Harvey Keitel reading.
Another post on flash since it's causing me some chagrin right now.
Last week, Sandra Seamans had some advice from various sources on her blog about writing flash fiction. One piece of advice that I usually adhere to is the twist ending. I wonder why this seems important to me in flash. Do I feel that the short length demands a greater payoff?
Does it need an ironic close? What do you think? Do your flash stories end with a kick in the teeth?
12 comments:
I don't think they were ever called flash fictions, but I first read these really short, short stories from Raymond Carver. No twist endings, just small, significant moments in people's lives. Moments the characters don't even realize are significant.
But this may be another place where genre fiction and literary fiction are different (and niether one is better than the other!) because in crime flash fiction, I do prefer the twist ending.
I know Frederic Brown wrote a lot of these but not if his featured final twists.
You gotta read your Fredric Brown vignettes, indeed. (One e.) Some of his had twisting or twisted endings ("Nightmare in White" probably wouldn't be recommended reading for most young'ns), but many didn't. I guess since what fiction I've written has tended to very short lengths, I tend to take the "vignette" concept to heart...that the whole thing is meant to be strange, that the twist runs throughout the brief text, that it is a snapshot, a frame grab, a slice that suggests all that's going on without spelling it out.
As for "genre" v. "literary"--um, well, among those others aside from Brown who also specialized in the shortest forms within horror or suspense, such as Jerome Bixby or Saki, again there's less emphasis on the Twist so much as the estrangement throughout. Shaking the reader loose from such preconceptions as one can (and this might even be easier with the vignette than with longer fiction because it will often irritate the reader who doesn't already agree with you, and that person might well stop reading).
Estrangement? You mean the estrangement of a character in the story or the reader from preconceived ideas. Ideas about what a story should be about? I think the later. I'll see if I can find an example online.
I have two Wedding Cake Flashies percolatingright now, and yes one has a twist, the other is just a bit twisted.
Estrangement of the reader from thinking they know where you're going, certainly, and with any luck entertainingly...since the vignette is so short, striving for a Twist Ending, when the whole text is about as long as the Ending for most fiction, puts one in danger of making a joke, instead. Which has its own vaunted place, but the vignette has a somewhat different responsiblity.
I don't think you need the big twist but I prefer them in my crime stories. Now, I do write some flash about a guy named Henry and they are more Hemingwayesque in nature and like John McFetridge mentioned are significant moments in this man's life. However, for the crime fiction I like to deliver an O Henry payoff.
I like twist endings, but I think, in contrast, that twist endings almost always make a better pay off with a short piece than a long piece. When I read a long piece I can be disappointed by a simple twist ending. The shorter the piece, the more acceptable it is.
I agree. In a longer piece , something you've invested more time in, it cheapens it often. Unless the twist develops slowly.
Well, I am mr twisty and i think it works well in flash because flash usually is vignettes, as Todd says.
At the risk of sounding naive, I'm just learning of flash fiction. It sounds like fun.
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