On compression: a flash workshop

A story, analysis and exercise (for my writers)

I wrote a lot of flash fiction during quarantine. Flash is fun, offers (almost) instant gratification to both writer and reader, and it can break more rules than almost any other genre.

Also during the height of the pandemic, I was invited to put together some instructional materials that I never had the chance to share in a workshop on flash. I came across this workshop draft the other day and thought, why not share it on Substack?

So here we are. This one’s for the writers. And readers.

The following story is mine (which I wrote before the pandemic), originally published in LUNCH TICKET and was reprinted in Dandelion Ghosts. After the story, I go through a little analysis and offer an exercise.

If you write something from this, please share.

Our Sky, the Ocean

We were waiting for rain the day my sister stopped talking. We examined the swollen clouds and waited. Mom and Dad prattled on about the football game that was holding up traffic to I-10, the church talent show, the neighbor’s runaway Chihuahua, the sandwich shop opening on Fifth, and the sad state of our garden.

I chimed in from time to time, keeping an eye on my sister as she watered the vegetables. The broccoli and basil leaves were withering up like prunes, and the lettuce resembled the tops of Grandpa’s hands. My sister patted the ground and traced the leaves with her fingers, as though speaking to them without words.

“Do your job,” I told the sky.

The twenty-day drought was right on schedule. It was the middle of August, and droughts often hit the Texas panhandle this time of year. Still, no one was ever prepared.

I nudged Em, chuckling because our neighbor, Mr. Jerry, was bending over. It looked as though he might lose his pants, and I whispered as much. When she didn’t laugh with me, I began to worry.

I asked Em if she wanted to walk down to the Twenty & Below. We loved wandering the aisles and evaluating the clothes. We’d model fast-fashion dresses for each other, spinning and sashaying and giggling until we were asked to kindly calm down or, if Darling was working, to kindly shut up.

“Come on,” I coaxed. After a minute I said, “Do you think it will rain?” When Em didn’t answer, I said, “How much money you think we’ll earn if we help Mr. Jerry paint his garage next week?”

I asked more questions, so many I don’t remember.

Em responded with smiles and raised eyebrows, shrugs and tightened lips. She walked with urgency, as though excited, but she didn’t make a single sound.

“You okay?” I asked.

She smiled with a brightness I wasn’t used to.

“Why aren’t you talking?”

She examined me with her wide eyes. They were the same brown as our kitchen table, which Dad had stained extra dark, only they had flecks of gold at the edges. I wished I had her eyes. Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.

Later, we ran around the store and tried on clothes, but my sister never opened her mouth to chuckle. Darling was working. She said, “You girls are being so good today. I’m impressed!” She gave us watermelon candies and instructed us to tuck them into our pockets for later.

My sister didn’t appear ill. At dinner, she ate her corn and mashed potatoes like a champ, even licking her plate clean as the rest of us chattered on about this and that. Toward the end of the meal, Em winked and gestured toward the door.

The air was pregnant with moisture. My parents were talking about who bought the house at the end of the street and why the teenager three doors down got fired from the automotive shop. They talked about how much the cell phone bill would be and what time they’d be home from work on Monday.

“Why aren’t you talking?” I asked again.

A year before, my sister had closed her eyes and refused to open them for almost the entire day. She had spent hours feeling around the house to get where she needed to go. After, when she finally opened them, she said that she had been trying out a different way to see.

My sister slipped the watermelon candy in her mouth. She felt the dry earth around our vegetables.

“It's like sand," I said. The sky was our ocean.

Em sat down on a patch of dirt and began to carve a message with a small stick. "Try it," she wrote.

I closed my lips, traced my finger over the wrinkled lettuce and looked up at the sky. Together, we waited. I could hear my parents talking about this and that, but after a while, I began to hear the wind too, then the whoosh of cars nearby. I began to understand.

The first drop of rain hit my arm and made all the little hairs stand up. The next drop landed on my cheek. My sister and I leaned back and closed our eyes, listening to the world, absorbing each drop.

Analysis

Flash fiction is all about the art of compression and brevity. There is no room to overexplain or use complicated metaphors that slow the narrative. Though flash fiction often employs beautiful language, it is also direct. Descriptions must be both concise and vivid. At times this seems difficult, but with intentional revision, a writer can include fewer details that contain the same potency and momentum as a longer story.

