The various responses interested me, not so much because of the different arguments on how one determines professionalism, but because of what the responses had in common — they were all from the writer’s perspective. That is, all the responders were discussing either how they determine their own status as a professional or amateur, or else how a writer could hypothetically be pinpointed as one or the other. All assumed and required some inner knowledge of the writer’s life (a professional is paid to write, a professional makes a living at writing, a professional writes every day…), knowledge to which no one but the writer and maybe family and friends might be privy.

My own response to the question was instantaneous: professional behaviour makes a professional writer.

And this is why: it’s the only thing that the editor sees.

As an editor, when a story comes up on my computer screen, I don’t know if the author has ever been paid for his or her writing. I don’t know how many hours a day he or she writes, I don’t know if it’s a full-time occupation or a hobby (or therapy, or a compulsion, or a dream being chased, or some combination thereof). I can’t make a judgement based on those things. But there are writers I believe to be professionals, based on what I see.

Quite apart from the usual suspects — abiding by submission guidelines, submitting only their best and most polished work, and so on — there are certain things I notice that make me think, “that one’s a pro”.

One is regular submissions. Professional writers are constantly submitting work; they don’t pack up and go home after one rejection (or one acceptance, for that matter). So when I start to recognize a writer’s name because I’ve seen it in our slush regularly enough, I find that I start to take that writer more seriously — he or she is obviously committed to the craft.

One is attention to detail. Queries specify submission ID numbers, story titles, dates submitted. The submission form is fully and correctly filled out; the author knows what a byline is, has selected an appropriate genre for his or her story, and has included a bio. The word count is accurate.

And here’s a funny one: the author bio had better be in the third person. All of EDF’s author bios are in the third person — all of them, and it’s been that way every day since September 2007! — so when I see a first-person bio I think, “Well, here’s someone who hasn’t bothered to check out the magazine before submitting to it…” I have no problem with the goofy and humorous bios, the story-related bios, or the sparse and bare bios. But the first-person bios trip me up every time. On that note, bios which announce that the author writes as a hobby (or otherwise advertise a less-than-professional self-perception) do take away from the professional impression a bit.

A professional writer’s correspondence with editors is appropriately businesslike and even a touch on the formal side, unless we’ve published a number of your stories and have naturally moved to a friendlier level over time. And for whatever sweet sake you believe in, if you want an editor to think of you as a pro, don’t argue with a rejection notice!

A professional writer has a professional website. Now, technically I know that this may not always be true, and I’m sure there are plenty of well-respected technical recluses who refuse to cooperate with the information age, but we’re talking about perception here. A professional-looking website with regular updates (the “latest news” on the site shouldn’t be from January 2008) is virtually essential if you want to be taken seriously, especially in the world of online magazines. Bonus points are awarded for having your own domain name, a growing list of publication credits, and current news about recent acceptances and publications.

And finally, a professional writer always shows professionalism and restraint in comment threads and forum topics and other public places. Whether in receiving criticism on one of his or her own stories or entering into a discussion about someone else’s work (or a publication, contest, editor, book retailer, or anything else under discussion), a true professional will be aware that anything posted online can travel far and wide — participating with a degree of dignity, intelligence, and restraint shows that the individual has the ethics and responsibility to go with his or her creative skills. Whining, bitching, rudeness, gratuitous unkindness, holding grudges and slinging mud… that stuff just doesn’t scream “pro” to me.

So now you know what I look for, and what it says to me.

This post by Camille Gooderham Campbell is reprinted here from her blog, Copy. Edit. Proof. Camille is an editor of Every Day Fiction.

No actually it isn’t.  What that is is action which is different from conflict.  Action is movement.  Conflict is choice followed by movement.  What???  What I’m talking about here is structure, what Randall Brown pointed out in a recent post at Flash Fiction Chronicles,  “Who Cares?”: The Nuts & Bolts of Making Narrative Matter:

Something happens (precipitating incident) to create a desire, and that desire creates a need for action that is thwarted by this and that and this and that until, finally, there’s resolution.

