much as I could – with lots of help from beta readers and input from other writers – in the hope that caring about small details would make a difference to the manuscripts people seek to create through this book.
It’s been really heartening for me as a teacher and mentor to see how this craft guide has fared so far. I really appreciate the feedback shared with me by the book’s readers. You never really know, while writing a book, how it will turn out.
As well as providing a technical survey of the novella-in-flash form, the practical Workbook section of Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash is full of flexible exercises that can be applied to lots of different writing contexts. So you can use this book as a support while you produce short stories, individual flash fictions, memoir, and novels, not just novellas-in-flash.
You can read some of the reviews for the book below. If you don’t already have access to the book, I hope you might be tempted to buy a copy here. And perhaps, if you’re working on a novella-in-flash (or planning to begin one next year), you’ll be tempted to sign up for some mentoring support… Bookings are open for January 2024. You can send an enquiry for mentoring through this link.
“I know good teaching, and folks, this is it.” (Kendall Johnson at MacQueen’s Quinterly, read the full review here)
“[T]his brilliant guide… detailed, informative…I have never been so excited to start a workbook!” (Jonathan Cardew at Bending Genres, read the full review here)
“[V]ery much the printed equivalent of taking a focused MA on the topic of the novella.” (Judy Darley at the SkyLightRain blog, read the full review here)
“My copy is plastered in yellow stickies and I will be continually returning and delving into different sections of this craft guide again and again… think of it as a guide to writing good fiction and developing any narrative form.” (Tracy Fells at The Literary Pig blog, read the full reviewhere)
“[J]am-packed full of knowledge…this book finds that sweet spot where most writers would feel empowered…[A]ll-encompassing, motivational and in-depth.. worth its weight in gold…” (Matt Kendrick, read the full review here)
“There is magic in what Loveday says in his craft book.” (John Brantingham at The Journal of Radical Wonder, read the full review here)
“If you’re a fiction writer you should read this book.” (Sharon Pruchnik, read the full Goodreads review here)
“This book is a classic…a five-star resource that will help thousands of writers produce the best possible version of their creative work” (Lily Andrews, at Reader Views)
I’m very pleased to announce that the craft guide Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022), which forms the basis of my mentoring programme here at novella-in-flash.com, has now received recognition in a fifth international book competition – this time winning the Cadmus Book Award for ‘Non-fiction: Crafting/ Hobbies/How-To’ books. The book has also won the Reader Views Awards 2023 Silver Medal for Writing/Publishing, and was a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2023, National Indie Excellence Awards 2023, and International Book Awards 2023.
As well as providing a comprehensive guide to technical aspects of the novella-in-flash form, the practical Workbook section of Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash is full of innovative and flexible exercises that can be used to understand your characters and settings more fully, figure out the key turning points or the structure for your narrative, and much, much more besides. Most of the writing and thinking prompts are applicable for lots of different writing contexts. So you can use this book as a support while you produce short stories, individual flash fictions, memoir, and novels, not just novellas-in-flash. You can read some of the reviews for the book below. If you don’t already have access to the book, I hope you might be tempted to buy a copy here. And perhaps, if you’re working on a novella-in-flash (or planning to begin one next year), you’ll be tempted to sign up for some mentoring support… I now offer a variety of affordable options and pathways, including a 3-session “Novella-in-Flash Boost”. Bookings are open for January 2024. You can send an enquiry for mentoring through this link.
“I know good teaching, and folks, this is it.” (Kendall Johnson at MacQueen’s Quinterly, read the full review here)
“[T]his brilliant guide… detailed, informative…I have never been so excited to start a workbook!” (Jonathan Cardew at Bending Genres, read the full review here)
“[V]ery much the printed equivalent of taking a focused MA on the topic of the novella.” (Judy Darley at the SkyLightRain blog, read the full review here)
“My copy is plastered in yellow stickies and I will be continually returning and delving into different sections of this craft guide again and again… think of it as a guide to writing good fiction and developing any narrative form.” (Tracy Fells at The Literary Pig blog, read the full reviewhere)
“[J]am-packed full of knowledge…this book finds that sweet spot where most writers would feel empowered…[A]ll-encompassing, motivational and in-depth.. worth its weight in gold…” (Matt Kendrick, read the full review here)
“There is magic in what Loveday says in his craft book.” (John Brantingham at The Journal of Radical Wonder, read the full review here)
“If you’re a fiction writer you should read this book.” (Sharon Pruchnik, read the full Goodreads review here)
“This book is a classic…a five-star resource that will help thousands of writers produce the best possible version of their creative work” (Lily Andrews, 5-star review at Reader Views)
Vivid locations, deftly sketched, are part of the contract we establish with readers that our story is authentic. Especially in long-form fiction, they are one of the subtle supports for persuading the reader to suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in the story.
