This week our readings taught us how to make great images and to write highly conscious, compressed prose. The Exercise for the week is to write a 1000-word piece of flash fiction (you can respond creatively to / emulate one of the readings, or borrow the opening line of one of the pieces, or come up with something entirely new, perhaps stemming from that great escalation generative writing exercise in the lecture) that you then cut down to 500 words, then 250 words. Be attentive to the imagery work our craft authors are outlining for us this week. A great flash piece can start with an image, end with an image, or (most often) rely on an image that it changes its relationship to over the course of the piece, as we see in the Saunders short story, with the pole. Include all three versions in this order in your post:
250-word version
[text here]
500-word version
[text here]
1000-word version
[text here]
*remember our work with objects, concrete, sensory details, closure, and attentive language (subjects and verbs close together, few adjectives and adverbs), and remember to start your piece close to the peak action you want to describe. Remember, too, our work with duration, scene, and setting.
Please do not exceed the length limit, as the limit is present so that all Exercises can receive generous and timely feedback. You will have a chance to expand later, and concision is a real virtue in Sudden Prose! (Most word processing programs offer a “word count” tool, or you can copy paste the text of your story here, at wordcounter.net, and get a word count that way.)
I look forward to reading your Exercises!
readings
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