![]() These apocalyptic visions also function as gapes in the garment. We read about “dresses the color of chewing gum,” a boy’s “honey-coated hair,” “fruit-scented perfume,” and the taste of “summer dew or saliva.” These details pull the reader forward, abutting apocalyptic descriptions of motionless vessels littering the streets, bodies disintegrating, the end of life. The story is constructed around snippets that function like gapes in a garment, each of the six sections offering a peek at the progression of the narrator’s first kiss alongside equally brief and fragmentary views of the apocalypse. Miranda Williams’s “The Apocalypse in Stages or Your First Kiss,” anthologized in The Best Small Fictions (Sonder Press, 2022), is a good example of a flash story that pulls you along, as if trying to grasp that string. Every paragraph you write might be like the string you tease a cat with. If you dangle the yarn, the cat will try to catch it over and over again, even after the string slides through its paws. It’s like playing with a cat with a ball of yarn. But if you’re appropriately coy, the reader will want more. If you give too much information, you leave your readers no room for imagination. A veil exists between writer and reader, so you have to think about how to lift the veil. The best flirts know how to strike the right balance between sending a signal and then withdrawing, knowing how each gesture changes the storyline. As Casanova said, “Love is three quarters curiosity.” Storytellers must think with the mischievous mind of a flirt.įlirting is a silent language, a way of signaling interest and attraction in the space that exists between lover and beloved, writer and reader. Writers’ materials are traditionally the wiles we conjure with words-but in flash fiction, in particular, that also includes what we choose to omit, or subtly suggest. Pleasure doesn’t come from the satisfaction of desire so much as it comes from its pursuit. The author calculates just how much and when to reveal. Flash is the art of the sidelong glance.ĭesire forms itself around the ambiguous, those feints and teases that keep us captivated by the mere suggestion of fulfillment. ![]() The words and images of a short-short narrative, also known as flash fiction, are akin to the brush of a hand from a lover. As much as a writer might want to tell the whole story, fleeting appearances can be more exciting. ![]() Brevity likewise lures the reader forward with hints and possibilities. The gape in a garment-an undone button, the slit of a skirt-is erotic because of the way it reveals tantalizing glimpses of flesh. Is not the most erotic portion of the body where the garment gapes? In our Craft Capsules series, authors reveal the personal and particular ways they approach the art of writing. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |