Fiction flash: Possessions

I was reading on the train this morning, rather than writing (I forgot to charge the netbook last night, whoops), and as I got off, my mind started turning phrases over in my head. Sometimes, I just like to play with words and weave images, without any particular intent, just to see where they take me.

Today, the words wound up as a two-sentence story, and here it is:

Possessions

She spent money like water and gave her affection away for free. Her husband cried when the gunshot rang out and said, “Now, I have nothing.”

I always try to make these little stories have something like a plot, and to be more than just a quirky situation. It’s a tricky discipline but that’s part of the fun.

I like the way the characters came out in this one. It seems crammed with possibilities, and I think (I hope!) just the right amount of ambiguity. The only bit I’m not sure about is the title, but it’s the best I could come up with at short notice.

Fiction snippet: Confession

I was reading an interesting post about different methods of writing by Juliet Marillier earlier today (well worth checking out!). I appreciate authors who realise that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ when it comes to approaching writing.

It got me to thinking about sitting down to start writing a piece. It’s the enemy of every writer: staring at a lot of blank white space, teetering on the edge of fiction, trying to find that perfect way to begin. I’ve been sitting in that position more times than I like to think! Pretty much every time I set out to start a blogfic post. I’ve got my own ways of getting past that.

As occasionally happens, pondering the situation sparked an idea in my head, and I managed to scribble it down (can you ‘scribble’ when you type? I typed it down. But quickly, between chunks of work, in a tiny Notepad window no-one saw).

I had intended it to be just a tiny snippet, maybe another of those two-sentence stories that I like to play with sometimes. It didn’t want to stay to only two sentences. It splurged (a little) and I let it, and here’s what came out:

Confession

A clean white sheet is spread before me, unsullied by human emotion, desire, or blood. I must mark it, stain it, spill myself onto its surface. I must treat it with respect, ease the sheet into its scarring, and hope for forgiveness when I am done.

The start is always the hardest part: the first puncture in the dam, the first perforation to tear loose. I must find the perfect place to sink the hook, so that it it rips and spills into the correct shape. After that, it will run and run until it reaches its coughing, spluttering finale.

Never mind all that. Start with truth, a deep breath and bravery. The rest will follow, as inevitable as its own end.

“Today, I killed a man….”

I think this month’s task for my writing group will be to start a story with those (last) five words.

Must not get distracted with ideas. I have Starwalker to write (which is coming along swimmingly!). But at least I got this bit out!

Guest post: Savannah, take 2

Back in December, my lovely friend let me play in her sandbox. I created Savannah, the candy-coloured hooker who likes to run at the mouth, in a guest post. Great fun to write, definitely something different from the stuff I was writing at the time (and now, as it happens).

Now, three months on, the story of the Inventor was in need of a spark of trouble, and so we brought the lovely Savannah back. Clover slid her into a tumultuous post, and then I got to write the hooker stumbling all over the aftermath.

It was tough to fit it in between the Starwalker writing, but definitely worth it. Sometimes it’s nice to break out and do something different. And who knows, maybe Savannah will come back later in the story and not screw things up for the poor main character. At least one of them deserves a break!

Fiction flash: Panic ensues

So, I was settling down on the train to write last night, and was in a musing mood. It was one of those days when sensory information twists into words and phrases in my head, in readiness to be used in some scene or other.

Usually, I don’t bother to do anything with these little snippets of description, but I decided to throw them into a two-sentence story, mostly to see if I could. Here’s what I ended up with:

Panic Ensues

An empty train carriage, cool with humming fans and the faint smell of disinfectant, is quickly filled up with bodies and bags, papers and books, iPods and laptops shoehorned in tight enough for typing. As the doors squeeze closed, a woman lifts her handbag, turns to the man next to her, and asks a dangerous question: “Does my bomb look big in this?”

For some reason, things seemed to want to come in threes. It seemed fairly natural, so I let it. And okay, it’s maybe not in the best of tastes, but I don’t pretend to be PC. Enjoy!

Guest posted!

Over the last week or so, I’ve been toying with a guest post for another blogfic, the Inventor. Yesterday, it went live! Huzzah!

I’ve been meaning to write a post about this blogfic for a while. It is written by a very good friend of mine, Julie, who did a guest post for me on the Apocalypse Blog.

The Inventor started in October (2009) and posts three or so times a week. It tells the story of a teenaged girl who has run away from home to the streets of San Francisco. She spins a different story to every person she meets, and she lies to herself just as often, while she struggles to figure out how to survive homeless, jobless, and friendless.

Julie uses some great images and turns of phrase in her writing, and she doesn’t shy away from the unpleasantness and vulnerability of living on the streets. I can’t wait to see where she’s going to take the story.

I was delighted when she invited me to do a guest post for her. For some reason, my brain immediately jumped on the idea of a hooker (what does that say about me?). Julie said she wanted to bring in prostitution sooner rather than later, so I started poking at it right away (hmm, not sure that’s the right phrasing). And thus, Savannah was born.

Writing the post has been a welcome distraction, a bit of a break from my usual Apocalypse Blog writing, and great fun. It’s a lot lighter than much of the stuff I’ve been writing of late! It also came out in present tense - I’m not sure why. I thought about switching it into past tense, but it seemed fairly comfortable in present (and Julie didn’t mind), so I didn’t bother.

So there we go. I have starred in another blogfic! Go me! Go read it, tell me what you think!

I have four posts left of the Apocalypse Blog. Only four! Time to go work on them.

Flashing fiction

Back in February, I entered the Two Sentence Story competition. I didn’t get anywhere in it, but it was an interesting exercise and I’m glad that I entered. A two-sentence story is curious beast – how do you get a whole story across in just that amount of space, without cheating? (By cheating, I mean replacing what should be full stops with commas and having two huge, run-on, nightmare sentences).

The thing I found most challenging was to put plot in there and not just present a situation. For me, that’s the difference between a snapshot and a story. 

When I looked back over my entries for the competition, I thought that my third entry was closer to a situation than a true story:

Planting the Seed

Sitting awkwardly and gripping the tools, there is a moment of reverence before the act and a whispered prayer for fertility.

In an uncomfortable moment, she can’t help but wonder if people will be able to tell that the baby’s father was a turkey baster.

(I admit, I was going more for the humour in that.)

I think this one was closer to having a plot, though the middle is wide and gaping. It could be filled with many different things, but I think part of the punch is that it isn’t specific:

Casualties

Attention is a click of heels, perfect creases, heads lifted, jaws set, and chests filled proudly with the hope of doing something good and right.

Four months later, heels click again, heads lift and jaws set as we wait for the gun salute in much shorter lines.

My favourite is still the first one that I wrote for the competition. I can’t decide if it’s more situation than story; I have a story for it sneaking around in the back of my head, and it’s hard to say how much of that came through. It was one of those pieces that just gelled when I wrote it, and I always love when that happens.

Snow Love

I have the tears of a snowman at the kiss of your sun, welcoming your fire with a scarf slipping askew.

When you go, I will be the space left behind, warmed but empty.

When I took this to my writing group to do an exercise on writing stories this way, one of my writers asked me if the last phrase should be switched around – empty but warmed. I hadn’t even thought about it, but I think I like it the way it is; that downturn at the end feels right to me. There’s the notion that there is no love (s’no love! get it?) in this self-destructive relationship, and the narrator knows it.

I like this form – it’s fun to play with. Maybe I’ll do some more soon, practice with it a bit. Even just writing about it like this is giving me ideas. Maybe later, when my to-do list is a bit shorter.