Flash Fiction Gets Its Day

Posted on May 16, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I bet you didn’t know it’s National Flash Fiction Day.  I’ll forgive you, especially if you don’t live in Britain.  It is, after all, the first time flash fiction has been honored with its own day.  (I’m actually surprised it got a whole day, as opposed to National Flash Fiction Hour.)

I probably don’t need to say this, but I’m big fan of short fiction.  Flash fiction is a “subcategory” of short fiction that generally includes stories with less than 1000 words.  It’s sometimes called sudden fiction or short-short fiction.  In my opinion, it’s one of the hardest forms to write well because every word needs to pull its weight and then some.  Good flash fiction is moving and powerful, and the work sticks with you longer than the five minutes it takes to read it. 

While I have published several flash fiction stories, I don’t profess to be much good at it.  That said, and in honor of National Flash Fiction Day, I offer up a humble 364-word story for your enjoyment (or perhaps, bemusement):

Not in the This Universe

“Maybe it’s radioactive.”  Sparkles glittered across Rachel’s face as she rotated the upheld bottle.

“Or a pocket universe…in a bottle,” Ben added because she cocked an eye at him.  Two days ago, he had fished the bottle out of a pile of ochre-colored leaves.  Who had dropped it there, he didn’t know, but he liked the way it sparkled atop his TV.

Rachel grinned neat rows of teeth.  He could have counted them, but instead he studied at the bottom of the Pyrex measuring cup. 

She had crossed crossed the hall for a half-cup of oil.  “Brownies,” she explained.  “The chocolate kind.”

Ben wasn’t sure if that was joke, so he laughed.  His friend Arnie said she had a secret crush on Ben, but girls like Rachel didn’t crush guys like him.

She touched her slender nose with a delicate finger.  “Let’s open it.”  She reached for the cork—yes it had an honest-to-god wooden cork in it.

He dropped the measure cup as he half-reached for the bottle.  Ashamed, he pretended to corral the still rolling glassware.

“What if it is another universe?  I wonder if there’s another Rachel and Ben in it, with bottle just like this one?  Only they open it.”

Her fingers touched his as she placed the unopened bottle into his hands.  “It’s just—”

“It’s okay.”

He knew it wasn’t.

He poured a half-cup oil and handed it to her.  She watched him over the top of the cup as if waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she thanked him and closed the door behind her. 

Maybe Rachel’s dearth of key ingredients wasn’t due to daily baking after all.

He turned the bottle in his hand.  At first he had thought it filled with glitter, but it lit the room at night like disco ball.  He held it up, but he couldn’t see another Ben and Rachel in it, only tiny pinpricks of light.  There was only one way to find out.

Ben wiggled the cork.  It took some doing, but finally it popped.

A trillion billion suns rushed out and filled the universe.

“Maybe it’s radioactive,” Rachel said, sparkles glittering across her cheeks. 

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Suction Cup Dreams Scheduled for July

Posted on May 15, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

obsolescent.info has announced a July release date for Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology, which will contain my story “The Octopus Garden.”  As the title of both the anthology and my story suggests, this will be an anthology of speculative fiction about all things octopus.

This is the publisher’s debut anthology, so I hope it stays on schedule.  If the responsiveness of the editor (Mr. David Joseph Clarke) is any indication, I expect it will arrive on time, and that it will be a fine-looking volume.  It’s a pleasure to write for and support small presses, so I encourage you to buy a volume when it comes out.  If nothing else, I’m sure my humble entry will be worth the price <grin>.

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Self-Publishers, It’s Hollywood Calling…

Posted on May 14, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Last week I was part of a discussion about self-publishing vs. traditional-publishing.   The topic is of direct interest to me (see my previous post on it here), so hearing the opinions of both self- and traditionally published authors was fascinating. 

One of the arguments made for traditional publishing was the increased likelihood of selling additional rights in the future, and the example provided was movie rights.  Selling rights is how authors earn their income, so the more rights sold; the more income generated.  Discussion then centered around the likelihood of selling movie rights, and whether they outweighed more tangible pros and cons (e.g., higher royalties for self-published, potentially better production and marketing for traditionally published, etc.).  Incidentally, when the point came up, no one could name a self-published novel that had been optioned.

So I found the recent news that 20th Century Fox and filmmaker Ridley Scott had acquired the rights to Hugh Howey’s self-published science fiction novel WOOL to be timely.  This apparently follows on the heels of another option for a self-published trilogy—Universal Studios and Focus Features’ acquisition of E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey.  Blurring the lines here, however, is that both books also have been picked up by traditional-publishers, but in the case of WOOL at least, the movie option appears to have happened around the same time.  So it looks like Hollywood is beginning to find self-published works, which isn’t a surprise: they’re in the business of finding what sells and both of these self-published works are selling in a big way.

While this news further blurs the line between self- vs traditional publication, it doesn’t settle the discussion.  I still think traditional publishing brings many advantages, especially for new writers looking for their audience.  Yet as one writer in our discussion pointed out, lots of self-publisher writer’s drop into obscurity, but lots of traditionally published writers do too.  There is no magic route to publishing success, so I think every writer needs to assess the options and make the decision that is best for him or her.  It’s nice to know that two routes are becoming more available and increasingly more legitimate.

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More Stories, More Loglines

Posted on May 10, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

The past two days, I’ve been practicing crafting loglines in between my usual short story writing and editing.  I thought I’d share a couple.

Here’s what I came up with for “Observations on a Clock,” published in the February issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction:

A religious acolyte on a distant planet must uncover the true nature of an alien artifact or human civilization will be annihilated by interstellar war.

And a logline for my slipstream story “Wing Over the Suicide Rocks:”

A teen who dreams of flying away from her war-torn island must survive her domineering father’s suicidal plan to escape the invading enemy.

So, do either of these pique your interest in the stories?  Do you have suggestions for improvement?  The comment period is open….

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The Ins and Outs of Loglines

Posted on May 8, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I’ve started revising my novel.  (Actually, I’m still preparing myself to get to work as I polish off a few short stories, but I’m starting on the ground work).  A while ago I talked about the elevator pitch approach to editing that I intend to use.  This approach requires that I write a one sentence summary of my novel: in a sense a pitch you could make if you had an editor’s ear for about fifteen seconds.

In the TV and film industry, and maybe with increasing frequency in the writing business, this is called a logline.  I’ve never actually written one before, so I did some research on what constitutes a good logline.  From a variety of sources, here’s what I’ve cobbled together.  Ideally, a good logline should: (1) have the title of the work (optional: the length), (2) identify the main character, (3) describe the character’s struggle, problem or antagonist, and (4) tell the consequences if the character fails.   It should be as specific as possible, be “action” oriented, and include details that would make the story interesting to the target audience.

That seem simple enough, right?  While it might seem easy on surface, it’s a lot harder than I expected.  Reducing an entire story into a single sentence is not only a challenge, but an art form.  All those beautify subplots and complications have no place in the logline.  That droll secondary character that steals the third scene…nope!…that cool gizmo thingie that saves the day…gone!  So much gets cut away, but of course that’s the point of the exercise: to figure out exactly what’s at the heart of the story. 

I’m not sure how to do that for a complex novel just yet, so I thought I would start with a logline for one of my short stories and then work my way up to something harder.  After many false starts, here’s what I came up with for my story “Thief of Futures:”

An on-the-run thief capable of stealing a person’s future must complete a final job for an amoral businessman before a killer finds his young daughter.

Wow!  That was actually quite hard to do, and I’m not even sure I like what I have.  I found it particularly challenging to bring out the speculative element of this story—it’s difficult to succinctly capture—and I’m not sure I did it effectively.  I also struggled with giving away too much plot information, because much of the attraction of a “last heist” story are the twist and turns of the tale itself.  I feel that much about the story is missing from the logline; but then, that’s point—only the core of the story should be there.  While my logline could certainly be stronger (any suggestions are welcome in the comments), I think it has captured the essence of “Thief of Future.”  If you haven’t read it already, do you want to read it now?

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How Long is Too Long?

Posted on May 6, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Two years ago, I finished a draft for a novel and promptly put it on the shelf.  I didn’t shelve it because I thought it was bad—quite the contrary, I think it has a lot of potential.  I shelved it because I thought it was too long to have a decent shot at publication as a first novel.  The draft came in 241K words, and with revisions, I expect the final length to be in the ballpark of 160K words.  That exceeds what is generally considered “marketable” for a debut novel.  So how long should a novel be?

This is actually fairly popular topic of discussion, and there are not many clear-cut guidelines.  Numbers often vary widely, but many speculative fiction publishers put an upper word limit of 120K words on unsolicited novel manuscripts.  Various agents and other writers suggest that debut novels not exceed 100K.  Of course there are exceptions (aren’t there always), and the upper limit often varies by genre.  Colleen Lindsay, who works with the Penguin Group and is the manager of Book Country, an online writing community, has a wonderful post on approximate word counts for various genres of novels.  For science fiction novels, 80-100K seems to be the sweet spot.  This bodes well for the novel draft I finished last December, but is likely to keep my older and longer novel on the shelf a little longer.