Movies are a great way to learn structure and what exactly a story arc is.  One of my favorite movies to illustrate structure in that old reliable action flick ( I know, I didn’t say “structure flick”), Die Hard, made back in 1988 when Bruce Willis was moving from Moonlighting on TV to the Big Screen.

Get the Die Hard DVD and watch it with a pen and paper and the timer on your DVD player.  Number the lines on your paper from 1 to maybe 120 or so.  Maybe skip lines to make sure you can write big if you get excited.  Record what happens every minute or so all the way through. This may seem like a tedious exercise,  but it’s amazing to just how carefully the story is constructed. For the hot-shot movie critics out there who love those ponderous three-hour think pieces, Die Hard is too “on the nose,” but for learning about structure and character development, it is one of the best.

What you’ll be looking for is based on Aristotle’s Poetics–the basic 3-act play structure.  There are many good books out there (Robert McKee’s Story which is based on The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives by Lajos Egri and for a quick understanding there’s always Syd Field’s Sreenplay) help a writer learn all the ins and outs–as well as the disagreements about rules, formulae, and art–but I’ll lay out the minimum here. 

Act 1 starts with a character in his regular life, something happens to turn his life on its head, and by the beginning of Act 2 (approximately 30 minutes in), the character’s life is 180 degrees different from what it once was and the character sets out to either change his or her life back or to figure out how to make the best of things.  He’s not trying all that hard because frankly, he can’t really believe things could go this wrong.  Then something else goes wrong. 

About a quarter way through Act 2 (around 45 pages in) the character has some kind of epiphany that he’s going to have to work a helluva lot hard than he thought.   The simple solution isn’t working.  He needs a better plan.

About half way through (60 minutes) he realizes who the enemy is (himself, his best friend, the woman with the man hands) and at the same time, there is a coming together between the character and his/her main relationship usually washing wounds or sex). 

In the second half of Act 2 some new effort is launched, but it doesn’t work and leads to a dark moment around 75 minutes in.  The character gives up the game as hopeless. 

But by 90 minutes, the beginning of Act 3, the character has come up with new energy, a new plan, a new assault on his problem and works through his conflict until he either wins or loses. 

Notice as you are jotting down what is happening on your lined paper, about when these things happen in Die Hard.  The timing won’t be perfect, but you’ll be shocked to see how close it is.

Look for: Set-ups and pay-offs: On the plane McClane talks with the other passenger about being afraid of flying. The passenger offers a suggestion. Watch for this to pay-off when he is in the bathroom of the Nakatomi building, and then later when he’s in the elevator and later when he’s being chased.  This suggestion from the passenger pays off about 6 times in this move. THAT’s good structure.

Look for how exposition is handled: On the plane, in the taxi, between McClane’s wife and her boss, when McClane gets to the Nakatomi building and looks his wife up on the list of employees. Then think about set-up and pay-offs again.  How is information given to the viewer?

Look for character development: The characters in this piece are so well-defined and consistent in their traits. We get them quickly and their motivation and subsequent behavior holds the structure together when the twists are thrown in. There is suspense without confusion.

Setting: Think about the airplane, the limo, and the high rise Century City building. Then think about how this movement evolves and what happens in the building and how each of these places have their own twists and turns. 

Pacing??? Remarkably fast, but with the right amount of time spent on reflection so the movie has meaning. And it does. It’s about loyalty, determination, married love, brotherhood, evil….

Okay enough. Now if you decide to do the jot down what’s happening thing, here’s what to look for. By the first three or so minutes you know who McClane is, what his problem is, and how he thinks he’s going to solve it. Notice he HAS a problem. A personal goal to find out what the hell is going on between him and his wife. That isn’t the PLOT of the movie, it’s a subplot, but it’s what gives the movie some universal meaning.

