1) With flash fiction, you get something finished (and published!)

Picture this: you’re working on your manuscript. You’re 65,000 words into it, and you’re not sure whether you’re going to make it. You tell someone you’re a writer. “What do you write?” they ask. If you’re me, when people ask you this, all you can think about are the plot holes and the character who is not cooperating with their given directions. 

However, when I talk to people about my writing, I can tell them about the novel-length manuscript I’m both pouring my heart into and tearing my hair out over, or I can say, “I wrote this really funny story the other day about a bunch of outdoor diners getting squished by a giant bowling ball.” Because I had an idea one day when I was out walking the dog, and later that week I sat down and wrote a whole story. 

The act of finishing something is so gratifying, and it can boost your confidence that you will one day finish your manuscript. Additionally, flash fiction is a comparatively small ask for your critique partners. I’m constantly sending friends stories with fewer than 1,000 words because I know it won’t be a huge drain on their time to review.

The more polished flash fiction you have, the more pieces you can send out for publication. A lot of lit mags, especially newer ones, are steering away from longer pieces because they know everyone is busy and wants a quick, engaging story. Getting something published is also a huge confidence boost – proof that someone wants to read your writing and thinks that other people should too. The more flash you write, the more you can get published, the more you have to talk about with friends and family, and the more confidence you have that you can finish that manuscript.

2) You tighten up your prose.

Some people tumble out of the womb, pick up a pen, and write perfect sentences without any more words than necessary. I’m not one of those people and I doubt you are either (I imagine those people as residing mostly in cabins without internet). It took me several years to come to terms with the fact that I’m wordy, but now I relish going through drafts and cutting words mercilessly. Flash fiction is an excellent way to practice excising unnecessary words and playing with a sentence until you get to a structure with three fewer words (that still makes sense, of course).

Shorter sentences usually make for stronger sentences. Passive voice, for example, takes more words than active. Take “Jane was run over by the car” and put it in active voice – you save a word and get a stronger sentence out of the deal. Once you write a few pieces with strict word counts (that absolutely can be self-imposed, I recommend this for practice), you’ll find yourself going to town on your longer pieces as well.

3) You have to kill your darlings.

I found a lit mag that I thought was a perfect fit for a piece of flash fiction I’d written. I’d pored over every word, tightening up my prose to under 1,000 words, and I was excited to start sending it out. Then I looked at the submission requirements: 800 words or less. I knew that my story was as concise as possible – the only option was to start taking out entire sentences or paragraphs. And so, I had to evaluate every sentence and every section and ask myself: is this strictly necessary to the plot? Is it necessary for what I want my story to convey to readers? There were a couple sentences that I absolutely loved that I thought had beautiful imagery or particularly clever phrasing. But they weren’t necessary for the story I wanted to tell, so into the garbage they went.

It’s good for us as writers to look at our writing objectively, to decide whether a phrase or paragraph or chapter is strictly necessary. It’s easy to get swept up in the details and the scenery when you have 80,000 or even 5,000 words, but when you have the hard stop of a flash fiction word count, it makes you consider every phrase in a new light. Of course, sometimes you decide that everything is imperative, that the story would suffer for cutting anything, and that’s when you know you have a good, tight story. Once I cut my story down to 800 words, I found another lit mag with a requirement of 700 words, and I knew that I couldn’t do it.

(In a stroke of irony, the version of the story that I actually got published was under 500 words. But it was a different story by that point.)

4) You get to the action (or don’t!)

As you’ve gathered by now, flash fiction is a game of choice. The great thing about flash fiction is that you can get away with a lot that readers wouldn’t always accept from a novel or short story because there’s less room for a narrative arc. Personally, I’m a big fan of random snippets of action that leave the reader asking questions about the larger context (flash fiction is great for sci fi for this reason). But if you want to spend 800 words describing an interesting person and then 150 piquing the reader’s interest with what might happen to them, you can! Or you can write a fight scene with only a few clues about the characters’ relationship or the moments preceding the fight. The traditional constraints aren’t there, so have some fun.

5) With flash fiction, you have fun with form

I naturally gravitate towards writing in past tense, third person limited POV – the thought of writing a longer piece in first person or present tense stresses me out. But I was recently working on a flash piece, and a friend read it and suggested putting it in present tense. It already had a sense of urgency, and present tense might serve it well. As soon as I started considering it, I thought, what if it was in second person too? 