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Inspiration: “Do Not Go Gentle into the Night”

Posted on May 4, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Darker recently published my story “Do Not Go Gentle into the Night.”  I wrote this story while traveling in Indonesia, and the influence should be obvious, from the Dutch colonialism to the Bahasa language.  The primary inspiration, however, came from a visit I made to a Bajau village while in the Wakatobi Islands. 

The Bajau, who are sometimes called sea gypsies, live a nomadic, maritime lifestyle.  Many Bajau never set foot on land, and even those that have given up their nomadic life still do not live on land.  The Bajau village I visited was built out over the ocean, with all of the buildings and walkways either on stilts or on piles of coral rubble.  The people maintained strong ties to ocean, and spent weeks or months at sea in their small sailing craft.  On more than one occasion, we sailed past remote reefs (with no land in sight) and saw Bajau fishing huts on them.  These fishing huts were wooden platforms on stilts with a simple thatch roof to keep off the sun and rain.  The Bajau would periodically stop at these huts to dry their catch, before returning to sea. 

The Bajau fascinate me, and served as inspiration for the semi-aquatic Orang (which is Bahasa for “people”) in my story.  Various aspects of Indonesia culture also crept their way into the story, and many of the character names are common Indonesian names.  While this story is not intended to be an accurate depiction of Indonesian culture or the Bajau people, I hope the things I have lifted for from this wonderful country and its people are accurate, and I make apologies for anything that is not.

If you haven’t already, please drop by Darker and read “Do Not Go Gentle into the Night.”  I hope you enjoy it.

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“Time Debt” Finds a Place

Posted on May 2, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I’m pleased to announce that Electric Spec has accepted my story “Time Debt” for publication this summer.  While this story is quite short (about 1,100 words), it was a pain to get right for a variety of reasons, so I’m happy it’s found a good home.

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The Elevator Pitch Approach to Novel Editing

Posted on May 1, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I finished a draft of a novel last December, and put it on the shelf to marinate for a while.  One of my writing goals for 2012 is to revise and submit it, so for the last month or two, I’ve been thinking about getting that done.  I’ve been thinking about it—instead of doing it—because it seems like an overwhelming task. 

I’ve spent the last several years revising short fiction, and the prospects of editing a 90,000 word novel is daunting.  I’m simply not sure where to start.  Thankfully author Marc Schuster has come to the rescue with what I think is an excellent idea: the elevator pitch approach to editing.  Marc says:

“[F]igure out your elevator pitch and also craft a brief synopsis of the novel—a single page at the most—but to do it without looking at your manuscript.  Basically, you’re explaining to yourself what you think you just finished writing.  Once you’ve done…start reading your manuscript with an eye toward whether or not it matches your elevator pitch in broad terms and your synopsis in relation to the details.”

This idea is a thing of genius (why didn’t I think of it?), and something I intend to try.  Distilling my novel into a single sentence and then a brief summary will give me a nice guidebook to help me stay the course.  With it, I can objectively examine each sentence, paragraph, and scene to ensure it is important to fully realizing my vision for the book.  I can then cut or hone as necessary. 

I realize this won’t be easy, but I think it will be helpful.  Already I feel less overwhelmed.  Now I need to stop writing short stories for a while and start working on my pitch.

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“Do Not Go Gentle into the Night” Now Available

Posted on April 29, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

My dark speculative fiction story “Do Not Go Gentle into the Night” is now available at Darker.  While much of my writing has a dark underbelly, this story is dark underneath, in the middle, and on the top—so be prepared, but don’t be daunted.

“Do Not Go Gentle into the Night” is a story about two old politicians trying to negotiate a lasting peace between their warring people.  Darker editor Robert MacAnthony summed it up nicely when he wrote it’s a “story of love, friendship, war, and betrayal.”  Here’s a brief excerpt:

          Willem flinched away from the orange flash on the horizon.  “I wonder if that was one of ours?”  The orange faded from the night sky, but continued to spot his retina. 
          Green tracer fire arced overhead, casting the coral-cobble beach in a ghoulish glow.  A moment later, a concussion washed across the beach like a rolling breaker.
          Danault, Willem’s attaché, shifted his weight from one foot to the other.  “Ikhsan is late.”
          Willem ignored him.  Ikhsan had asked for this meeting, so he would be here, battle or not.
          “It’s not safe out here, sir.” 
          The boom of shore-to-sea howitzers nearly drove Danault to his belly.  Shells whistled toward the horizon. 
          Willem’s gut tightened.  How many more men and woman would die when those shells hit?  “Ikhsan will come.”

Head over to Darker to read the rest, and while you’re there, be sure to check out their other fiction.

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