"What is Flash!points?"
Flash!, a guide to writing very short stories is full of writing exercises, examples, and prompts to get you writing your own short-short stories. I’ve been asking folks to send us their results. You can contribute as well by sending your stories to me at johnnydufresne@gmail.com and maybe you’ll see your story online! You can get your copy of the book here.
The Modifier
by Sherry Dickerson
She said “You are so…”
I said “You are so…”
And so it begins.
She said “You are too…”
I said “You are too…”
And so it ends.
Sherry Dickerson’s interests are science and medicine. She grew up in Michigan, where she earned several degrees in nursing and counseling. Upon retirement, her reading choices moved to fiction. In her current home in Florida, she attended several lectures by John Dufresne. Much to her own surprise, she was inspired one day to write the Flash Fiction, The Modifier.
Here’s an exercise for you to try. The Bathtub
Jerome Stern (Making Shapely Fiction) said that you can’t write a story
called “The Bathtub.” Once the water is turned on, we know the
character isn’t going anywhere, Maybe he had Ernest J. Gaines’ advice in
mind: Every story should begin in the middle of an LA freeway: the
character moves or the story’s over. Leonard Nash in his story called
“The Bathtub” proved that you can indeed write a story with that title. And that’s what you’ll do.
The character may not be going anywhere physically, but she is going places imaginatively or
emotionally. So put your character in the tub. What’s that tub look like? Use your five senses. What
does the bathroom look like? Smell like? Sound like? The character is in the tub, but this is not a
story about bathing.