Muddled in the Middle

June 2nd, 2007

The other day I decided I wanted to try my hand at an on-line flash fiction contest. The contest seemed simple enough- use the prompt to write a 200-500 word story, submit your work, and pray that you win. As easy as that seemed I never imagined writing the middle of the story would be so difficult. Sure, the beginning challenges the writer with a blank screen and infinite possibilities of which you can only select one. Then of course there is the challenge of creating an appropriate ending. Anyone can draft a cliché story book finale, but what distinguishes average from the cream of the crop are the writers who can fabricate the endings that make you anxious to run out and pick up the next novel before you’ve even finished the story.

But neither of those challenges inflicts writer’s constipation like the middle of a flash fiction story. In flash fiction you don’t have the word count to invest in the development of characters or a plot. Just like a minute man in bed, you gotta get the reader excited, stick it to ‘em and pull out before anybody realizes how fast it all happened. You don’t have time for foreplay to entice your reader into the story. You also loose the privilege of teasing your readers with captivating twists in the plot that might provide that ultimate satisfaction. In flash fiction you just gotta drive it home with no hesitation and therein lays my problem. I’ve got 500 words to develop a story about the shock of meeting a childhood friend’s fiancé and I know how I want it to end, I’m just not sure how to get there.

So far, I’ve got an impatient main character anxiously awaiting the arrival of her friend and the mystery groom at a tasty seafood restaurant. As she waits she rattles off lists of her friend’s looser boyfriends all the while praying the elect is not amongst them. Although the intro is packed with too many unnecessary details it provides a decent foundation but that’s where the thread unravels leaving me muddled in the middle. Talking in further detail about the narrators inner thoughts eats away at the word count and delays the rhythm of the story. Jumping straight to the ending leaves the reader discombobulated in the flurry of what has just happened. Sigh, I pray that a third draft will lead me down a more fruitful path. Until then I have reached the middle and run out of gas.

Having a goal in mind isn’t enough, at some point you have to hash out exactly how to get there.