One way to achieve directness, potency, and momentum in a flash story is by knowing your characters and introducing them with well-chosen sensory details. Let’s look at “Our Sky, the Ocean.” After the narrator introduces Em through action, you find limited description used. Leveraging a single detail—eye color—characterization for both sisters deepens and the larger theme is brought in, which further emphasizes the tone of the story. While any detail may have been used here, the simple description of Em’s eyes presented a dynamic relationship, the overall theme, and an emotional tone.

She examined me with her wide eyes. They were the same brown as our kitchen table, which Dad had stained extra dark, only they had flecks of gold at the edges. I wished I had her eyes. Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.

Instead of only stating that Em had brown eyes or, conversely, explaining everything about Em, I used one color and made it specific to lead to other details. The color of Em’s eyes is not only brown but the same color as a table their father had stained, extra dark and with flecks of gold. Not only does this detail offer insight into the girls’ father’s character, but it also highlights the narrator’s slight envy, as she aligns her own eyes with the drought: “Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.” This detail offers contrast, emotional resonance, and it ties to the larger story.

When it comes to revising flash fiction, every detail is an opportunity to go deeper.

One way to know how and where to include certain details or compress your language is to get to know your characters better. As a writer, knowing your characters intimately allows you to better introduce them to the reader. This may mean jotting down details about them that you won’t necessarily bring up in the story. Let’s try a simple exercise. 

Exercise: 

1.     Choose a key description (physical detail) about one of your characters.

2.     Choose a key emotional detail that is important to the story.

3.     Write a few sentences that tie together the emotion and physical detail.

Take your time with this exercise and consider trying it out a few times with different characters. As you learn to allow a few sentences to achieve multiple things in your story, you are well on your way to writing an emotionally powerful story.

The art of achieving brevity can also come in handy at the sentence level. As you revise flash fiction, you have the luxury of really diving into each sentence. I always recommend going one sentence at a time and when you feel the sentence couldn’t be tighter, moving forward.

Let’s look at an example of how to employ compression by evaluating the last paragraph of “Our Sky, the Ocean.” This passage could have easily been written in language that was less efficient and less rhythmic if I were to try to explain more about what was happening. The scene basically depicts two characters’ actions, the start of rain that the characters had long been waiting for, and a final moment of peace. Though I don’t have an earlier version of the story available, let’s say it went something like this:

The first drop of rain hit my arm and made all the little hairs stand up. The next drop landed on my cheek. I couldn’t believe the rain was finally here. I looked over at my sister. She still wasn’t talking, but I went with it. I leaned back. So did my sister. We both closed our eyes, and I listened to the world as it continued to rain. I was content, and I hoped she was, too.

As writers, we can easily overthink the limitations of narration. I could have rationalized that because our narrator wasn’t inside the sister’s head, she couldn’t know whether she was feeling the same or listening. I could have told myself that I needed to remind readers of the drought by including the line “I couldn’t believe the rain was finally here.” Instead, I made the artistic choice to have our narrator portray the emotional resonance of the scene, which allowed for more efficient language.

The first drop of rain hit my arm and made all the little hairs stand up. The next drop landed on my cheek. My sister and I leaned back and closed our eyes, listening to the world, absorbing each drop.

When it comes to the efficiency of language, you’ll find that a deeper understanding of emotional resonance helps you to plan what to include/exclude. You can begin to write or revise with economy in mind naturally, but often compression takes place in the revision stage.

Revision Exercise: Take your time and see each sentence as a vehicle to move you forward. Go through your work one sentence at a time. If a sentence feels potent, turn it blue. If it feels flat or wordy, think about how you can revise it. Keep going until your entire manuscript is blue!

Summary:

Your work as a flash fiction writer is to create powerful sentences that entertain and immerse your readers in a few minutes of their time. This might seem like a tall ask, but it’s accessible if you know your characters intimately. Writing concisely is greatly helped by revising with attention to how each sentence is moving the story forward and allowing details to reveal more about the theme or characters.

Remember to take your time to decide what details to include, and this will allow you to better identify opportunities to connect emotionally with your reader. Look for opportunities to inject symbolism into your sentences or add more dynamism to the characters. Compression and brevity, once employed, allow flash fiction to have the emotional resonance of poetry with the immersive momentum of a good short story.

And if you write something great, send your flash pieces to UNLEASH LIT :)

Write well, friends.

xo Jen