writing prompt – 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.

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 (and get access to exclusive discounts on Michael’s mentoring) here:

Novella-in-Flash Writing Prompt #12 – Encountering a Local Landmark

This month’s writing prompt is inspired by my recent visit to Sheffield, in the North of England but (as it turns out) only a few hours away from me by train. I was visiting Sheffield Hallam University, which is right in the heart of the city, and I was fortunate to have time to take in some nearby landmarks as well – particularly the well known and excellent Millennium Gallery, which hosts the Ruskin collection and three spaces for art exhibitions, and also Sheffield Cathedral and Graves Gallery (which is a gem of an exhibition space hidden away above the city’s Central Library, currently showcasing many drawings and sculptures by Sheffield-born George Fullard, among other artists). All this started me thinking about landmarks and public spaces…

Writing Prompt – Encountering a Local Landmark

• Take your main character(s) to a notable built landmark (somewhere local to the setting of your novella).

– Are there any rituals, traditions, or aspects of culture or history associated with that place? Might some of these inform the action that happens in the story OR what a character notices in the location?

– Are any parts of the landmark notable for being in a state of renovation, development, or repair? Are any elements of the natural world intermingling with the built environment? Is it a meeting point? Or a place for people to find sanctuary? Or is it a place for passing by/through? Are there any striking visual aspects that inspire, uplift, or create a sense of awe/wonder? Or are there any aspects of the landmark that seem strange, off-kilter, or unsettling?

– What is your main character’s relationship to this landmark? How do they feel about it, how often do they encounter it (and in what context/with what motive), and what does it mean to them personally? How does that compare with the experience of other people who encounter this landmark – is the main character’s relationship to it typical or atypical?

– In this flash fiction, be sure to allow something to happen, something that creates a sense of an event unfolding in time – even if it’s only a very small incident, or an action witnessed.

– Let all this material lead the character towards an insight – about the world, their relationships, or themselves.

Sheffield Central Library and Graves Gallery

Kingdom of the Blind #4 & #8 (2008), by Hew Locke, Graves Gallery

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 #11 – ‘In the Land of Plenty’

The following flash fiction – the superb ‘In the Land of Plenty’, by Jayne Martin – tells the story of a series of repeated actions over the course of one day. A woman who sleeps in mounds of garbage, at a landfill site under a motorway, spends her daytime gleaning scraps of food discarded by people in various situations – at a schoolyard, outside an Applebee’s restaurant, behind a Safeway supermarket.

The story consists of a chain of brief moments narrated as individual vignettes, like a montage of scenes from a short film. At the end of the story, the woman returns to her “refuge under the highway”, where, we have been told, she is not the only hungry, homeless person. She must guard her day’s spoils carefully. And then in the very the final section, the view changes to a more dispassionate, material description of landscape itself – “the procession of garbage trucks” and the gulls overhead.

The poignancy achieved through the writer accumulating these understated and succinct mini-narratives into one flash fiction is heartbreaking. Here’s the story:

http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/in-the-land-of-plenty-by-jayne-martin

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

• A person living/sleeping somewhere other than inside a building.

• A chain of repeated actions over the course of one day, with the recurring action each time happening in a slightly different situation. Let the chain of actions add up to something poignant, through the character’s yearning to repeat the action.

OR

• A flash fiction that features someone’s (unique) relationship to food (or consumption of any other goods or commodities). Let the piece evoke something about how we relate to contemporary capitalism or consumerism.

• A scene taking place under a motorway – where the location is a liminal space for something unsettling or unusual unfolding.

• A story in which, at the start, a character leaves a particular location, then returns to that same location again at the end of the story. In between departure and arrival, let the reader learn new things about the character (to do with their feelings, values, motives, life purposes, or life situation) such that we no longer see them as entirely the same person when they return to that location.

• A story where a character is given, out of compassion or solidarity, something by another person that the person would actually have wanted to keep for themselves.

• If it helps, use any of the following pictures as a way into the material:

Above all, “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 #10 – Separation

We’re very grateful at novella-in-flash.com this month to welcome poet and fiction writer Nora Nadjarian as a guest. Nora has this new writing prompt to share with you…

“The prompt is based on my poem ‘Separation’, one of my personal favourites. It was published a number of years ago in the Poetry on the Lake anthology of winning and highly commended poems.

Separation

The time came when they longed to return.
My father walked circles in the living room,
my mother packed and unpacked her hands.
We will leave when the rain stops, they said.
The rain in this country is so unkind.

The time came when they could no longer return.
My father sat in his remote corner of silence,
my mother leant into lamplight and threaded sighs.
We will leave when the rain stops, she said,
hummed intricate tunes, sewed invisible tears.

WRITING PROMPT

Step One:

First, think of a time you were separated from a place you love and/or people you are close to. Free-write about the impact this separation had on you and the people involved.

Step Two:

Then take one character (or more) from your novella and draft a flash about what would happen if they were unable to return to a place of importance to them (this can be a country, a town, a club, a building, even a house).

