Ditio Syed Haq

Storytelling and How to Write Flash Fiction Everything you need to know about storytelling and flash fiction to begin writing today. Learn about the origins of the art and craft of storytelling and find out how to write the type of stories that editors like and want to publish with this free guide. Brought to you by: Bengal Creative Hub. DITIO SYED-HAQ Writer and Poet – a teller of tales (but, not of fortunes). Creative Director/TV, Digital Media Specialist and Serial Entrepreneur. www.ditiosyedhaq.com STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Contents What this Guide is About ............................................................................................... 3 The Origins of Storytelling ............................................................................................. 5 The Craft of Storytelling ................................................................................................. 9 The “Writer’s Toolbox” ................................................................................................. 12 Flash and Other Types of Short Fiction .......................................................................20 Guidelines – Both Generic and Flash Fiction .............................................................. 23 Down the Rabbit Hole to the Water’s Edge .................................................................30 About the Author Ditio Syed-Haq is a man who wears many hats. An award-winning bilingual author from Dhaka Bangladesh who writes in both English and Bengali, he is a familiar face amongst the Dhaka literary crowd where, more than for his writing, he is known as the only son of the late poet, playwright and novelist Syed Shamsul Haq and Anwara Syed Haq, also a writer and practicing psychiatrist. Like his father, who earned himself the nickname of Sabyasachi, a term denoting one who is skilled in many fields, Ditio also has multiple and diverse interests that include simultaneously working on novels, stories and poetry in English and Bengali, a number of translations of his father’s work, projects in the theatre and dramatics space along with recording his own songs and music as a solo artist and some experiments with the spoken word. In private, he rues the fact that he does not have time to devote to his love of nature, fishing and organic farming. Between this hectic schedule, he also finds the time to mentor a number of Post-Graduate students of Theatre and Performance Studies Dhaka University along with mentoring children with special needs about building confidence and public speaking. According to Ditio, “A life without stories is a blank page,” and thus, he explains, is the reason why he seems to be making a determined effort to leave a good few reams of paper in his wake – and that, is precisely why he fills up the nanoseconds in-between projects with developing his role of Creative Director at the soon-to-be-launched Amar TV, assembling a team of multi-skilled content creators and also as Chief Technology Officer of his ITenabled Services firm Indigo ICT, which he explains, means Inspired Creative Technologies. Ditio’s educational background is in business – he completed his MBA and qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant at the turn of the last century and subsequently spent two decades working with business technology, working his way up from a project analyst to senior roles within the global banking industry, driving organizational change through continents and culture through technology. A serial insomniac, he often works until dawn in his home studio, stating that the stillness of night is the perfect environment to create art. With the incessant traffic of thoughts inside his head, it is not surprising at all that he needs a bit of peace and quiet. He lives with his extended family, his wife Gina and son, Ezra in a curious, crumbling red-brick house in the heart of Dhaka that is his childhood home. Copyright and Licensing Copyright © 2018 Ditio Syed-Haq (as author). This guide/eBook contains proprietary material and intellectual property of the author that is subject to copyright restrictions along with the content itself. This version has been prepared for Bengal Creative Hub’s Artistic Arsenal programme. Bengal Creative Hub has been granted exclusive Private Label Rights to this content and are therefore free rebrand, co-brand and offer it or any part thereof in any medium – including online/html, pdf, eBook, mobi, video or in printed form to both members and non-members of Bengal Creative Hub through their associated website(s) and partner sites provided it is distributed free of charge to the recipient and retains this unmodified copyright statement. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 2 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION What this Guide is About This guide forms the supplementary material and notes for the Storytelling and Flash Fiction workshop run by Bengal Creative Hub as part of their Artistic Arsenal programme. You do not need to have attended a workshop in order to use this book. You do not have to have prior knowledge of writing, as this is an introductory course. It is by no means a complete guide or how-to manual of writing stories – to do that would entail covering much more ground and could easy fill up a college semester. However, as an introduction to the “why, wherefore and how” of writing short stories, this guide is all you will need to dive into your own ocean of creativity and emerge as a writer. Dear Reader (and, soon-to-be Writer), I am going to teach you how to write a short story by asking you to forget about writing short stories altogether. I mean it; let go of your desire to write for a moment. Let us, instead, take a step back in time to where it all began… *** Ever since the development of language, humans have used the spoken word, and subsequently, its written form to tell each other stories of all kinds – stories that spoke of the lives of their ancestors, of their customs and culture, of their joys and sorrows. Since the dawn of civilization, stories have been written on every imaginable topic, from the coronation of kings and queens and depictions of gods and goddesses, to the struggles of humans for survival, food and shelter, and for protection from the dangers that lurk in the worlds both seen and unseen; real and imagined. We have been hooked on stories from Day One. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, anyone? That is a story, too. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 3 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Over time, the popularity of stories crossed over from the factual to the manufactured and groups of people emerged within communities who devoted their lives to keeping people entertained with their tales. Those who recorded these narratives following the development of letters were the earliest writers we know of. As civilization advanced, these people, known as Scribes (from the French escrire: to write) began a practice that continues to this day. In this way, the earliest records of human life (stories) are found decorating the walls of their temples and places of worship. Meanwhile, in the Western world, the Protestant revolution inspired a man called Martin Luther to invent the printing press. The rest, to use a much overused cliché only because it fits, is history – hisstory and, we know about that story because it, too was printed. This guide covers the basics of how storytelling began and evolved into the forms that we know today. While writing is undoubtedly an art, we focus here on the equally, if not more, important craft of writing. To practice a craft, a craftsman requires tools and, by implication, anyone in possession of those tools and with sufficient understanding of how to use them, can break through any doubts they have in their minds and begin writing stories. Not just any other stories, but good ones – the type editors like to read and publish. It is something that I had to learn by trial and error over the course of two decades and, by being blessed with a great teacher in my father, I am in a position to also pass on that joint knowledge here. Whether you are an aspiring writer, or a professional one, a journalist, filmmaker or copywriter, this book will show you how to write and get your work accepted for print in record time. The primary focus of this book is on how to write Flash Fiction, but, in doing that, I provide all you need to start writing better stories in any form from the moment you finish reading it. Once you begin to see and understand stories in the context that they are defined here, there is no looking back. So, without further ado, let us jump “into the middle of the action” and get down to the business of learning how stories came to be. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 4 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION The Origins of Storytelling  It is all about Communication: Storytelling is one of the most primitive forms of communication known to humankind. It developed side by side with the origins of language. Did you know that touching another person is also a primitive communications device? Alongside storytelling, it is also something that we use all the time - .e.g. touching someone on the shoulder to get his or her attention.  Verbal and Non-Verbal: Touching is a non-verbal method of communication. Other non-verbal methods are through painting and drawing, dancing and, of course, sound – such as the sound of tribal drums to send messages across great distances. Our ancestors used a combination of sounds and vision to create messages that could be understood by other people. Think of the Native Americans and Witch Doctors in Africa who used a combination of dancing, drumming and chants for a variety of reasons including – praying for rainfall, for a good harvest, to ward off disease and the Evil Eye and, of course, to spread the message of our brave leaders and how they battled enemies!  