About thirty minutes in you might notice that everything has changed 180 degrees from the beginning of the movie (this is about where ACT 1 ends). The building is taken over and the story problem isn’t just about McClane and his wife, but it’s about surviving the “terrorist” attack.

Act 2 come next from around 30 or so minutes to about 90 minutes in. In that time it is McClane fighting the bad guys.

The first part of act 2 is all about getting the police’s attention and he assumes of course that the police will solve the problem. He has to just survive and create enough chaos to keep the bad guys busy until the cops save the day.

But in the middle of the movie around 60 minutes in we see that McClane isn’t going to get any help. As a matter of fact he’s now perceived as one of the bad guys. The stakes are ramped up. There is no help coming. He’s got to do it himself.  However, if I’m remembering correctly this is about the time John McClane’s wife begins to feel more kindly toward her estranged husband.

And then at about 90 minutes when Act three begins, John McClane makes his final assault to save his wife and everyone else who has survived. And he manages to do that in true action hero form.

The end? The enemy is defeated and he regains his wife.

Okay. Formula. Over the top. Right? Yeah but it’s a learning tool too. Knowing why this movie works has helped me to have answers to story problems whenever I get stuck. What does the formula say at this point??? Do I want to do that? If yes, may it a unique with details. If I dn’t, make sure that what does happen has the same kind of emotional effect.

I didn’t make this up. If this idea of studying movies to help understand structure appeals to you you might consider reading one of the books I mentioned earlier.

I can’t remember all the movies I did this with, but it is amazing to see how close movies THAT WORK stick to this. 

Movies I logged

Overboard
Witness
Terminator
Suspicion (wrong ending really but I still love it)
Outrageous Fortune
Trading Places
Charade

 That’s all I can remember off the top of my head!  Happy movie watching!

Gay Degani writes surrounded by the frantic chortles of parrots.  She has published in journals and anthologies including The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and TWO (2009).  Her stories online can be read at The Battered Suitcase, Night Train, 10 Flash, 3 A.M. Magazine, as well as other publications.  Pomegranate Stories is a collection of eight stories by Gay. She is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles.  

Sometime ago I attended a poetry read meet after a very long time and was once again struck by how eager the poets were to explain their poetry!

A typical reading is almost always followed by: “in my poem I am trying to say blah blah blah…Followed by, ” this (motif or image) means this in my poem,” and /or “I mean this in my poem” and so on and so forth. Why?

Isn’t it  the reader’s/listener’s prerogative to understand or takeaway whatever it is the poem is trying to convey? Shouldn’t the reader/listener be given an open mike as far as forming an opinion is concerned? 

Different people react to the same thing differently. I think it enriches the poetic/creative experience when one gets different perspectives. But this is not how writers and poets view it, usually.  They always have a long, often longer than the poem itself, list of reasons seasoned with all kinds of whys and wherefores for their creative outpouring!

 I can understand telling a story which may have led to the poem or writing being created in the first place. The owner is entitled to share the source of the inspiration, because this usually provides an interesting prologue (or epilogue if you will) to the verse. Besides, who doesn’t want to have a glimpse of another creative mind’s muse? However I think that’s where the explaining should end.

It’s time poets (writers too, but especially poets) allowed their verses to be viewed and weighed from points of view other than their own. If anything, it will enrich the poetic experience of everyone present. A poem comes alive when molded and shaped by another’s understanding; a poem takes on new cadences when uttered from another’s lips. Their lives get extended when lit up in the spotlight of unknown prisms. Ditto for stories. Likewise with plays.

Haven’t Shakespeare’s plays and poems been cast and recast a thousand times in different hues and tones down the centuries? I think that is the very reason why Shakespeare is still so alive!

