The blog has been a little quiet lately. Every time something new comes into my life, it pushes out something else, and this blog has, unfortunately, been a low priority for me.

This time it was the flash game Evony. I’m not linking to it because it’s extremely addictive, and I’m going cold turkey. I was good at this game. Very good. But it was consuming my life, so I dropped it. I feel bad, but feeling bad is what addiction is all about, and I am a video game addict.

Anyways, I finally got around to writing a piece for KC Ball’s flash fiction magazine 10Flash. Normally, I avoid subbing to new magazines because they tend to fold like a cheap suit, or have such low readership my work doesn’t get seen, and with my limited writing time I need all the exposure I can get.

Ball’s project was different for several reasons. One, I got specifically invited and KC is a friend. I want to both support her venture and don’t want to let her down. Two, KC is no unknown. She is a heck of a writer herself, having recently won 3rd place in Writers of the Future, which, as I have said before, is completely equivalent to 1st place. Once you place that highly, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are determined by chance (for instance, whether your story resonated with the particular judges that read it. The judges change from quarter to quarter, so the person who reads your piece is determine… by chance). Three, KC has been a huge supported of MY labour of love, EDF. I can honestly say that the magazine wouldn’t function without her help in the slush.

Anyways, about the specific project, 10Flash is a prompt-driven magazine which is a bit of an experiment that I think could only work in flash fiction. Prompt-driven magazines for longer works (short story length) have failed in the past for lack of quality submissions among other reasons, but with flash, writers can churn out stories in hours (mine took 2.5), so the investment of time you’re chancing is minimal.

The prompt this time was “a librarian on vacation in a foreign land”. I kind of bent that prompt a little as I usually do, but the piece turned out quite well. I actually choked myself up a little as I wrote it, and that’s a pretty good sign.

I’ll post again when the piece actually debuts. I know a lot of my EDF regulars have been burning and yearning to read my work, and this is an opportunity to see if the old man can actually practice what he preaches. Until then, I promise to keep the blog up a little more!

Tags: 10 Flash, EDF, KC Ball, my work

At EDF, we get a lot of “Dialogue only” stories. These are stories with zero description, just (at minimum) two characters talking to each other.

I can count on one hand how many of them we’ve ever accepted (and have fingers to spare).

The biggest reason for rejection? Both voices sounded the same. With dialogue only stories, you’re basically saying, as a writer, that you’re so good at writing dialogue that you don’t need all that mundane stuff like description, setting, and plot. You can do it all in the spoken word. Well, if you can’t even make two character sound different from each other, you’re in trouble. As an editor, I should be able to point to a random line of dialogue and say, oh, that’s character A speaking. I can tell because of his/her (way of speaking/accent/personality/etc).

Other good reasons for rejection are:

• You’ve inserted a random line of description at the end. If you have description at all, you need it everywhere. Otherwise it just looks like you tried to write a dialogue only story and failed.
• More than two characters. Two is hard enough. I’ve never seen a successful dialogue only story with three characters. The reader just gets confused.
• Info dumps. Just because it’s in dialogue, doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.
• The story sucks. A “clever” format like dialogue-only can’t save this.

Anyways, dialogue only pieces make for great exercises, but poor stories. Disagree? Prove me wrong. And then submit that proof to EDF’s slush pile.

Tags: EDF, The craft

Sorry the blog’s been quiet recently. Been battling Norwalk, home renovations, and major deadlines at work all at the same time. Still desperately trying to catch up on the slush at EDF, so apologies there also.

I noticed that the last post got nine comments from people who all immediately vowed to flood me with Spouse-Killing stories. May you all be forced to read the collective works of Stephenie Meyer!

Anyway, next in the list of hideously overdone plot lines: “A social gathering from Rejected Loser’s POV.” This kind of story is fun to write. So fun, in fact, that every single writer on Earth has attempted it. Fourteen times. And submitted all of them to EDF.

Tags: EDF

Just noticed in the admin section that readers have commented on Every Day Fiction stories 11,111 times. That alone is one of the best metrics of how a community has sprung up around our little magazine.

Thanks guys! You make it all worthwhile!

Tags: EDF

I just wanted to draw your attention to the latest Flash Fiction blog to hit teh interwebs.

Flash Fiction Chronicle is a “meta-blog” authored by the flash fiction magazine, Every Day Fiction‘s best and most prolific authors. The articles are really amazing. There’s a lot of collective wisdom out there about writing in general and flash fiction specifically.

I also think that the idea itself is full of win. The authors get yet more exposure for their own blogs (their picture appears alongside their article along with links back to their site), and the readers get a steady stream of great content from a variety of view points.

What does EDF get? Well, we’re “targeting” the key words “Flash Fiction”. The hope is that when people link to the site, they’ll use the words “Flash Fiction Chronicle”, which will help our rankings with Google. I doubt we’ll ever surpass Flash Fiction Online because of their cleverly chosen name, but our hope it to at least make the front page for that search.

Tags: EDF, Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction Chronicle