The Purpose of Storytelling: With the development of language, our ancestors learned to communicate with each other by giving “meaning” to the specific sounds – i.e. “words” produced by their vocal chords to represent objects, people, places and events. These sounds were then joined together to form meaningful pictures or “sentences” that conveyed a complete thought. From there, sentences put together led to the creation of “stories” (I like to think of stories as “movies” instead. It is more visual) that other humans were able to understand. Look at the examples in the previous point – as you will see below, stories exist to inform and entertain.  Before Language was invented: Imagine a time before words and language were invented. Before language, early humans had to paint pictures or use other visual methods to tell stories – think of the cave paintings that we find across the world. They show scenes of warriors hunting beasts in the wild for food; they show people’s dwellings and villages and portray the deities that were worshipped by those people at the time. The TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 5 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Ramayana and Mahabharata are probably the most detailed and significant examples of storytelling in action.  The Dimensions of Space and Time: Without stories, we are limited to telling other people directly about incidents that are occurring in the present moment. “Eat this fruit, it is good for you” is an example of something in the present moment. With the advent of stories, we are able to add the dimensions of space, time (and the derived elements of distance and velocity) into the equation. For example, “The fruit this year is even better than the crop on the other side of the valley last year, when it rained for a whole month.” Can you see how time, space and distance turn a present moment statement of fact into a story?  We Still Do this! Just because our ancestors did these things before the invention of language, does not mean that we do not do them now. Think about road signs, about pointing at something to direct somebody’s attention to a specific place – “Turn left at the next set of traffic lights just past that blue building”. Imagine the creepy music in a horror movie. Would the same scene be as scary if the music was not there? The music is also part of the “story” being told/heard. Think about your friend saying “mmm…” (a human sound that is not a “word”. Words have meanings, whereas, a sound like “mmm” may have multiple implied meanings depending on the context) when they eat something nice or “grrr” when they are angry or upset. All these methods – words, sounds and visual cues - together make up the stories around us. The sentence above illustrates this point.  Stories are all Around: Yes, we are surrounded by these “stories”. Stories that tell us how to navigate from Dhaka to Chittagong by road and then choose a nice hotel to stay in. The descriptions you read online on your favourite travel review site are all stories. When you are looking for a hotel and you read, “Fabulous wooden cottage, king size bed and veranda leading out to the seafront, fully air-conditioned and attended by your own waiter who can keep you refreshed with a glass of your favourite alcoholic beverage. Feeling adventurous? Why not try out Pineapple Passion drink – served within a whole pineapple and topped with our famous Red Rock Rum, a specialty drink brewed by the first settlers as part of the Tipsy Agreement signed with neighbours on… etc.). Now, ask yourself – did you just read a description of a hotel, or was it a story? The fact that reading it caused you a imagine what was TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 6 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION being said: wooden cottage, big bed, veranda, sea side etc. – each of these items makes the picture of the hotel clearer in our minds.  Stories in Action – the main types of stories. This section offers us a high-level view at best, but that is all we need to start writing. o Fiction such as short stories, novellas (a long short story), novels (a very long short story), biographies (a real-life story), or epic sagas (a terribly long story – some, might say, “too long”). Collectively, we call these “golpo” in Bangla. o Informational stories like our hotel room by the sea, a Country Guide to Bangladesh, the Liberation War Treaty, the Retail Garments Outlook for South East Asia Special Report, Energize Your Mind with SubCosmic Floating Lotus Meditation, How to Grow Naga Chillies all Year Round, Learn How to Play Guitar in One Week Even if you Don’t Have a Guitar etc. These are all informational stories; they tell us how to do things. o Professional stories like the Microsoft Office Guide from Beginner to Guru in one Week, or your colleague telling you, “I heard a rumour that Sinthia is getting promoted to Regional Manager all because of Mr. You-Know-Who…” all the written and spoken communication we tell each other at work, when we are with friends, plus personal stories – see below. When you go for a job interview and the interviewer asks you “Tell me about a time you had to organise and rely upon the efforts of other people to achieve something. How did you do it?” – The interviewer is asking to hear a story from you. o Personal: “I had a great weekend; we went to my cousin’s wedding. She’s emigrating to Canada this January…” or calling your manager to say, “I can’t come to work today because I’ve got a fever” (but I don’t really have a fever, I just don’t feel like spending another day on that boring research) or, “I can’t come to work today because of a family emergency” (and I need to catch the next flight back to my town this morning or else there will be big trouble. Notice what is happening. We speak about something but our mind can have its own agenda. Our minds are occupied with stories layered upon stories and more stories. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 7 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION  The purpose of a story is to provide information (or misinformation, whether it is intentional or by accident) and entertain (or bore people, such as with all these examples ;)). As I was typing this last sentence, a line just popped into my head from out of the blue – a line that sums up everything said in this section. See, even our subconscious mind has a hand in storytelling (just how true that is, springs to mind much later in life as we become more self-aware). Here is the line. Read it, take it to heart and think about it the next time you try to convince yourself that you cannot make up stories, that you cannot write about the countless stories that are going on around you whether you want them or not. Stories are inseparable from life itself: Life without stories is a blank page. ~ DSH. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 8 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION The Craft of Storytelling Okay, stories are important; we have gathered that much. No, not even important, they are critical and inseparable from life – we all agree upon that I hope? Granted, that the survival of the planet does not rely upon telling stories (Or, does it? How about all the stories we are shown about how climate change is being accelerated by the damage we are causing to the planet? Or, how about the tax man explaining why we will pay less tax if we switch our premises to energy-efficient lighting? They are stories, too.) You may have come across the much-used clichés like the ones above. Storytelling is an art, without a doubt, but it is also a craft. Wait a minute – what does that mean for people like us – people whose idea of having a good time is to sit around with a pen and a piece of paper, wishing that they could capture a story as it flies past and put it inside the cage – oops – page in front of them? Let us answer that with a question. I love people that answer questions with another question. Normally, the territory of intrusive mother-in-laws, I am bringing this subtle form of irritation (if this were a cleaning product, it would be described as a “mild abrasive”.) Select the correct answer from the possible answers listed for the question below. Which of the following is true about writing stories (it does not matter what type of story or whether they are long or short): 1. It is an ancient practice, as old as civilization itself and shrouded in much mystery about the task of preserving spoken and imagined worlds onto paper using the medium of language. It is a discipline whose secrets and inner workings are known by a very small number of teachers (masters) who pass on this information from generation to generation over time. Do you think that sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings? Think again, that is exactly what is going on right here, right now, as you read this page. Okay, Hobbits, time to move on. 2. It is a learned skill, just like driving a car, where you must learn how to operate the individual parts in perfect harmony to drive the car forward. It is something that can be learned and applied by anyone willing to devote the time and effort. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 9 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION 3. It is something that is unique to each person. Every person who writes stories will have their own way of expressing things, just as people’s faces are unique; just as our personalities are weak. Of course, it is possible to imitate people, and there are people who look “almost” like one another, but not one hundred percent. Stories can be made based upon other stories (all those films that state “Based upon a true story” at the beginning that make you gasp and whisper urgently to your partner next to you in the cinema hall, as if they cannot read and you have accompanied them to helpfully speak the words on-screen out loud), but that is also a conscious choice on the part of the writer. In the dark and shadowy world of plagiarism, it is the only way of telling stories. 4. To become a writer, you need to open your eyes to the stories all around you; you need to observe, because it is the power of observation that makes you a writer. Observation, not imagination, is the cornerstone of creative writing. To become a good writer, you need to practice, practice and practice more. With practice, the art of writing becomes automatic. Take this guide, for example. I am writing it in one sitting on a lazy weekend afternoon. When I first started writing, such a feat would have been like possessing a superhuman power (“Storyman!”). It would have taken days, if not weeks to get a draft completed. With practice, we realise that, in fact, our ability to write thoughts as they come into our heads is already automatic, because that is how we speak; we do it all the time (see previous section). When we speak, we do not usually know what we are going to talk about next, do we? Our conversations are spontaneous. That is because our thoughts are spontaneous and, stories are merely thoughts that we are transferring onto the medium of paper and pen, instead of the medium of speech. With practice, we become more used to the idea that writing stories is just making note of the stories that we tell all the time and is as natural to us as breathing. 5. It is a little bit of magic. 6. It is all of the above. Let me guess – you chose number six; the last option. That’s the problem with these questions – at least, that’s how it seemed like in my school days (Wha’hey, another story coming up!) – whenever you see the “all of the above” answer, you automatically scan the rest of the answers, weigh up the possibility of them being true and then think to yourself, “Yep, I agree with this odd chap talking about TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 10 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION stories as if his life depended upon it (actually, it does, but that is another matter), the correct answer is “all of the above”. Thank you, Mr Instructor, for getting me to go over each of these points again and think about them. You didn’t even have to ask.” It’s time for us to pause for a moment and silently think to ourselves, “Well darn, I never looked at it that way, who would have thought? I spent all these years thinking that stories were out of reach and now I find out that there’s no escaping stories. That’s crazier than a box of frogs (I love this phrase; a friend from North Carolina gave me the wonderful imagery that the phrase spawns upstairs in my movie-theatrefor-one). This is monumental – it should go down in the his-tory books. We have laid the foundations of storytelling. If you are in a workshop as we reach this milestone, this collective “aah!” that accompanies an expansion of consciousness (which is exactly what this type of mental shift or paradigm-shift is called). As we have laid the foundations, so must me now build the house. What I am going to give you in the next section will cover points 1-5 noted above. I am sorry, but I cannot teach you how to do magic – or can I? What ideas did you have about storytelling before you started reading this paper? Where is your level of understanding now? Did you experience an “Aha!” moment or two? Perhaps an expansion of consciousness and being able to see this intimidating “Writer’s Club – Member’s only” place from the inside. It looks like you may have missed the tiny little sign that says “Free Membership”? Well, whether you like it or not, you are now firmly within the hallowed grounds of the wonderful world of writers. Isn’t that magic? To do magic, though, you need equipment. You need a wand, you need crystals and oils and potions. You need a book of spells…. and you want somewhere to store all this stuff. Let us talk about something that I call the Writer’s Toolbox. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 11 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION The “Writer’s Toolbox” This is where we begin to get up-close and personal. I first learned about this thing called the Writer's Toolbox from my father (whom you can read about in the endnote). I am not sure if he invented the term, but it would not surprise me if he did. He wrote a lot on the mechanics and craft of writing in addition to a substantial body of creative work during his lifetime. I will admit to not having read his books end-to-end myself – there are over four hundred – but I can say with conviction that we spoke about it on countless occasions as we discussed the craft. Remember what I said about writing being an ancient craft passed on from master to student, a couple of pages North? That was the relationship my father and I had in addition to the relationship of blood and bloodline. We did it because that is what we used to do – tell each other stories about writing stories and then discuss how those stories could be used to write even better stories. Moreover, that is exactly what I am doing now. This toolbox we are talking about – What is it? Is it a physical box like the one carpenters use to keep their equipment in? Is it some artsy way of imagining something that has the value of an imagined meal at your favourite restaurant – that is nice to think about while you are doing it, but provides no real gratification and is meaningless afterwards? (I am thinking of one of those online meditation gurus who say things such as, “I want you to imagine a crystalline, blue, healing, kind blue light emanating from the depths of the cosmos and entering through the crown of your head and spreading a cold blue tingle through your entire body; from the top of your head through the infinite knowledge and wisdom that lies dormant within your dna; turning you into that loving blue light as it progresses out of the soles of your feet into the welcoming and nurturing soil of the Earth Mother. With that light, all your troubles cease and abundance, the infinite abundance of the universe flows through you… now, repeat to yourself, I just paid fifty bucks for the privilege of this guy talking rubbish. I am, in fact, a great supporter of meditation and self-help methods such as autosuggestion and hypnosis, but there are some people, many, who give the alternative therapies space a bad name. I have regularly used self-hypnosis, breathing and relaxation techniques when faced with a particularly grueling or difficult public appearance, such as where live music is involved. It works wonders without these cosmos-blue-lighty things.) TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 12 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION The Writer’s Toolbox is nothing like this. It exists whether you want it to or not. It does not care if you use it or not. It’s your toolbox and it is there to do your bidding. It can be real or imagined, or both. This is generally one of those points in the presentation where I hear a distinct rustling as people shift around in their seats. My rhetoric and frequent examples and notes and side notes and running commentary should be starting to have the sedative effect for which they are renowned. Listen: there is no problem in this Writer’s Toolbox being many things all at once. It could be as absurd as you wish – make it “exist in a non-existent way” that you often “use or don’t use”. We are writers, and making stuff up is what we do. If you heard the line I just made up and thought, “Well, who knows, I happen to have a real toolbox. It is currently referred to as my “Office Bag” to the various people that work with me or around me, who seem intent upon snatching it from me like a malicious crow swooping down upon a defenseless, baby chick. To them, it appears to be some kind of Grand Prize, the “Bag of Honour” to be taken from me and carried dutifully around whenever my hand twitches slightly in its direction. At the time of this writing, it contains my work laptop, various chargers, a pen drive or two, a broken pencil, three different coloured pens, a pink guitar pick that must have been planted there by my son, a highlighter and a scrunched up jhalmuri packet that I intended to throw away but forgot about, plus a smattering of what looks suspiciously like panch phoran, our ubiquitous answer to five-spice (much as it is considered “okay” to throw litter on the streets of an already polluted city, my parallel lifetime in the UK insists that I dispose of my rubbish responsibly). My toolbox is a REAL toolbox – agreed? You probably have one yourself. You probably call it something simple, like “Bag”. However, this is not the toolbox I am talking about. Because, what I am interested in talking about is a “Virtual” toolbox. It is something that is imagined, as we are doing now (well, I am, at least), and this virtual toolbox will exist whether we are consciously aware of it or not. It is just “there” and, my own toolbox is something that I use all the time. It still does not answer the question – what is inside the Writer’s Toolbox? This virtual toolbox is what we are going to work with today. It is a box that you imagine to hold the “tools of your trade” – the trade of being a writer. Go ahead and imagine your toolbox for a second. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 13 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Allow it to be the first image that comes to mind – do not think, “Oh dear God, no, I did not want that rusty, tin box painted a post-box red, no, I want something Louis Vuitton, Gucci, perhaps.” Do you know what you did by “allowing” the first image to be what your box is? This process of allowing is the gold dust by which writers connect with their subconscious and with the world around them. Your subconscious obviously knew straight away when it showed you that rusty, red, tin box. It was as if it said, “Ah, you mean this toolbox? Of course, it’s been here all this time waiting for you, Sir/Madam.” By allowing the subconscious to have a “conscious” say in things, you have bridged a creative gap that many writers take years to discover. (Because of the old master and student process of osmosis. Is this beginning to sound more credible as we go along. I took a slight detour from our discussion on the toolbox to make note of the above point. It belongs in a far more advanced class on creative writing where all these arcane references to alchemy and magic and Harry Pottery begin to make sense. For now, you will have to take my word for it. Incidentally, that red tin box is how I see mine.) Back to this toolbox – it contains all the stuff that you pick up about writing, including the mechanical elements such as spelling and grammar, diction, your own techniques that give you your unique “voice”. It also contains the self-help type tricks that you learn, including changing your old beliefs (as we have done with our new knowledge of how stories are all around us), adding new ones (such as our writer’s toolbox itself), or simply confirming what you know – every single thing related to writing that helps you write better, write clearer, follow rules and even break rules, goes into your virtual toolbox. So, what kind of tools do we have in there? Here are a few practical examples that come to mind straight away:  Literary Theories and Structures – e.g. the Greek three-act structure of narrative that you find in fiction, plays and about any other story you can imagine, even television commercials. If you do not know about this one, Google it. It is fundamental to any kind of story; a good story, that is. Alternatively, stay tuned on this page and I will give you a warp-speed overview in a couple of pages.  Literary Devices that you use – whether you do this consciously or not. “Devices” is a fancy word for techniques. There is a beautiful equivalent of this word in Bengali – “Kaushal”. There are devices with various mysterious names such as Cliff Hangers, McGuffin’s, Foreshadowing and plenty of others. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 14 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Again, look these up on Google if you are interested. Most writers, myself, included, employ such devices in their work automatically. Or, they will consciously use a device, such as a cliff-hanger, without really planning as to what happens when the storyline resumes (from the edge of a cliff, where they left it hanging perilously a few chapters ago and since when you have unconsciously bitten your fingernails down to ragged stubs). This is the ingrained and hereditary aspect of art at work – but look! If they are recognised as devices (the ingredients or elements of fiction) that we can read about here, they can be learned, too. Just as you are learning now.  Your mental catalogue of books and resources, places and objects and things and locations and everything that your story “world” would have. Sometimes, writers will make notes on something without any idea whether they will need it or what story they will use it in. To them, it is something of interest, to be noted, “just in case” they wish to use it at some undetermined point in the future. Writers of epic fiction, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, take this world-creation business to extremes. Imagine creating every single item and location in Game of Thrones before you begin, from their clothes and jewelry to the weapons, the cities, different types of houses, forests, vegetation and, of course, monsters. Unless you have Tolkien’s magic wand, this exercise alone would take us the best part of a lifetime, by which time we would probably lost all desire to write.  Languages that you write in, spellings, their grammatical rules, rules of syntax and diction, along with a dictionary and a thesaurus that are supplemented every time you Google a new word and begin using it.  Grammar and Style techniques in more detail and your personal notes that you develop as your writing skills begin to pick up speed. How strictly you apply the rules of grammar is up to you. However, let me state the obvious – grammar exists to make your language “sound” right. If you break the rules or choose not to follow them, your writing will not “sound” right. I am very fastidious about grammar but often deliberately adapt the rules of grammar, style and syntax to achieve a desired effect that I want. i. for example using semicolons instead of stopping a sentence that is longer than a train (because I want the sentence to be long, because I want the reader to think it’s a long sentence and get tired and because grammar TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 15 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION doesn’t rule my writing – I do). Know the rules before you break them is the best advice I can give here. The second-best advice I can give it to wait until you have some street-cred as a writer before doing anything drastic. I can assure you that the Red-and-Blue Pen brigade take great pleasure in the sound of a manuscript being scrunched up into a little ball of paper between sweaty palms before being tossed into the bin with the deftness of Tamim Iqbal taking a wicket. ii. This last part – adapting rules, not just grammar, but of all the theory and techniques in there – is what defines our personal and unique voice as a writer. Because, just as everyone’s’ face and personality is unique, his or her perception and understanding of a topic and application of it will vary from person to person. The next time you read a story, why not try to keep a lookout for places where the writer has made what seems to be a glaring mistake. Look carefully, and you will probably find out why. There is only one reason to break rules intentionally, and that is to achieve a desired effect or outcome. The best part is about this toolbox is, that it does not care whether you subscribe to the idea or whether you believe in it or not, but your writing is crafted using those very same tools – your tools – the ones that live in your Writer’s Toolbox. Today, I am handing you a tool called Flash Fiction. It consists of some rules that need to be applied when you are writing a particular type of short story which goes by that name. Go ahead, reach out and take it… make it your own, and then you are free to do whatever you like with it. In fact, you are free to never take it out of your toolbox again. The choice is entirely yours. Because, you alone are the one who decides if you are ever going to attempt a piece of flash fiction and, even if so, whether you are going to play by the rules. That is okay. In fact, it is more than okay. It is the sign of a healthy attitude to writing. It will still be there, if you need it – the toolbox with every single thing mentioned above, tidied up neatly and arranged in perfect, neat little rows (if you are anything like my sister), or just thrown in haphazardly because you keep rummaging around inside your box all the time (like me). TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 16 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION A few Points to Remember:  The Writer’s Toolbox is part of their “personal artistic arsenal” – in keeping with the title of this series of workshops, it is an array of tools and techniques and knowledge and experience that help writers write (If you do any other craft, they will have their own toolboxes, too. Why we bother doing all this imaginary roleplaying fantasy stuff is discussed briefly, later on in this guide. I will tell you one of the reasons right now – if you have kept an open mind and embraced the concept of writers having a toolbox of this sort, you have already succeeded in convincing your subconscious that writing is a craft. You have the toolbox, it’s full of tools and now, all you have to do is make some time for craftsmanship. This is writing meets psychology, meets self-help and autosuggestion rolled into one.  Every writer has this toolbox available to them, but not all are aware of it or, even if they are, it may not be something that they think about consciously. The good news is that it does not matter whether you wish to think about it or not – because it is virtual and it is there. Our brains have their own filing system in place, otherwise the millions of sensory inputs that we take in every second would see us locked away in a psychiatric unit. We group similar and related pieces of information closely together, to ease the speed of retrieval of that information. Thus, your Writer’s Toolbox becomes an extremely efficient storage system inside the most powerful computer known to humankind – our brains.  By allowing yourself to imagine such a toolbox, you soon realise that it allows you to put all our learning, experiences, thoughts, feelings and footnotes about writing into a separate space in your head. (Don’t see what benefit this could have? Think again – the technique leans towards tried and Management, Goal/Task orientation and Leadership principles taught to senior executives around the world. Used correctly, it will create intense concentration and focus, encourage clarity of thinking, better writing and – most important of all – allow us to work faster). Prior to taking the decision to write full-time, I was sentenced to twenty years of hard labour, working for corporate banking and financial companies in the City of London. The principles behind this seemingly innocent toolbox are rock-solid.  Literary techniques and theory, criticism, articles, training, reference books etc. and, importantly, your own versions of all this information lives there. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 17 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION  Each person has their unique interpretation of the tools and techniques that they use. The tools are the same, but seen through the lenses of individuality, they produce different results. If this was not a case, a person needs only to pick up a pen and be on the path to becoming a renowned writer. But Wait! What about Flash Fiction? It is understandable that you might be feeling slightly conned, swindled or hoodwinked into devoting a good slice of your life to reading this far and realized that we still have not touched upon the topic of flash fiction. Well, “There is a method to this madness,” as they say. I am from the school of knowledge sharing, and I believe that to really excel at something, you need to go back to first principles and build a solid foundation. The ideas that we have covered so far will last you a lifetime and I am in no hurry to start talking about flash fiction just yet. Do you know why, that is? It is because, by the time you reach the pages on flash fiction, you will have absorbed so much about the craft of writing, that we could probably exchange places and you could teach me a thing or two about the topic instead. The final few pages of this book are devoted entirely to flash fiction and, at that point, you will begin to realise how all of these separate topics converge and that, apart from a few rules such as “don’t do this” and “do that”, there is nothing left to teach – you will know the rest intuitively – and, even if you came to this material armed with previous knowledge and experience of writing, they will be supplemented and sharpened by what you have learned here – provided you have read through the material up to this point at least once. Now, I think we know enough about what stories are, how they originated, what they are for and a whole lot of other information that I am sure we would not think about if somebody asked us to tell them about stories and storytelling. This area can take up the space of an entire college semester but, thankfully, I have condensed that into a couple of pages that give you all the background you will ever read. You are also fully prepared to bore entire living rooms full of people to sleep at after dinner-party conversations with your newfound knowledge. Before going any further, stop for a moment and consider if what you have learned in the last few pages has given you more confidence about writing stories? Many people will attend a creative writing workshop with the impression that TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 18 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION it is impossible to write stories. I am telling you it is not only possible, you are making up stories each day, all around you. Writing, then, is just the act of putting them down on paper. Doesn’t that make you feel better? Good, because now we get into the main topic. Because of the background that we now have, talking about Flash Fiction becomes as easy as pie. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 19 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Flash and Other Types of Short Fiction What is Flash Fiction? Note: I have used the term Flash Fiction, as it is a term that I use. It goes by many names including Micro-Fiction, Short Short Stories, and One-Page Stories etc. Whatever name it goes by, it is the same thing. Therefore, pay attention to the definition: The 500-word limit is arbitrary. Some people will say 1,000 words. For the purposes of this workshop and as a general rule of thumb: Flash Fiction (or micro or one-page or whatever) is a complete and selfcontained story of 500 words or less. It is NOT an extract or summary or an introduction to another, longer work, such as a novel. It must stand independently on its own merit as a work of fiction Fits all) rule, we can safely accept 500 words as being our personal limit. Any shorter than that, and it becomes difficult to write an effective short story without resorting to gimmicks (a gimmick is a literary device too!). If it is longer than 500, it runs the risk of becoming a short story proper. Five hundred words equals about a page of single-spaced text or 1.5-2 pages double-spaced, using Times New Roman, Arial, or similar font [Tip: always format the story that you are sending to an editor with 1.5 line heights. The formatting features of Microsoft Word will allow you to do this quite simply through the editing and language features of Microsoft Word. Editors use that space to do their editing work. If you do not pay attention to manuscript formats, your story might be returned unread.] TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 20 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Flash Fiction is among one of the oldest forms of storytelling, originating from when families and communities sat around the campfire. Themes: Human Conflicts, Survival, Food, Nature, the Unseen and Unexplained. What is so “flash” about Flash Fiction? We now know that this thing called Flash Fiction goes by many names, such as the ones above and can come in many different guises. Of the different choices that we have, my preference would be for “Micro” fiction. The word “flash” carries with it certain connotations that do not sit very well, with what we are trying to learn. Like the flash of an automatic camera, it is not something that appears for an instant to bedazzle readers and is then gone, leaving the poor reader flash-blind, that is, seeing a ghost image of the bright light that appeared seconds before. It is a very good analogy, but it can send us down the wrong path in our writing adventure. It is not necessary to quick that you can hardly spot it. Its effects are not necessarily felt long after the event (in this case, reading the story) has gone. Still, “Flash Fiction” is a widely used term and has been used throughout this document and the accompanying workshops because many people are familiar with it. What name you give it does not matter – You could call it Personal Pan Pizza Fiction for all I cared, so long as it adhered to the guidelines in the definition above: 500 words or less, a complete story that you can read and then move on with your life. It is as simple as that. Creepy Pasta and the Dwindling Internet Attention Span Creepy Pasta = Flash fiction with a twist (like pasta spirals) and where each story (just like pasta), is small, perfectly formed, and delicious. You might have come across a term called “Creepy Pasta”, which refers to a particular type of flash fiction that has gained a huge following online. It is an internet-only type of storytelling (yes, I’m sure that there are published anthologies as well, before you ask!) and consists of very short stories, often no more TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 21 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION than a paragraph or two that are scary, unsettling or disturbing in some way. Consider them as bite-size horror movies, if you wish. They are the type of stories that used to be forwarded by email, thereby creating one of the earliest forms of viral content on the Internet. “Viral” content, in case you do not know, refers to content that is shared/spread very rapidly and the number of people who read that content increases drastically within a short space of time. For example, if you forward a story to ten people, each of those people forward it to ten other people and each of the resulting one hundred people forward it on again to ten people – you get the gist. Creepy Pasta aims to be the type of story that people speak about long after they have read it. They are stories that “stay with you”, the ones that leave you with goose bumps as you turn off the light. Where the trend began is, like most online trends, impossible to determine exactly, but its roots can be found both online and offline. If you saw a movie called Candyman in the 90’s (meaning, if you are somebody who saw Britney Spears while she was in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse), you might remember the ghost called Candyman who could be summoned simply by saying his name three times in front of a mirror. In other words, a story that will have you 1) Wanting desperately to do exactly that every night while you brush your teeth before bed and 2) Wanting to scream for even allowing such a thought into your head, but being powerless to stop it. Both these elements together are a Hollywood filmmaker’s dream. The Law of Diminishing Online Attention Spans Okay, I confess, I made this up. There is no such Law – but that does not mean to say that it does not exist. Let us pretend, for the purposes of this workshop that it does exist. I imagine that it would be stated in textbooks like this: The Law of Diminishing Online Attention-Spans states that the MORE online technology advances and people have readily available access to content creation tools, they will devote increasingly LESS time towards consuming individual pieces of online content (including, but not restricted to, articles, stories, reviews, guides and other forms of mass communication) due to the increase in choice, variety ease of access and download speeds and the increased availability of readily available tools for content creation such as smartphones and video editing software. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 22 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Sounds good for a made-up theory, if you ask me. But, it’s true. The Challenges of Writing Flash Fiction People, especially non-writers, will quite readily dismiss short stories as being somehow inferior to what they consider “proper” writing, such as novellas and poetry. It is understandable, because we have always grown to associate length and substance with complexity. This is all the more true in Bangladesh for the majority who write in Bangla. The use of archaic language, formal and long-forgotten terminology along with a preference for long and complex sentence renders a lot of the written word in Bangladesh as “unreadable” for this one factor along I find that simply staring at a page of unbroken text written in such a style is cause for a headache. With that in Mind, let us take in a few words of caution before we go through the tips. I guarantee that they will leave you feeling motivated and wondering what exactly you were worrying about and why you considered writing to be such a difficult task. Writing is not difficult or not – be it flash or trash. We make stories all the time as part of our life. In that sense, we are already storytellers. From there, to become a writer, all you have to do is write them down. The following points apply to fiction of any length. Read them, embrace them and watch your “impossible” dream of becoming a writer materialise at a speed you never thought possible. It is time for you, to take a leap of faith and join me on the writing bandwagon. Here goes. Guidelines – Both Generic and Flash Fiction TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 23 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION The first few points apply to general fiction, including flash fiction. I have begun the guidelines with these because, unless you pay attention to them, your fiction, flash or otherwise, will not be as good as it can be. Also, remember that these points are going into your writer’s toolbox – not mine! Therefore, feel free to accept, reject or modify them as you feel necessary (but – be warned, you should change them only if you want to achieve something outside of the norm and understand the implications it will have for the other elements in your story. The guidelines below will work for everyone “out of the box” as they say.). 1. Make Sure there IS a Story: Nobody wants to read something that is boring. There must be a story in there – not necessarily an award-winning plot, but a “real story”. By that, I mean, it is about something happening in the past/present/future to, or being done to, or being experienced by someone or something (a dog, an old diary?) that has a beginning, a middle and an end. That is a story. A paragraph describing your morning routine, as you get ready for work is not a story. If you think that, its lack of ideas that are holding you back, the section after this one gives you a few pointers on that too. 2. Use Simple Language: Do not fall into the trap of associating words that are hard, complex, and difficult to understand or that are no longer in common use. If you do, you will only be proving to yourself that very few people read your work. Write as if you are talking to yourself, telling yourself a story. What kind of language does the voice inside your head use? Unless you are Nabokov (and I believe he did go a little over the top with his choice of words in Lolita), you probably have a “regular everyday guy/girl” talking to you. That is your voice. Your natural voice. Use your natural voice and your story will sound natural. Learn to use it well and people will begin to read what you write – even those editors with their red and blue pens. 3. Simple Plot Construction: – You must stick to one plot or storyline. Face it, you are not going to get a complex plot with many twists and turns and subplots running through different times and locations. No. You would struggle to even fit the synopsis of a novel thoroughly into five hundred words. Keep your goal simple – one plot in the story with one beginning, one ending and, ideally one “twist” or surprise. For more about why we need the twist, read on. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 24 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION 4. There are No Shortcuts to Plot: a simple plot does not mean that we can dismiss things as unnecessary or irrelevant in the context of the overall story. A plot must have the elements that were identified by the Greek masters centuries ago. They have not changed for a reason – they just “work”, there is nothing to change or improve or build upon. (Side note: They truly were like “another race”, those Greeks. From mathematics and physics down to the not-so-simple task of creating, a one-size-fits-all-for-eternity outline of a story takes some skill, right.). 5. Plot Components: Your plot should have a hero/heroine/main character. This person needs to have an objective, a goal, or a desire. They have to want this thing so bad that they try to get it. There should be someone/something standing in the way of the hero trying to get towards that objective. There are upsets and disappointment. There are laughter and tears. Then there is the final fight and it is over. The hero wins. (Aside: And, if the writer thinks that s/he’s smart enough to kill off the hero, then it is the writer who dies, take my word for it). Note, that for flash fiction, we need a simple version of this – but it must have the basic elements of a main character who faces a problem in order to reach a certain goal. 6. Begin in the Middle of the Action: Remember that you have very little space to manoeuvre in 500 words. There is no time for backstory, as you would have in a novel. At the same time, we need to inform our readers of certain details about our characters. This point and the next point focus on condensing the events in your story (without omitting a single story element) so that it becomes what we call “tight” – which means focused and to the point. Consider these two examples below. Neither is better than the other is. The only thing that changes is the pace of the story. Notice that all the details in the first are also present in the second, but it is delivered using less than half the space. I drew up these examples on the fly. If I were to give it some thought, it would be even shorter. This is what is meant by beginning in the middle of the action. a. I was beginning to get a bit tired of the way my roommate, Meena, thought that she had some kind of God-given right to interfere in every single thing that I did. Sure, we were besties; had been ever since primary school, and it made perfect sense as we got older that we would want to go to the same university as each other, mingle with the same TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 25 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION people and be there for each other. Meena was always the protective one in our club of two. It was she who was in charge, chose the restaurants we went to and the crowds we mingled with. I didn’t mind the protectiveness; knew it was her love for me that made her be that way but, when I found out that she had been trying to discourage me from dating Arman just because he was popular with the girls and happened to taken a shine to me, well, that was going too, too far. b. I could not believe my eyes as I opened my pencil case and saw the item inside. I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable as a flush of embarrassment washed over me. It was a photo of Arman with another girl. I began to feel an all-to-familiar rage building up. Meena. Nobody else who could have done such a thing. My childhood friend, who had been with me like a shadow since school days; she who knew best. Arman was popular, that was the problem. She had gone too far. 7. Show, Don’t Tell: this means that your characters should reveal details of their environment and other elements including props and locations and even other characters through their own observations and speech, rather than by narrative passages where the writer describes these. The following example shows how this approach in addition to beginning in the “middle of action” makes the writing both shorter and faster-paced. Why faster? Because action, including dialogue, speeds up a story’s pace and description slows it down (a very important tool). a. It was three years since I had that operation on my spine and it showed no signs of getting better. Ever since that day five years ago, when I slipped on the stairs at school while making my way to deliver a lecture to the English Lit class. God, they were a bunch of unruly kids! I wondered why most of them bothered coming to class in the first place. Now, as luck would have it, and just as I had begun to take the short flight of wooden steps onto the podium to collect my Teacher of the Year award, the pain in my back, which had been absent all day, suddenly decided to make a surprise appearance. b. The searing pain shot up my spine like a red-hot iron the instant I placed my feet on the steps to collect my Teacher of the Year while those brats from English Lit snickered. It came from out of the blue, a back injury that was five years old... TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 26 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION 8. Have a Surprise Ending: Okay, this is a joke. No, seriously – I mean it. Think about it – (now follows what they call a “barrage of questions”) – What is the funniest joke you have ever heard in the past, one of those jokes that are like mini stories? What made you laugh when you heard it? Why do you remember the joke after all this time? Why did you laugh? Why did you want to repeat this joke to your friends? Did they laugh? Were you almost sure they would laugh? Okay, I have the point across, I think. No, I am not asking you to forget about flash fiction and focus on a career in comedy. What I am saying is that a good joke has the elements of a great short story. It has an ending that most people could not guess; an ending that delighted, amazed, or stunned people, made them laugh and made them like it so much that they went around telling other people about it. As a writer, all I can say is that if you can write anything with the elements of a good joke, you have it made. [Side note: creating jokes, whether they are good, bad or awful is something I do with my eight-year-old son all the time at home. It is a fun way to foster creative thinking, improve language (e.g. with puns) and have a laugh as well. It also works wonders for parent-child bonding.] 