Think about consequences:

Does the separation have long-term effects?
What happens to the characters during this separation?

Finally, see if you can channel some of the feelings, ideas, and sensations from Step One into Step Two.”

Author Biography – Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus. She has been commended or placed in numerous competitions, most recently in the Live Canon International Poetry Competition 2020 and the Mslexia Poetry Competition 2021. Her work was included in Being Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), Capitals (Bloomsbury, 2017), Europa 28 (Comma Press, 2020) and Poetry International (2022). She was chosen to represent Cyprus in the Hay Festival’s Europa28: Visions for the Future in 2020. Her short fiction has appeared, among others, in Sand Journal, FRiGG, MoonPark Review, Lunate and was placed in the Reflex Fiction flash competition (2021). In 2022 her story “Doors” was selected by Kathy Fish to be included in the Wigleaf Top 50 Short Fictions of the year.

www.noranadjarian.com

Twitter: @NoraNadj

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 #9 – Scene Afterwards/Scene Beforehand

Try the following writing prompt (a version of which first appeared in Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022), and then at the National Flash Fiction Day website this summer.)

PART ONE:
Set aside some time and space to think laterally and imaginatively about your novella. Plan ahead for this, if necessary, by allocating time in your diary.

Focus your attention upon a favourite chapter from your novella (one that you’ve already written).

PART TWO:
EITHER:

(a) Imagine a moment/an action/an event taking place some time after the scene in the original flash, and write a new flash using the same character(s) as a foundation.

You might set the new scene in the same location or situation, but allow some time to have elapsed in between (it’s up to you how much), so it feels like this new flash is beginning afresh in a new moment.

OR:

(b) Imagine a moment/an action/an event taking place before the original flash. Again, write a scene using the same character(s) as a foundation, maintaining a time gap between the two pieces.

Across the source flash and the newly generated flash, allow the story/situation to move forward. Let one flash develop the ingredients that are in the other. Explore what’s beyond the margins of the source flash.

Depending on whether the new scene is set before or after, consider:

Where must the character(s) have been previously or inevitably go afterwards?
Who with?
Seeing, doing, and experiencing what?

Be as specific as possible when answering the above questions.

We might say the resulting pair of scenes creates ‘fragmented continuity’.

If you enjoy this tactic, consider using the process again (creating more ‘beforehand’ scenes or more ‘afterwards’ scenes). Do this as many times as feels right for your material.

PART THREE:
Cultivate a list of such ‘beforehand/afterwards scenes’ you could develop. Again, explore beyond the margins of the existing material, or follow up any threads (character, setting, plot situation, etc) you glimpse within it.

Begin some daydreaming…

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 #8 – ‘Natalie’

In the following flash fiction – ‘Natalie’, by Tai Dong Huai – a young character tells the reader about someone she knows, effectively giving a summary character portrait of that other person. This friend, Natalie Bilotto, is, according to one adult, “on the road to disaster” – and she is frequently involved in “misadventures”. Her personality seems to provoke and trigger the narrator, yet also seems to intrigue her and provoke curiosity. Here’s the story:

http://wigleaf.com/200810natalie.htm

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

• A child or young person who has to play with someone they’re a little bit afraid of. Or an adult who has to spend time with someone they’re a little bit afraid of. What is the (surprising/unexpected) outcome?

• Two characters who are friends but not really friends – “frenemies”, if you will. Explore the power dynamics and tension between them.

• A child or young person witnessing a parent/adult who’s a bird-watcher. (Or vice versa – an adult witnessing a youthful bird-watcher.) Let the bird-watcher’s behaviour seem a little strange…

• Some kind of hideout that’s not particularly effective as a hideout. Why has it been created? What are the consequences of the hideout not being effective?

• A narrative where the main events are triggered by any of the following actions. What happens next?
– flushing something unusual down the toilet;
– cutting off someone’s pony-tail;
– throwing stones at something that deserves to be protected;
– maliciously sticking something sharp onto an ordinary household/office/school object;
– boy scouts sitting round a campfire and pretending to “roast their weenies”;
– taking someone (or something) away in a pickup truck;
– a parent (or step-parent, or adoptive parent) sending a child away to get treatment for “adolescent behavioural disorders”;

• Your main character narrating an anecdote (or confiding in the reader) about an unusual person they know – perhaps someone, following Tai Dong Huai’s flash fiction, who is often involved in “misadventures”. Is their behaviour actually all that bad? What might be its underlying motive or cause? What does the relationship between the two people reveal about the main character?

• If it helps, use any of the following pictures as a way into the material:

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 #7 – Picture Prompts: The Alchemy of Image and Word

We’re very grateful at novella-in-flash.com this month to welcome Ali McGrane, author of the remarkable novella The Listening Project, a story of family dynamics and an exploration of hearing loss and its recovery. Its beautifully crafted flash fiction chapters often verge on prose poetry.

