A Writing Exercise
Starting in January 2007 I worked on miniature stories. Taking the idea of flash fiction to an extreme. Haiku narrative. Having written haiku before, I thought these prose miniatures might be equally instructive in making every word count.
My guidelines were simple.
- No more than 50 words.
- Show, don’t tell.
- If possible, don’t show.
These last two guidelines need some clarification. Almost every writer has heard the platitude, show don’t tell. What this means is, rather than tell the reader Johnny feels sad, you show the tears streaking down Johnny’s face. Great advice. Showing encourages the reader to use more brainpower while reading. If done right, images evoke emotions and acts of interpretation. A really good writer doesn’t need to spell out all the undercurrents of a story.
I can remember reading Dickens a few years back. In a scene where a woman is about to kill herself by jumping into a river, Dickens never writes, and his characters never think (on the page at least) she’s going to the river to kill herself. The woman simply draws closer to the river, with greater and greater suspense as Dickens drew out the scene over several pages. Was she trying to kill herself? If so, would she balk? If not, would the people following her notice and stop her? That is what happens when you show.
But I’ve amended that suggestion, if possible, don’t show. This is a recognition of the limitations of the miniature form, but also one of the main reasons I undertook to write these miniatures. A really good miniature would have to do more than show. Like haiku, it would need to suggest. Going back to the fictional Johnny, you wouldn’t show Johnny crying, but might mention the crumpled tissues which fall on the counter next to a bottle of vodka as he pulls the wallet from his black slacks. To the reader this might suggest Johnny has been crying, perhaps at a funeral, and that he plans to drink himself blind.
The miniatures need compression. If they are to succeed as a story (if any of these do) the reader will need to unpack them like a suitcase.
001, City of Elemental Works
This here is your god. Trifling, really. Two inches high and a bit wobbly. Poorly cut from a cool gray stone, I know not what. Your god has absolute power over all other pieces on the board. But its perfect love encompasses all, and it never shows favor or intervenes.
002, A Glance
A glance tells everything.
There I ended my story, on the first line, and submitted it to Professor Brandeis, untilted. To write more, I explained, would destroy the integrity of the original idea. A decade now, he still hands out copies to his Freshman seminar.
003, Horror Story
Again, while walking by the river to buy coffee I revive the scenes, wishing I’d never watched the movie, that murdered girl. An actress acting, okay, but still. She could be lying in the weeds, toenails painted. Real… imagined, this path would inevitably lead to her story.
004, Shirley Foster’s Nephew
History’s long, but miles more deep. Take Uncle Shirley. He could talk you out of a winning lotto ticket, but who’ll remember Shirley Foster? Owned a business. Widower.
Another life, he’d turn back invading Visigoths with a bottle of brandy and a perfect toast. To Shirley.
005, Objectivity
Be thankful. You fit into a solid, regular space: physics, chemistry, biological processes which convert sugars into energy and the reverse. Madness may infiltrate your societies on occasion, but you continue dreaming, not knowing how.
I on the other hand, dangle from the fingertips of a frenetic fever victim.
006, Yoshiko’s Boat
Yoshiko folds a square of paper into her boat’s sail. “It’s blank,” she cries. “It needs words.” This she directs to me, the master of characters. “Daddy!”
Bending to her iron command, I hug my knees and blow into her ear every word I know, both terrific and terrifying.
007, Signals from India
Hair, skulls and severed limbs were discovered in gutters and drains around the murderers’ affluent neighborhood. At least seventeen missing children were identified. One mother cries in disbelief. “Police say we should breed fewer babies.” I switch off the receiver before the story continues.
008, A Note on the Type
The text of this book was set in Nuc Para 7. Designed by Wiloert Blightly from a true dream, it exhibits metamorphic emergence, arising from the semiotic incongruities in its line form. From one logical mutation to another, the reader is subtly introduced to an alien transliteration of human words.
009 Engine of Commerce
That plank of melancholy on the buoyant sea unfurled blank sails. Gathering breezes in its nets, it crossed the course of natural currents. We who abandoned the cursed wood haunt deep caves far inland. Centuries hence and our captain, still lashed to the wheel, commands us. SAVE OUR SHIP.
010, Red Salamanders
Having never set eyes on a salamander, I can taste, from the name alone, its slick skin and the stillness of its pose even to the slits of its unblinking eyes. From one association to another, as always the salamander skirts beneath the leafage before I catch a glimpse.
011, The End
Ben took one left turn too many.
012, Destination Center
Four wild dumplings in the forest foraging for fuel oil left in a doodle, afraid to deprive the depraved lathes of their fiery freighter. The fritters fled, with prognosticating lumps in their unfried hearts, knowing all the while how they were fated to meet a thin, wise owl.
013, Premature Birth
Twin engines flared. Spectators fled as the fuselage fell unnaturally close overhead. The twisted metal sculpture with a ruptured fuel line (only that) flashed white.
They called it, henceforth, the Dodo’s Egg. As you see, the monumental failure still stands, here under shadows of passing jets, and still draws a crowd.
014, A Fashioner of Fantastic Globes
Lemuelle painted solid spheres of wood. Later, in his twenties, he began engraving. Dragons, eels and demons curled across the stone and metal surfaces. He dug deeper. Hollowed centers. In his workshop, an inverted and exploded globe sat unfinished, secrets of its making buried beneath the earth among bones.
015, Philosopher’s Note
Truth being obscure, human sense strikes a flat tone against the diamond surface of reality.
So why am I surprised? Things can’t be undone. I am late, she leaves. I sit in the pretense of the absence of something lost: a woman, her love… why not a unicorn’s bones?