9. Some Final Caveats: I have included all these elements under one bullet point just to tidy things up a bit. a. Short does not mean simple. It is extremely hard to write complete and self-contained story within so few words. b. Stay away from clichéd and overused topics such as unrequited love, girl/boy trouble, suicide, characters who are writers (writing the story) etc. Common topics mark your work as amateur – not by me, but by those people with the red and blue pens. c. Keep the plot as simple as possible; you have one chance to hook the reader. d. Your internal compass will tell you when the story is “finished”. Don’t linger and work on it forever. Move on to the next story. e. Allow a little time, at least a day in the case of flash fiction between writing your story and then editing and revising it. This allows you to TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 27 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION see your work impartially, without emotion. "A writer must be their own fiercest critic." ~ Syed Shamsul Haq. f. Be careful about your ego and your subconscious. Your story will be great the day that readers tell you, it is great. The top three words to look out for when telling people a story is “What happened next?” When people start asking you this while you are telling the story, you know that you are onto a winner. g. Use feedback wisely. Negative feedback is the best type of feedback there is, because it is an opportunity to grow, to see shortcomings that you may have missed. Positive feedback is nice, but should be filed away in your “feel-nice” folder and not handed over to the ego! h. Are you stuck for ideas? Look around you – observe people, places and events that happen every day. You will be surprised that your normal journey to work held so many stories waiting for you to notice them. Learning to watch and observe is one of the most valuable skills a writer can have. i. Keep a notebook or (better) use an app like Evernote, One Note, and Google Notes – there are many alternatives. All are good, and they allow you to take pictures, save web links and make lists and any other type of note you can imagine. As this collection of notes about interesting things builds up over time, you will never be stuck for ideas or inspiration again. For those who like visual cues rather than pages of text, here is a diagram of what a plot looks like in a story in its simplest form. Remember, we only have space to include the simplest of plots in a story that is just five hundred words long, therefore the simpler you can make it, the better – BUT – No shortcuts. To put the diagram in words: The Story Begins, then Something Happens, that turns into Something Big, then that Something Big is Fixed and then we Finish. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 28 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION With that, “to cut a short story long”, we come to the end of this guide. I hope it has opened your mind to a world of possibility and inspired you to pick up that pen. My father was fond of saying, “The longest and most difficult journey that a writer has to make is the one from his bed to his writing desk.” Make that journey – you will never look back. Happy writing, DSH October 2018, Dhaka. Email (p):-, Email (w):-*** TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 29 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Down the Rabbit Hole to the Water’s Edge From Ditio Syed-Haq, C/o Indigo iCT, ManjuBari, Dhaka. Dear Writer, Welcome to what is, technically, not a part of this guide but, some would say, is arguably the most important part. It is not essential that you read it, but I hope that you will. We have, after all, spent considerable time together talking about the secret craft of writing that other writers keep hidden, have we not? If I am found out, they could very well make me disappear in a mushroom cloud faster than it takes me to write another bad joke. You must know what I mean when I say “secret” – those occult rituals, a rabbit’s foot concealed under the bed, a red and blue thread tied neatly, exactly thirty-one times around a bamboo-flower during a full moon, a secret handshake – all the things that help writers write. Because, writing is surely not about skill or even about talent alone. It is easy to believe that writers are magicians. After all that confidence building and denial, I hate to say that this is true. In a way, they are. Magicians… But I prefer the term “Alchemists” instead. Writing is about taking ordinary, everyday words that we use automatically during the course of our days – not hard words, not complex words or words that you need to look up in a dictionary. It is about taking the base, leaden metal of everyday parlance and, with them, creating something that is gold. That, by definition is the process of alchemy. What writers do with words is almost identical. You have read, or at least I hope you have, what I would call this book of spells. With this, it is entirely possible to churn out some good stories of any genre on. So, I will stand by my statement that writing is a learned skill, a magical skill, an exercise in word-alchemy. However, simply being in possession of the top secret KFC formula will not result in you replicating the Colonel’s Original Recipe chicken at home. There is a little bit more to it than that. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 30 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION This is because there are, you see, one or two missing ingredients without which your spells will not work. They simply will not. You will throw away this guide and, along with it, other guides and “false promises” in the form of books and manuals that you have accumulated over the years. You will blame the hapless authors of such guides and curse them for allowing you to fantasise for a while but, I can assure you that these spells work. I use them all the time – all day and every day and not just when I sit down to write. All they need is the silken and steady hands of two fair maidens – Effort and Desire. Without them, you will see those with less merit, those less skilled surpass you. You will watch them with resentment and regret seething beneath your skin, for those imposters so cunningly and deceitfully snatched away what was rightly yours. It is funny how these most incredible stories emerge in the face of our greatest self-deceit. To be a writer, you must write – you have to want it and be prepared to work. So, I am telling you this as an addendum to this guide. What I have done over the past few pages is to take you on an imaginary journey down the rabbit hole of our minds back into the subconscious and given you a glimpse of the boundless ocean that lies hidden within. It is the sea of consciousness and, from it, springs all imagination, all stories, tales and fables. This is where all ideas and inspiration come from. It is also not as fanciful or “artsy” as it seems although all the analogy makes it seem so. To get a more academic view of what I am referring to, look up Carl Jung’s work on the collective consciousness and archetypes – or, just take my word for it, as you have so patiently done all this time. This immense ocean – ocean of possibility, lies in wait; to be explored through hands and eyes afresh. This ocean never gets tired of being observed. This guide along with any dozen other books on writing and creativity that you pick off the shelf in a thrift store, buy from your bookseller, borrow, steal – however you come across it – they all refer to this raw, consciousness from which creativity emanates. The birthplace of new thought and the foundry where the abstract is given form and becomes material. All those books will refer to it, by different names perhaps, but they acknowledge its TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 31 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION existence. It is to the edge of this ocean I have taken you and back with the intentionally jumping back and forth between multiple storylines and voices in this text so that you can get an idea of how to do the same with words. But beware that you will be tempted to resist everything I say and throw it away. Don’t be a collector of knowledge and books and reference materials and guides and notes and textbooks and what-have-you instead of doing the actual deed itself: writing. I wasted many years doing this and it is a trap! I have spent years standing at the shore of that ocean while reading and re-reading my books and brushing up my grammar and trying to prepare for that big step. All that happened was that I returned to my writing folders, my organisers and scrapbooks and tons – literally – tons of paper that I downloaded from the Internet with a self-satisfying flush of achievement only for them to gather digital dust and cobwebs made of kilobyte-silk while I stood at that shore. That is self-sabotage of the highest order. I warn you simply because your ego will not and your subconscious was never really on your side in the first-place. What happens is that you surround yourself with all this material to convince yourself that this secret craft is so difficult and challenging, that you require years of study to master it. That’s rubbish. You are as ready as you will ever be – right now, at this point in time. What you do once you decide to venture down the rabbit hole again (and it takes a lot of courage, I will admit), is to decide what you want to do once you reach that metaphorical ocean. Your desire may be to take off like Columbus in a massive, creaking hardwood ship. You may choose to walk along the shoreline, letting each wave reach no further above than your ankles. You may elect to wade in fully clothes while others skinny-dip in the light of the moon. To each, their own. Effort and Desire will tell you what is possible. Without these two, you are back where you started. You have picked up an awful lot of information about writing stories, short stories and flash fiction (incidentally, you can only write a course solely on flash fiction if the people reading it have the background knowledge and experience of writing) – my approach has been to take you right back to basics, unlearn what you may have known and then programmed you afresh with the style of learning that fosters creativity. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 32 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION Hence, the analogy of the ocean of consciousness when talking about Source – and, you may or may not be aware, that “Source” is very close to describing the “I am” element of God (for believers) or Chaos, in the eyes of others. To each their own views, but they both refer to the same thing. It is to this “thing” that I refer to by many names – Creator, Grand Architect, Master Designer, Master Craftsman, Source, Unity – all refer to the omnipresent “Godliness” all around us. It is from there that all creativity comes forth. It belongs to nobody, it just “is” just as God is said to say, “I am that which I am not” – the divine dichotomy – this immense (and by immense, I mean as big as the universe itself) belongs to nobody and everybody and, that is exactly why, you must take action. Because, if you carry on with self-doubting and procrastinating your way a few months towards another birthday while still sitting on the sidelines, standing by the shore, whatever you call it, this is what will happen: if just a tiny, tiny, miniscule proportion of seven billion souls, treading fourteen billion footfalls across the earth each and every day – the ones that succeed will be those who want it. Because, at its very core, writing is not a pack of bloodhounds running, flinging saliva from their foaming jaws. It is a not a quest for wine, nor for women, nor for accolades. It is a quest for yourself. For you. The part that years to dive into that ocean and stake a claim to even a thimbleful of water in delightful frenzy like the first pan-handlers in the Klondike. Those desperate, dreaming men lived every day in hope of the slightest glint of gold upon the silt of the riverbeds. They were seekers, not makers. In this surreal landscape of analogies and metaphor, consider them to be readers. The wish to see gold, to touch it, to handle it and feel its pliant mass in the palm of their hands. Our obsession with gold is that much more apparent, when you consider that the KFC analogy – totally unrelated to everything in this sliver of ocean – features “nuggets” on their menu. Long after the bones of those men blinded by the dream of a world of comfort have ground to dust as fine as the grit at the bottom of their pans. You, who have read this far, are not one of them. You are the river, you are the flask, you are the Earth; forever in an agony of childbirth as you clench your teeth to get those words out onto paper. To turn the pictures in your mind into words. To laugh at others when you hear them say that it is impossible to make something out of nothing. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 33 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION It is more than possible because you may have noticed that only one thing could possibly separate us – you from me, the you who sat through pages and pages of complex and abstract and confusing and bewildering prose. The only thing that could separate us are those two fair maidens. There is a reason why I am writing in this style all of a sudden. Stop for a moment and think back to whether you consciously noticed that I had stepped off the edge into the Rabbit Hole. The place where, in the past thirty pages or so, I have given you an exclusive insight and a guided tour and taken you right to the water’s edge of that immense, infinitely abundant ocean of possibility and imagination condensing and coalescing as they speak into the protozoa of fully formed words. If you choose to embark on that journey of self-discovery, you are to find a spot of your liking. A place that nobody but you could ever like because, as we have said, everyone views the world with different eyes. It is up to you to fill your flask with the water from that spot, to make the effort to find it no matter how long it takes – days or weeks or months or years and only then, in total seclusion, will you begin the Work. The only Work that a writer knows. You will be the alchemist, with flask of leaden ocean-water in one hand, crawling with billions of miniscule protozoa. Like fractals, combining and combining in circles and spirals and majestic sweeps like a concert piano batters their triumphant Grand finale upon the ancient teeth of dead elephants at the end of a symphony. Yet, in order to do that, you must light the fire. There can be no alchemy without fire. It is up to you to do that as well. Once again, to make the tiniest move towards the flask and light the flame in an instant so that the molecules agitate and clash and collide against each other increasingly frantic until the steam of creativity fills your secret chamber and makes you sweat in the flesh-melting heat of a sauna. You will watch, awestruck, each time, as this creativity, distilled by your own hand, wills, urges, coaxes those words to take form. The wonder never ceases. Of forming words on a page that may or may not be read – but it does not matter. The writer, the writer who wishes to be so from the heart, will never cease for an instant until they have failed ten thousand Edisonesque times for just one chance to feel the weight of gold in their palm. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 34 STORYTELLING AND FLASH FICTION That gold is created through alchemy; turning ordinary words into extraordinary thoughts. Alchemy is created through fire and, that fire, is the fire of desire. I repeat, desire is the fire with which you must do your alchemy. I have done the easy part – to give you this knowledge. Putting this knowledge to use is the hard part, and must be done, can be done, only by you, with your fair maidens by your side. Everything is effort, all is desire. If you look inside and feel that you want to write, must write or, as I put it once “Cannot not write” – then do it. Do it for the sake of creating, not for recognition or fame or worldly gain. Riches never follow those who chase them. Riches go out in seek of people doing that which they love. Approach your writing with this spirit, be sure that it is not another nagging demand of the deceitful and selfish Ego. Once you are assured, then – only then, will you open your eyes fully to what possibilities swim in those waters. You will learn to spot the ones that are leaden, you will learn to spot the ones like living Aztec temples. They will be all for your taking, but you must want to dive into that ocean; it takes courage, but it can be done. You must yearn for it like a childhood love. You must nurture it like a prayer for the good health of the infant in your arms, even at the expense of your own health. When you want it that badly, the effort will come to you as naturally as breathing. As naturally as you would lay down your life for your child. Then, you will not need me to tell you this, or to read this book or any more than the books that you have already read on writing. If the dream of being a writer be pure within you, I leave you with a whispered prayer and a blessing, that you make your way to the water’s edge soon. You know what you need to do once you get there. Stop! Look around you for a moment. Do you see a paper and pen anywhere? Yes? Good. Go and get it. Close this book and pick up your tools. There is much work to do. Ditio Syed-Haq, If you enjoyed reading this guide, check out my other articles and even more free stuff at my personal blog and also from the creators www.ditiosyedhaq.com (en) www.indigowriters.club (en) and the soon to be launched https://ditio.deshiblogs.com (bn) where I talk about more such stuff in beautiful Bangla, the language of my motherland and the language of my heart. TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL AT: www.ditiosyedhaq.com | www.indigowriters.club 35