Flashing #26: Hint Fiction

I read about Hint Fiction over on the Flash Fiction Chronicles. It’s Robert Swartwood’s concept of telling a story in 25 words or less. I love the idea, there’s quite a bit of thought that has to go into writing small, so I decided to try it out here.

The concept reminds me of an exercise I used in my Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels class. Chris Piers and I would split our students into four groups and have them each draw four panels from a single comic story. One group had to do four panels about a group of astronauts getting ready to go to space, one group had to do four panels about the astronauts’ journey to another planet, one group had to do four panels about what happened when the astronauts got to that planet, and one group had to do four panels about the astronauts voyage home.

We took the 16 panels and hung them on the wall, in order. We then had each student go up to the wall and pull down one panel that they felt the story didn’t need in order to remain a complete story. Every time we did this project the students would whittle this 16-panel story down to a 1-panel story. And, without fail, that one panel was always one from the last part of the story – the voyage home.

The thing is – by showing our astronauts returning home we know that they went into space, we know that they did something, and we know that they’re now coming back. We don’t know the details, but we know what we need to know in order to look at that one panel and infer what happened before it.

The ending is the story, after all. The first two acts are just set-up and build-up; the third act is your point. I like to occasionally throw out the term Act 0. It’s all of the stuff that happened before the first act. All of the stuff that’s either implied or deduced from our characters’ behaviors and mannerisms. No-one writes a truly complete story – there’s always an Act 0. Something gets our characters to the first act.

We don’t expect a writer to write an Act 0, we just expect them to make Act 1 clear enough so that we can deduce Act 0, even if it’s not the Act 0 the writer had in mind. So, in writing a story that begins and ends in the third act, one just has to make it clear enough so that the reader can deduce what happened in acts 0, 1, and 2…even if it’s not the story the writer had in mind.

So, after that 449-word introduction, I give you my 25-word story, inspired by the original memoir. If you want to read longer Flashing pieces, head on over to the main page.

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The whole bar laughed. Even Gabriel chuckled, albeit while staring into his pint glass. I left, embarrassed. I didn’t miss this experience, I traded up.

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