Reprint from Writers & Writerisms

Rumjhum Biswas is still living in Chennai, India, but in another part where there were no mosquitoes until the rains came and all the incy wincy spiders were washed away. No she isn’t implying that spiders eat mosquitoes, but if they did she’d become a millionaire by breeding spiders and selling them all over the world, instead of being another poor writer who gets to answer the door and the phone because she is at home and that means she has a cushy life! She has a blog to prove that it’s not: http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com. You can also find her at times at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing new pieces from the

First came the prompts. I copy and paste them, and then add the quote – and I stare at them until I get a thought. (if one doesn’t come, I play Bejeweled until one does.) I add thoughts or definitions or phrases about the words beside them – it looks like this when I’m done:

- TIN ROOF (rusted, cat on a hot)
- AVON LADY (avon calling)
- REFINEMENT (improvement)
- MOP CLOSET (narrow)
- LEAK (drip, pass through)
- AFFECTED (influenced)
- PULCHRITUDE (beauty)
- MACARONI (elbow pasta)
- LAME BRAINED (foolish)
- CURVY (rounded)

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. –Henry Louis Mencken

 quote thoughts: Immorality. Sin. the roaring 20s. regular hausfrau dreaming of better times, better romance, etc.
her life – leak, mop closet, ornaments out of macaroni, avon lady, tin roof …
dream life – refinement, affected, pulchritude, curvy
Margaret – sensible name, sensible husband – Michael, sensible house. dreams of more, reads romance novels – the historic kind, where men have accents and write notes extolling their lady-love’s pulchritude. She’d had to look that one up, but wasn’t it a nice way to say a girl was pretty?
she is much older, kids are grown, it’s just her and Michael now. He still works, wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t, still won’t let her – she took in mending, once, when times were tough and the babies were little, but as soon as things were better she had to stop – hurt his pride, he’d say, having a wife he couldn’t support.

From there I generally have a picture of the story, or at least a start. I begin writing, working in the phrases with the prompt words. I add. I delete. I learn more about the character and change things. This is the “finished” product:

Margaret wiped the sweat from her forehead with the same rag she had been using to wipe down the leaky pipe under the sink so she could see where to fix it. Lady Wintercourt wouldn’t have had to fix a pipe, she thought to herself, beginning the complicated process of hauling herself to her feet. Winter’s Heat lay on the side table in the living room, next to her cigarettes and Pepsi, and if she was lucky she’d get to the end of this chapter before Michael was home expecting dinner.

She put the mop in the empty bucket and put the bucket back in the mop closet, then leaned on the counter until she caught her breath. Age was nipping at her heels, and the face in the mirror was no longer the fresh beauty that had graduated at the top of her refinement classes. Margaret imagined Lady Wintercourt in all of her curvy glory, gasping for breath, and how Lord Darien would be entranced by her heaving bosoms …

“Cor,” she scolded herself. “Such nonsense.” She smiled at her own foolishness, and went back to her reclining chair. Oh, for a time when her own bosoms would heave fetchingly, and some Lord would send her a handwritten note about how he was so affected by her pulchritude that he could scarcely sleep. She’d had to look pulchritude up in her son’s dictionary, but wasn’t it a fancy way to say a woman was pretty? Michael hadn’t called her naught but lovely since she was a new bride, and he called her pot roast lovely.

Oh, Michael loved her, she knew. He provided for her, refusing to let her work when he could support her. She had done a brief tour as an Avon Lady, back when times were tight and the babies were small, but he had asked her to stop just as soon as they were back on their feet. It hurt his pride, he said, people thinking he couldn’t take care of his own. Margaret had liked getting out and talking to the ladies, but she quit because he asked her to.

So now she stayed home, keeping things tidy and reading her romance novels and showing Michael that returned his love by making sure there was a hot meal on the table when he got home from work. Sometimes she rang her sister just to chat, but she didn’t want to be a bother – Martha’s girls were still at home, and such a handful. Her own boys called every Sunday. They were working over in the States now, and she couldn’t be prouder.