So, I rewrote the entire thing in second person present tense, and I loved it. The second person point of view gave my story even more urgency, and I quickly realized how many words I could save in present tense. For my longer pieces, I’m still a past tense third person limited kinda gal, but I’ve started experimenting more, and realizing that other formats can be a lot of fun.

So put that manuscript aside for one day, write something short and fun, and see if it doesn’t help get the creative juices flowing.

Marina is a West Coast native living in Washington, DC. She loves writing anything, from sci-fi to creative non-fiction to romance, often drawing inspiration from the frequent travel required by her day job. Her work has appeared in such literary magazines as DistrictLit and Corner Bar Magazine. When she’s not writing, you can find her hosting bar trivia, baking something involving peaches, or bothering her extremely patient dog, Daisy. You can read more of her work at marinabarakatt.com and find pictures of Daisy at twitter.com/marinabarakatt.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways Writing Flash Fiction Improves Your Writing appeared first on DIY MFA.

I am having the biggest fangirl moment of all time because today I have author A.J. Jacobs on the show!

I was first introduced to A.J.’s work back when I was just an itty-bitty baby writer, and heard him give a talk on “faking it until you make it.” DIY MFA was barely a twinkle in my eye at that point, so to say I hadn’t yet made is a massive understatement. His talk was a lightbulb moment for me, and from there on “fake it until you make it” became my mantra. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now A.J. is here to talk about his latest book It’s All Relative, which follows the same vein of experimental journalism as his other works showing in great detail his quest for “self-improvement” in the most hilarious of ways.

Listen in as we chat about his books, the structure he uses to write them, and maybe get your own lightbulb moment from A.J.!

In this episode A.J. and I discuss:

• Nailing down your hook, and how to structure your book around a concrete goal.
• A.J.’s personal techniques for brainstorming and finding the “sticky ideas.”
• How to find your writing groove to get through the daily grind.
• Tips on preparing for a speaking presentation vs. writing something on the page.
• Ways to balance writing about your own life and other people’s without annoying anyone (or getting yourself in trouble).

Plus, A.J.’s #1 tip for writers.

About A.J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs is the bestselling author of four books: he achieved enlightenment in The Year of Living Biblically, sharpened his mind in The Know-It-All, and become the healthiest person in the world in Drop Dead Healthy. He is also the author of My Life as an Experiment and his book, The Year of Living Biblically, will soon be adapted as a sitcom on CBS, called By the Book, which stars Jay R. Ferguson and is executive produced by Johnny Galecki. Jacobs is an experimental journalist, a contributor to Esquire and NPR, and the host of the podcast “Twice Removed.”  His TED Talk about the global family has been viewed more than a million times. He lives in New York City with his wife and three sons (and several million cousins). His latest book It’s All Relative is available now.

To connect with A.J. check out his website at ajjacobs.com, and follow him on Twitter at @ajjacobs.

It’s All Relative

New York Times bestselling author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs undergoes a hilarious, heartfelt quest to understand what constitutes family—where it begins and how far it goes—and attempts to untangle the true meaning of the “Family of Humankind.”

A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: “You don’t know me, but I’m your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database.”

That’s enough family members to fill Madison Square Garden four times over. Who are these people, A.J. wondered, and how do I find them? So began Jacobs’s three-year adventure to help build the biggest family tree in history.

Jacobs’s journey would take him to all seven continents. He drank beer with a US president, found himself singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and unearthed genetic links to Hollywood actresses and real-life scoundrels. After all, we can choose our friends, but not our family.

“Whether he’s posing as a celebrity, outsourcing his chores, or adhering strictly to the Bible, we love reading about the wacky lifestyle experiments of author A.J. Jacobs” (Entertainment Weekly). Now Jacobs upends, in ways both meaningful and hilarious, our understanding of genetics and genealogy, tradition and tribalism, identity and connection. It’s All Relative is a fascinating look at the bonds that connect us all.

If you decide to check out the It’s All Relative , or AJ.’s other books — The Year of Living Biblically, The Know-It-All, Drop Dead Healthy, and My Life as an Experiment — we hope you’ll do so via these affiliate links, where if you choose to purchase DIY MFA makes a small commission at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 173

(Right-click to download.)

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 173: Fake It ’til You Make It and Other Life Lessons — Interview with A.J. Jacobs appeared first on DIY MFA.