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Free Flash Fiction: Stellar
Free Flash Fiction: Stellar
As flames inched closer, blistered her skin even before they touched it, Delphine recited their names over and over. The self-appointed council, the witch trial, all had happened so fast. And all she had focused on were their names. Father Harrison, Iona McCarthy, Archibald Sykes. Remembering was important. Focus was important. When finally the fire bit her flesh, she tilted her face…
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micro fiction → the nothing of the nowhere
A/N: And I think this last installment successfully tells us that the micro fictions are complete for now~ Feel free to take a look at all of the finished ones here.
Word count: 61
There is nothing. I am in a negative space, where everything is white and everything is black, and there is no in between. There is no sun, yet there is no moon. This is nowhere, but it is everywhere. I am nothing, in nowhere. But, I am everything, everywhere. And I am beginning to realize where I stand in the world.
micro fiction → priceless discovery, priceless river
A/N: I know I've been gone for a little over a week now, and I'm terribly sorry, I'm just trying to work out the characters for Heels and Stockings without giving too much away. Anyway, here's a micro fiction to make up for it (hopefully). Enjoy~
Word count: 73
Do you hear the river rushing? Why is it in such a hurry? Is the river perhaps like you, with its hard pebbles, twists, and turns? Or is the river calm and soothing, never leaving behind one trickle of water, because every emotion has to be accounted for in every situation. No matter which way you look, the river keeps on rushing on and on in every direction, and there’s no stopping it.
This man is insulting literature and he deserves a time out
As a doctor of Marine Biology (University of Alaska, Fairbanks ’99, with a study abroad year at the Univ. of Technology, Sydney), I am here to disprove a common myth about my dear goldfishies. Some of you out there are under the impression that goldfish have an attention span of only three seconds, and it has become a common expression attached to those who browse the internet, quickly jumping from one site to another, unable to wait five seconds for a video to load, or stalking a new chick when the one you’ve been looking at is actually wearing pants. But I’m here to tell mankind that they've been mis-informed: goldfish actually have an attention span of three months.
Now, in order to keep you interested in reading about fiction in conjunction with goldfish, I will post pictures of sexy women and men. But I’ll have you know, they don’t add pictures of babes scubadiving to marine biology textbooks, so a little sympathy, if you will. Of the three previously posted articles – “Some Notes on the Novella,” “The State of the Short Story,” and “The Remarkable Reinvention of Very Short Fiction” – it is the last that I disagree with. Shapard compares us to (the misconception of) a human goldfish and believes that fiction has reinvented itself in light of our attention deficits.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated for a seat in the Senate. The series of seven debates was nationally covered and the main topic was slavery. Audiences sat still and listened for over eleven hours of debate, the outcome of which was Douglas defeating Lincoln and keeping his seat. It would be a lie to say that audiences today could endure such long debates with steady and commanding attention, especially if it was about something as bor-ing as slavery: we could not. The internet and television, indeed, have played a role in our decreasing attention spans, but I could never say that it changes the way we read or what we are interested in reading. Lorin Stein (editor of The Paris Review) readily admits that the internet and smart phones have changed his life: he reads emails more, he is always available, and perhaps the subway ride is no longer a time for the short story, but some spare time to play Words with Friends. Stein didn’t say that last part, but it’s evident everywhere you look.
What Stein does say, however, is that the short story is meant to be read from beginning to end without distraction. Because every word is precious, we must take the time to carefully examine each sentence, and re-read when you’ve fallen victim to a daydream about your grandma dying and you inheriting her fortune. He also says that because of the brief nature of a short story, it is not possible to lose yourself in it. So because a short story runs counter to your yearnings for immersion and companionship with the characters, the plot, it proves to be difficult and deserves your full attention.
The novella, too, of which Kafka and Joyce were masters, is a perfectable form, according to Ian McEwan in his October New Yorker article. As something between a novel and a short-story, people often feel short-changed; good, but something perhaps is missing, like when there aren’t enough explosions in an action movie and you feel you got jipped. But with economy at stake, a novella must never sacrifice even one sentence. Plot is being driven every second, every word, and if you think that something is arbitrary, then you are most certainly wrong.
Shapard, however, blames everything on the internet, citing people who say that kids these days don’t listen to albums anymore, just songs. This, of course, is true, but highly irrelevant. Lydia Davis, a successful micro-fiction writer (among other fiction), began writing her flash fictions long before kids stopped listening to albums. Fiction moved and molded due to experimentation, not due to adaptation. Her biggest influence is Proust, goddamn it, who, I can tell you, is not into the whole brevity thing. Look at some of the top-sellers recently: Franzen’s gigantic Freedom, Eugenides humongo The Marriage Plot. Certainly we’re straying from hundreds of pages describing the Russian farm, such as is Anna Karenina, but that’s because we’re in the 21st century now. There will always (always!) be people who love to read, and there will always be people who do not. I don’t believe that the numbers have changed significantly, and if you disagree, then I think some part of you has perhaps lost faith in humanity, as drastic as that seems. People mold fiction; politics drive fiction; human suffering and human connections form fiction. Not the internet.
Also, goldfish are able to distinguish between sound, color, and shapes. They can even be trained. A lot smarter than they seem, don’t you think?
_PhD in everything
I usually compare the novel to a mammal, be it wild as a tiger or tame as a cow; the short story to a bird or a fish; the micro story to an insect (iridescent in the best cases).
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/2012/september/remarkable-reinvention-very-short-fiction-robert-shapard