Ali has designed this month’s blogpost as an essay exploring how to use visual writing prompts in a novella-in-flash. See the end of the post for Ali’s full bio. Now let’s hear from Ali…

Doorways into other worlds

I used to avoid using visual prompts. It felt like pinning my imagination down. But I soon discovered what a productive and inspiring tool it could be to override my internal censor, free up my creative brain, unearth half-hidden associations, and, best of all, surprise myself. A picture lets you travel in time and space, and see differently.

Bluer Than Blue, published by Fictive Dream, originated from an ekphrastic exercise using The Good Weather Umbrella by John Wilhelm. And I’m currently editing a flash based on a photo of three elderly women which led me to a story I would never have found otherwise. It’s clear that visual prompts can be fantastically creative springboards. I’m sure you know this already!

But how might you use picture prompts specifically for your novella-in-flash? Well, I think this longer form gives you extra opportunity to exploit their potential, particularly in terms of enhancing and enriching character development. Writing a NiF often involves gathering flashes without necessarily knowing in advance how the overall narrative will be structured, or indeed much of the detail. This uncertainty lends itself very well to the use of image prompts as a wonderfully creative strategy for imagining and exploring new territory.

Some key points to consider:

An image doesn’t exist in isolation. You’re viewing it through your own individual lens, teasing out unconscious and conscious memories, associations, and assumptions. You can go with those, or interrogate them – either might be fruitful! Don’t be limited by the picture, use it as a spark.
Time is frozen in an image. It lets you hover inside the frame – like staring at a magic eye picture when it comes into 3D focus and you can look around in all directions – tricking your brain – almost able to touch what’s there, or see what might be just out of shot.
An image might help kickstart or uncover something at any point in the narrative, and you might find it unlocks your story in unexpected ways. Maybe choose something you’d never normally be drawn to. If you’re hooked, follow that trail. If it excites you, it will likely excite your reader!

Writing Exercise #1: Find a photo to help create an authentic character.

This can be especially beneficial if you’re struggling to bring someone to life, or they’re a different age, gender, or background from you. For The Listening Project, I found an image to use as Edith, Imogen’s mother, and it was very much a two-way process – finding a photo that fitted what I had in mind, and spinning more of her story from that visual prompt.

Select a photo that seems right for your character, and mesh together the image with what you already know about them. Look at their expression. Listen for their voice. Jot down any thoughts as you imagine the story behind the picture. Write without stopping for five minutes. Let any associations flow, however random, unexpected, or apparently irrelevant.

Let new ideas about this character’s background, personality, or desires, help to shape their trajectory in the story, or inspire a new chapter.

Tip: Use images from particular eras to anchor and enrich your writing. For example, photos from the 1960s helped me see Imogen’s elderly parents as young parents themselves.

**Photos from The UK Photo and Social History Archive**

Writing Exercise #2: Use an image to take you directly into a setting.

A painting or photo is likely to include elements you’d never have thought up yourself. A brilliant catalyst to invigorate your writing. Placing your character in an unfamiliar or unusual location can provide extra insights into what makes them tick, and spark fresh discoveries across the whole novella. How do they react and why? Don’t forget you don’t have to always like what they do. Let them surprise you!

Tip: Choose an image to take your character into a liminal space where reality might be a little out of kilter, a little out of time. Deserted stairwells, late night bus shelters, abandoned buildings, empty beaches. Have them step into an Edward Hopper painting. Freewrite for five minutes.

Ask questions. What doesn’t quite add up? What jumps out? What lurks in the background? Who or what is missing? Look for connections, but also contradictions, conflict. It can be tricky to develop contradictions in a character without it feeling contrived, leaning into cliché or stereotype. Tapping into unconscious responses to an image can throw up more subtle elements.

The great thing about writing a novella-in-flash is that, although you gather far more material than you need, it’s not too painful to discard some, knowing everything you write helps build this vital hinterland, adding depth and richness to the final cut. Images are a valuable addition to your writerly toolbox, and when every picture paints a thousand words, what have you got to lose?!

Check out these resources:

Read The Ekphrastic Review for inspiration. Take part in their regular workshops. Also see 7 Ways Visual Art Can Help You Write Better Flash Fiction by editor Lorette C. Luzajic (who would love to see more submissions from flash fiction writers).

Explore Google Arts and Culture, and sources like The UK Photo and Social History Archive, but beware of losing yourself down the rabbit hole!

Bio: Ali McGrane lives and writes between the sea and the moor in the south west UK. Her short fiction appears in anthologies and online, including Fictive Dream, Ellipsis Zine, Janus Literary, and Splonk. Her work has been longlisted for the Fish Flash Fiction Prize, shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and received nominations for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net and Best Microfictions. She is a reader at Fractured Literary. Her Bath-shortlisted novella-in-flash, The Listening Project, published by Ad Hoc Fiction, received a special mention in the 2022 Saboteur Awards. Find her @Ali_McGrane_UK, and at her website: https://alimcgrane.com/

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: