Sword-and-Flashery
A publisher friendly to sword-and-sorcery fiction recently put out a call for flash fiction — stories under 1,000 words.
OK, I thought. I write sword-and-sorcery. I write tightly. I can tell a lot of story in a small amount of words. I’ll give this a shot.
I had an idea. A simple plot, vivid characters. Piece of cake.
I sat down to write. I figured I’d just tell the tale, finish somewhere a tad beyond 1,000 words and simply pare it down to fit after writing it. I wrote tightly, skipped a lot of description I might otherwise have added. Then I checked the word count.
Almost 2,000 words — twice what I needed.
I read the piece and found nary an ounce of fat in it. It was the simplest kind of plot I could devise and still have a sense of drama to it. In short, there was just no way I could go back and jettison half of what I’d written.
I came away doubting I could write a successful sword-and-sorcery flash story. I did write an almost-flash story featuring Hissu from the Carnifex Press “Freehold” books, but that was more of a vignette than a story. And it wasn’t something I wrote to sell; it was a promotional thing and the allowed word count was quite severe. So I wrote something to give the flavor of the world and character, but it doesn’t have a lot of story to it. I don’t think it was a story I would have submitted to an editor at a paying market, but it sufficed for its purposes.
I’ve sold one flash story. But that story wasn’t sword-and-sorcery.
Sword-and-sorcery demands a solid plot and a sense of forward motion. That means you have to start at point A and work your way quickly to point B, and things have to happen along the way. Sword-and-sorcery, to me, should be suspenseful. You have to build suspense. That takes a few words.
Flash fiction, on the other hand, works better as a vignette or a snapshot of a moment. You can start very close to the story’s climax — you can even start right at the climax. But you don’t spend a lot of time getting there.
This experience leaves me wondering if I can write a flash piece that is still sword-and-sorcery. A poetic, bare-bones tale might work; I don’t know.
Anyway, rather than take the story I’d written and turn it into something else I simply kept it as it was, added a bit of seasoning here and there and shipped it off to a publisher. Maybe I’ll take up the flash challenge again later.
– Steve
Hello, and welcome to the blog of a sword-and-sorcery writer. Most of the stuff here is about writing fiction, but you'll also find some stuff about beer and Godzilla, a few bits of Zen, really short film reviews and my now-and-then rants about social injustice.You can find topics by category, using the list further down in this sidebar.
I tend to stay away from flash fiction for some of the very reasons you states, Steve.
But on the other hand, I have faith in you. I think you could pull off some S&S flash fic, thought it might take some solid plotting and you’d likely have to start right at the end of the story.
I suppose if the right idea pops up, I’ll give it a try. Generally, though, I dislike writing to a set length. I prefer to write the story as I think it should be, and then edit down to meet a publisher’s requirements if it’s close enough. I might, on occasion, try to stretch a story a little if the publisher has a minimum word count — but I think editing a story to be shorter generally improves it, while adding stuff to pad it out almost always hurts. Of course, Ty, you already know that. If there is anyone out there who writes leaner stories than mine, it’s you! But I mention these things for the benefit of others who may drop by.
– Steve
Hmm … yeah, but I sometimes wonder if my stories are too lean. I mean, to me a piece of armor is a piece of armor, not a “scintillating plate of luminescence that reflects the sun’s rays like a thousand stars upon a midnight lake” … or whatever ( forgive me, I’ve been re-reading Peake’s third Gormenghast book).
There’s a time and place for scintillating plates of luminescence … but it generally isn’t in anything you or I write.
My stories, anyway, tend to be about hard-nosed people in hard-nosed worlds. They generally have urgent business to attend to, and so stopping the narrative for a poetic ode to the scenery seems to me a bad idea. And my characters tend to view their weapons and gear as tools, not scintillating items to be verbally fondled.
But if I were writing something from a different vantage — say that of a musician or poet — then a more elevated tone would be just fine. Now and then I do that, but not often.
I recently read this bit of advice in a magazine’s guidelines: “Leave out the parts people skip.” For sword-and-sorcery, anyway, that’s great advice.
– Steve
Good posts guys, interesting reads. I come to browse often, post sometimes, but I did want to say this — “Leave out the parts people skip.” (an old quote from somebody old) — sounds like a possible blog title for future reference. NOT that I dislike “Swords Against Boredom” in any way!
Darkmoor (AKA Jason): I’m glad to have you drop by and comment. I’ve been enjoying your blog, too. It’s a regular stop on the Web for me now — I figure I’ll get some good heads up on things to read.
Anyone here who wants to visit Jason’s blog can click on his name above his comment, or use the handy link in the sidebar. There’s a link to Ty’s blog in the sidebar, too, and clicking on his name above his comment also gets you to his blog.
– Steve
It has been years and years since I attempted anything like a flash fiction story. It seems to me that in most stories, moving from point A to point B is really what gobbles up the word count. Not that I have ever sold fiction, but it occured to me that the word “flash” was perhaps more important than I orginally thought. Why not do a story that has a flash in it? I see no hard fast reason the character has to move from point A to point B. The flash can move other things while the character stands still, literally if not figuratively or emotionally. What common things have flashes? A camera: That’s out for S&S–or is it? Flash powder can momentarily blind the hero and things change/move while the eyes recover. Memories: A strong memory can move people. The hero could hesitate in destroying the nasty critter because the eyes remind him of a favorite childhood puppy, or it smells like that vicious badger that attacked him as a small child, or–whatever. Some memories or thoughts can literally stop a person in their tracks. Trust me. Inner conflict can be overhelmingly powerful. Flood: I am sure that if Tolkien had told the story of Frodo’s escape into Rivendell on Glorfindel’s horse from the Black Riders’ point of view, it would have been much, much shorter.
And I respectfully disagree about the Hissu short for the Freehold promotion. Hissu moved from point A to point B. Not phyically, but in the understanding of the big picture and the terror tactics that had become necessary. A big move for a young warrior to take–and he took me with him. To me it was a story, not a vignette.
Deven: I’m glad you liked “Venom for their Dreams.” I did try to tell as much of a story as I could within the word count. I think if I had written that story without such a constraint I would have set things up a bit more, to make that leap in Hissu’s mind a bit more of an organic growth. It feels rushed to me — but honestly, I don’t think it would have taken a whole lot more verbiage to really nail that stuff down. I do tend to write short and tight, most of the time.
Interesting variations on the flash fiction theme! And you’re right: Fictional characters don’t always have to move from Point A to Point B (and those points don’t have to be physical locations, either; they can be mental states or political positions or movement from stupidity to wisdom, whatever). You can write fiction that doesn’t really do that and still be successful and attract readers. But you might have to tie me down to get me to read it. I have very little patience for stories that don’t go anywhere, no matter how elegent the linguistic pyrotechnics involved might be.
And as for Lord of the Rings: Imagine how short the whole trilogy might have been if Gandalf had just asked the eagles to airlift Frodo to Mount Doom in the first place …
– Steve
“I try to leave out the parts people skip.” –Elmore Leonard. I wrote it down.
Thanks, Ellie! I knew a line that good had to have come from some writer somewhere …
[…] About a year ago, I’d posted about the unlikelihood of me writing a sword-and-sorcery flash story. A thousand words isn’t a lot for a genre built on suspense and strange lands. But I kept at it, and Invincible is the result. It’s even considerably shorter than 1,000 words, if you can believe that. […]