In one-off flash fictions, passages of description may sometimes be minimised, due to the compressed nature of that individual form. But in a novella-in-flash, your settings and locations can have a more meaningful role in building story and atmosphere, through the gradual accumulation of detail across chapters. Plotting out your settings and locations on a map can also be a fun way to bring to life the novella you are imagining.
It can be helpful to think about your settings as if they were characters or entities in their own right. What’s more, a piece of description is always more than just description. It reflects the emotions and inner world of the protagonist or observer. The way human participants relate to their physical environment contains dynamic narrative potential.
Vivid, specific and unusual details can make scenes feel alive. Flash fiction writer and editor Randall Brown refers to Charles Baxter’s concept of ‘defamiliarization’, encouraging writers to focus on what’s unfamiliar and atypical about a location, the aspects of a scene that seem idiosyncratic, rather than giving the reader predictable and predetermined details. (Randall Brown, Pocket Guide to Flash Fiction (Wynnewood: Matter Press, 2012), pp.128–136)
Invitation: Pick one of the following prompts and write a new scene/story for your novella, or (if you prefer!) try sketching out some “notes-towards-a-story”, perhaps via the creative mind-mapping technique that Liz Berry talks about in this article.
Take a character to a location/landscape that’s physically or emotionally dangerous or risky. How do they respond?
Show a character in a landscape that’s full of vitality/abundance or ruin/decay. How do they respond emotionally? How are they prompted to interact with it/act?
Write a story where a character crosses or fails to cross a boundary of some kind (to go somewhere off-limits, forbidden or hidden)
Show a character settling down or choosing to settle down somewhere and treating this place as “home”. What emotions do they feel?
Show a character escaping/trying to escape/wanting to escape. What are they needing to escape? How are they feeling? Are they successful?
Show a character returning to somewhere that’s very familiar to them, after a long time away. What emotions do they feel?
Show a character arriving somewhere that’s completely new and unfamiliar to them. What emotions do they feel?
If your character(s) live(s) in a city, take them to thecountryside (orvice versa). How do they feel in that new environment? How does it make them behave?
OPTIONAL: Consider using vivid, specific and unusual detail to bring to life the spirit of the location itself, and explore a character’s reaction to (or interaction with) the location. By the end of the flash, does the character realise something (about their environment, or a relationship or their status in/connection to the world)?
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Think about which aspects of character a pressurised/unfamiliar situation might uncover: (a) What flaws of theirs might be exposed? (b) Or in what ways might they thrive unexpectedly? (c) And what might then follow on from EITHER (a) OR (b), for the ongoing story?
Here are some methods for stretching your characters beyond their comfort zones:
Your character crosses a physical boundary of some kind (to go somewhere off-limits, forbidden or hidden) OR
A scene with a long-standing friend or a cherished relative is unsettled by a disagreement or conflict. Who loses their cool or gets rattled? What unexpected things are said?
Photo by Stewart MacLean on Unsplash
OR
Your main character meets a stranger. What’s the mood – awkward? tense? confusing? surprising? What unexpected or disconcerting things does the character notice about the stranger? What words, if any, are spoken by them? OR
An encounter with a wild animal – an encounter that unsettles them or alters them in some small way (NB the animal could be a pet, if that pet might unsettle/alter them somehow, or else a wilder creature) OR
Your character breaks a previously established rule (this could mean transgressing a social convention/code, or officially breaking the law) OR
Your character comes into conflict with institutional power in some form (you might think in terms of government, judiciary, healthcare, educational, corporate, and so on) OR
Write about a character and a taboo/fetish/obsession OR
A character having a supernatural encounter or unsettling spiritual experience OR
Your protagonist meets a person / couple / social group that’s verydifferent in some fundamental way from themselves. How does your character interact / react? Perhaps something awkward, tense, confusing or surprising happens? OR
Challenge your character(s) with a task, problem or role that’s beyond their current capabilities or natural skillset. What’s their unique response to this unique problem? OR
Throw your character(s) into an unfamiliar environment – perhaps one that feels incongruous for their core identity. (The classic “fish out of water” concept so beloved by Hollywood scriptwriters…) OR
An encounter with an enemy, rival or “frenemy”. Will it involve out-and-out conflict? Or will it be merely a banal encounter? Embarrassing? Awkward? Establish a mood that suits your overall story.
Invitation: Pick one of the above prompts and write a new scene/story for your novella, or (if you prefer!) try sketching out some “notes-towards-a-story”.
OPTIONAL EXTRA: Pick more than one prompt from the above list, and put your character(s) under pressure several times across multiple scenes!
OPTIONAL EXTRA: When describing performance under pressure, people sometimes distinguish between “comfort zone”, “stretch zone”, and “panic zone”. Do the implications of these categories have any bearing on the situation for your character? Or are there other relevant names you would use for “zones” you would push your character into?
OPTIONAL EXTRA: Ernest Hemingway, in an interview with Dorothy Parker for the New Yorker, once defined courage as “grace under pressure.” What one main quality does your character exhibit when under pressure here? Might it be something completely different from Hemingway’s concept of “grace under pressure”?
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Last weekend at the annual Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol, England, one of the workshops (‘A Blast from the Past!’) was an introduction to the historical novella-in-flash, a category of novella-in-flash that seems to be increasingly popular.
In fact, among all the literary genres that could possibly be adopted within the novella-in-short-short-stories, it seems to be historical fiction that is emerging as the most prevalent so far – more so than science fiction, fantasy, crime, magical realism, and so on (and leaving to one side for now the standard mode of contemporary realism in ‘literary fiction’, which has been the dominant mode).
At the Festival workshop, one writer wondered if there might be something specific to the way that the novella-in-flash ranges through time (by creating, between its short chapters, gaps and silences in the novel’s otherwise usually continuous plot), that has meant that the two kinds of writing – novella-in-flash and historical fiction – have fused together so keenly. It’s very possible!
We also discussed at the workshop some of the exciting opportunities and writerly challenges presented by this unique fusion of styles, and began to explore what happens when a novella composed of short-short stories combines with some of the conventions of historical fiction.
Here’s a provisional list of historical novellas-in-flash that have been published to date. It would be wonderful to curate a thorough online record – there are inevitably going to be a few gaps in this initial list below, so please comment below if there’s a historical novella-in-flash you know that’s missing. Especially if – forgive me! – it’s one that you’ve written! At the end of the list (actually two lists!) is a summary of some of the different approaches adopted by the writers of these books, based on examples published to date. If you want to write a historical novella-in-flash, it might be worth considering which of these different approaches appeals to you, so you’re aware of all your options before you get fully underway. And the blogpost ends with some writing/thinking prompts, some of which we shared at the workshop, in the hope that you have one or two epiphanies about potential subject matter for one of your own…
Different Strategies adopted by Historical Novellas-in-Flash:
Fictional characters influenced by and participating in historical events, i.e. supposedly active in the newsworthy current affairs of the time e.g. Homing (characters participating in World War II).
Using historical context as “background texture”, a vivid setting for the personal (fictional) story in the foreground, rather than a plot that’s entangled with the current affairs of the time – e.g. An Inheritance (a family’s history across the 20th century).
A mid-point between both these approaches above – characters directly influenced by the political structures and events of the time, without actively participating in the course of those national / international events, and with a primary focus on a story of personal challenges – e.g. Sybilla (a personal story unfolding in the shadow of the Berlin Wall when it divided East and West Germany).
Another option: using real people (well-known or neglected) from history as your protagonists experiencing known events from real-life, with and a high degree of factual accuracy in the novella’s plot – e.g. TheLast Days of the Union
A key choice: will you narrate the story as if it’s unfolding and happening in the past in real-time (e.g. Collected Works of Billy the Kid) or will you access the past via nostalgic or fraught reminiscence from the present (e.g. The Lover)?
Or move back and forth alternating between two stories: one in the present-day and one in the past – e.g. Liliane’s Balcony?
Or jumping deliberately “haphazardly” and fluidly across various years/eras (Superman on the Roof, the everrumble)
Consider also the option of using “recent history” (within last 30-40 years) – e.g. Stormbred, Lovelace Flats, Things I Can’t Tell Amma
Invitation: Which of the above approaches would you like to adopt for a historical novella-in-flash?
Possible Ways Forward:
(1) Research Interests Consider any research interests or personal hobbies that you have…
• Which non-fiction topics do you like reading about most or talking about most (think for example of magazine/online articles/news as well as books)? • Which aspects of culture or society are you most interested in? Could either of these be (re-)located within an interesting historical setting?
• Is there a famous person from the past who has often fascinated you? Or a historical era or community you’ve often been fascinated by?
(2) Family history • Is there an aspect of your own family’s roots that could be mined for an extended writing project – specifically something in your family’s background that links to a broader aspect of social history or a specific newsworthy event (local, national, or international)?
Identify a few ideas you’d be interested to research…
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