Read Bruce’s previous column here, or visit his author page to see them all. Two columns ago, I looked at how the writer can save words by using a character that the reader already knows. We can also tell stories by leaving out narrative sections or details that the reader can supply on her own […]
I want to address the question of how short a story can be and still be a story, but to get there we have to consider an obvious question: What is a story? Consider the poor writer whose manuscript was just rejected. The editor has been kind enough to provide some specific comment in the […]
Read Bruce’s previous column here, or visit his author page to see them all. In this month’s column, I want to address two things at once. The first follows naturally on the previous topic of how short flash fiction can be: How long can we make flash fiction? And because my answer to that question […]
Read Bruce’s previous column here, or visit his author page to see them all. These columns are about writing flash fiction, but this month I want to peer over the border to examine flash fiction’s sister genre, the prose poem. At least some flash fictions and prose poems are similar enough that it can be […]
Read Bruce’s previous column here, or visit his author page to see them all. Zeus was the original Peeping Tom, hiding himself to watch human or divine maidens while they bathed. He particularly liked following Artemis and the nymphs who attended her on her hunts. One nymph in particular appealed to him. Callisto was her […]
This column is about a fixed form first introduced in Short-short Sighted #4 in September 2008. You can also read Bruce’s column from last month here, or visit his author page to see them all. One of the best-known poems in the English language is “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan […]
Have you writers ever been critiqued in such a scathing, vicious fashion that you don’t know whether you want to crawl into a hole or beat the critquer with a bat? Can you imagine getting that kind of critique from Mark Twain? I don’t know what James Fenimore Cooper did on reading Twain’s critique of […]
Bruce has a related column about prose poems in our April 2010 issue. You can also read Bruce’s previous column here, or visit his author page to see them all. Any time I begin a discussion of fixed forms, the first such form that I mention is the sonnet. Even if many readers can’t name […]
This is an unusual column for Bruce, dealing with the writing life rather than specific techniques and forms. If you’d like to read his previous columns, you can find a complete list on his author page. This month, I want to take a break from examining the forms of flash fiction and consider another aspect […]
My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. I choose weird stories […]