When using as few words as possible, how do we make our stories come alive for our readers? If, as Grant Faulkner says, “A veil exists between writer and reader…” then how do we invite them into our stories? How do we simultaneously make them comfortable and intrigued? How do we help them gain knowledge and context and feel as if they are also experiencing the story in real-time? We must create a kind of story velocity, where we jump the reader into the story and get them rocketing forward, or as Sylavia Plath said, “You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” This is one of the innate functions of the flash form. So much of the reader’s world drops away, and they can focus on the tactile experience of being in the shoes of the main character. This experience of reading flash is “…perfect for capturing the small but telling moments when life pivots almost unnoticeably, yet profoundly” (Faulkner).
In “Dendrochronology” by Tara Laskowski, we not only inhabit a small space of less than 400 words, but we also dwell in the large canvas of an entire year in three conjoined segments, separated by white space but fused in their heady use of causation and metaphor.
It was 10th grade, the year of Hurricane Isaac, which mowed down the mighty oak in the teacher’s parking lot, snapped it like a cinnamon stick and prompted Mr. Luckanza to teach us about dendrochronology, counting the tree’s rings. Grown-ups wanted to turn everything into a lesson.
Here, we start with a specific year, a specific natural disaster and its traumatic results, and the unique learning opportunity created by this event. Lakowski imbues keywords and images with importance in this first paragraph not only through their specificity but also by the way she repeats them in the next two paragraphs. Anything repeated gains power because we take notice of them, note their possibility to add to the story, to be more than their static connotations.
It was the year the football team had a shot, and they introduced cheese fries into the cafeteria. We had to take English 10 and read dog-eared copies of “How Green Was My Valley?”, which everyone kept calling “How Long Is My Valley?” The economy tanked and my mom took a second shift at the late night diner. We all turned 16 and some of us got parties. The biggest one was Shannon Richardson’s, talked about for months because someone vomited all over her parents’ white suede sofa and she posted flyers on certain lockers looking for a confession.
One of the story engines that Laskowski uses here is the naming of a specific time, a collective experience for these characters, a time and space that the reader is invited into. Time or setting markers can add to the atmosphere of a story, especially a micro since so much is left out or left to the reader’s imagination. Guideposts make us feel comfortable, and help us settle in.
But more has happened in this year, and how do we categorize a year, but in its events, in the way they stand out, and the way consequences might reverberate into the future? This is an important year, we know because the narrator is almost obsessive with the specificity of the details, their desire to hold up these events without commentary, because, we are in the know; we were young once. The bass beat behind these words is the question, “You remember, right? It affected you, too, right?” The more questions arise, the more power and depth a story has, the more affect it can have on its reader.
Notice too how long the narrative keeps us from the point of view, how in the middle of this paragraph, the almost middle of the story, we are now a part of a “we”? How the narrator is personally affected by the mother taking a new or second job? The story became personal, and this dynamic shift is important for the reader, too, because we want it to be personal, we want to be as close to the characters as possible, and there’s alchemy here where we might also consider our own tenth-grade years, where we might share in a mutual, but unsaid feeling!
It was the year people started losing their virginity, whether on purpose or not. Then, right before Christmas break, they found Mr. Luckanza in his car with a pistol in his lap and a shattered windshield stained red the color of those poisonous berries our parents always warned us not to eat. In the spring, a group of men came in overalls to finally take the oak away, chain-sawing it in pieces and tossing the hunks over the side of their pick-up. Even after they drove away I could still imagine rolling my fingers along the tree’s insides, the roughness of the bark and the tenderness of the inside, some rings small, some larger, some stained dark and hardened like a cancer, almost like it knew what was coming but couldn’t tell anyone until it was too late.
I love how Laskowski starts to connect all three sections, how some things happen on purpose and others are uncontrollable, how nature and choice are at odds in these characters’ lives. Mr. Luckanza’s suicide seems to be on both sides of this theme, how he can teach them something important but not know this importance, or know it enough to keep himself alive, how Laskowski moves to the tenor of metaphor as the blood is described in the terms of nature, of poisonous berries as if this event is communicable as if a parent’s warning can keep their children safe, and how do we know that warnings are often useless, are especially useless to these characters? Laskowski finds another, deeper metaphor in the nature of the tree, the tree from the opening paragraph returns to exert its importance in this story. We end on the not a true action, by our narrator, but by an imagined one, where we go back to the beginning, how this year’s events have invited into their lives a form of poison or cancer, one associated with violence and trauma that has the power to follow them long past this year.
Ending with metaphor is a function of dwelling in the unsaid. The writer or narrator doesn’t resort to the pithy, the easily digestible meaning or lesson. If we’re up to the task, and the metaphor rings that bell of satisfaction in puzzling, we delight in the figurative being the answer for the literal. This becomes even more important in ending a micro. There’s so much unsaid or left off the page, that we need a device that honors the brevity. “The surprise and the density of the metaphor require unpacking, and in the process of unpacking, the reader experiences the effects of a longer story” (Faulkner).
We are not lifted from the story like a feather in the wind but driven deeper like a stake through wood. We are meant to feel heavy with the participation of the experience.
Prompt:
I want you to try to borrow this format and build a story that uses the unique perspective of your main character to talk about the year in a way that only they could see it! Notice how that tree works as the controlling image and metaphor; a way to put this perspective into context, to create depth and resonance in the ending, a way for the narrator to dial out and provide an overhead view of the year and the catastrophes it caused! This is one way to make a micro loom larger by making it have a more universal ending. It's not always easy to do. If that's not working, try to zoom in on a particular feeling or image associated only with the main character. Play around with dilation: zooming out or in for your endings! Try to use only three sections like Laskowski and see if you can speak for an entire year in mini-moments! If you summarize, which you probably will, make sure it's active with surprising language! Get weird or surreal, too, if that makes sense! Create a slanted view of this world, this year!
Flash, I Loved Reading This Month:
Bone by Didi Wood
The Greenest Place by Eliza Gilbert
Vacuoles by Łukasz Drobnik
There Is No Advice I’d Give to My 16-Year-Old Self by Sabrina Hicks
Mrs. Frakenstein by Gwen Kirby
Try This At Home:
Make a list of some important years in your life. For each year, list a few big events for that year. Be specific about what happened or dig into the images that arise when you think about these years or events. Find the one that provides the most inspiration and write a story about that event. But use a different character than yourself as the main character.
Write With Me:
Want to work one-on-one with me on Flash or Microfiction writing in 2024? Here are two opportunities for the Spring, with another enrollment period in the fall! More information at my website!
https://tommydeanwriter.com/flash-fiction-mentorships/
https://tommydeanwriter.com/microfiction-mentorships/
Just announced! Flash Fiction Writing: Plot and Structure 5-Week Online Workshop, Starts Thursday, February 1st, 2024
Craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts are all available through the online classroom. Students also post work and provide and receive feedback within the online classroom environment (Wet Ink).
Each student will receive positive feedback from me on each prompt they respond to (1 per week or a total of 4 for the class) and have the opportunity for one full workshop critique from me. Students are expected to provide comments on each flash workshopped in this class. Students will receive lecture notes and analysis of 2 flashes per week.