Margaret lifted up her readers from the beaded chain around her neck, and tucked into Winter’s Heat again. Her own adventures, sensible as they were, were over – but there were at least three more Wintercourt novels at the public library waiting for her.

Now, the important thing about this exercise is not the fact that I hate the piece (which I do). It’s crap, and we all know it. Say it with me, kids. LESSON NUMBER ONE: The First Draft of Anything Is Crap.

No – the important thing about the exercise is what I can take away from it, and even more importantly, what I SHOULD take away from it.

I could clean this up. I could contrive a “real” plot, or at least a believable one, and squish the words like PlayDoh until they fit the mold I had made.

Or, I could identify what would make it possible for the story to be reworked, and just save that piece.

Margaret is what works for me. I like her, I can see her so clearly, I know her whole life. (and while she reminds me a bit of Shirley Valentine, she is still her own person.) I get her husband, too, what motivates him and how much he loves his wife and how little he knows how to show it. These people, this relationship – this is what clicks.

As I have said before, people are what work for me. Characters. I collect them in my memory, I have mental boxes full of habits and traits and situations and experiences and sometimes complete people. Every now and then, one of them will move to the forefront, and that’s when the archaeology dig begins – I catch the tip of something larger out of the corner of my eye, and slowly brush away the bits that aren’t relevant until all that remains is the story. But 90% of the time, it starts with the character.

And characters are born of exercises like this – even exercises that are wildly, irredeemably terrible. So I have tucked Margaret and Michael (and even Lady Wintercourt and her heaving bosoms) away, and when they’re ready to tell their story, I’ll be ready to write it down.

In the mean time, I’ll work on today’s prompts – you never know what might come of it.

Previously published at Blogging in the Dark

TL.Schofield lives in central GA with a white dog and a black cat – one of which she is allergic to. Her second published piece is currently posted at AlienSkin Magazine.  She is getting back into the swing of things after a holiday hiatus, and blogs about the writing process  at Blogging in the Dark.

In the 30-plus years I was a corporate mouthpiece and wordsmith, senior managers occasionally sidled up to ask if I had any tips for writing.

1. Use short words and, when you edit your writing, cut, cut, cut! See what makes this piece stand out:
“Our world’s well served by his last book, The Old Man and the Sea. He said words should be like small, bright stones, seen in the sand through a clear stream. You know it’s tough to find the ones that are lean, have strength, stand up, shout out and sing loud. At last, each best, true, sole verb or noun takes its place. On a good day, we might write just a page, two or three, then call them done.”
Notice that each word in this example has just one syllable? It’s not that word choices are overwhelming, but that we move too fast to complete the assignment. Doing the job too quickly makes it suffer in the process. Who takes the time to go back and change the text, to find the perfect word that will change the reader’s point of view?
2. Decide what result you want to achieve, what message the reader should take away. Each word, each thought must support this end result. Kill the rhetoric that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with your message.
3. Substitute Anglo-Saxon words when you can. Use “strength” instead of “fortitude,” “start” instead of “commence.” Greek and Latin derivatives are soft and mushy. Why say “apprise” or “inform” when “tell” says the same thing in half the syllables?
4. Avoid clichés, as in this real-life example:
“Opening night at the Cirque de Soleil was a strictly A-list affair, with a veritable Who’s Who gathered under the big top for a mind-boggling performance.”
There are four – maybe more – clichés here. Neo-clichés also lurk in memos and meetings: think outside the box, paradigm shift, core competencies, strategic initiative, impact (usually as a verb). Tired words and phrases also grow like nits into lice because it’s easier to use them than come up with an original image.
5. Don’t worry overmuch about the fine points of grammar. Sir Winston Churchill said about dangling participles, “They are an outrage up with which I shall not put.” The same is true about split infinitives. Capt. Kirk always wanted “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Who’s going to argue with the Captain? Grammatical rigor mortis can make you sound stuffy.
6. As the Microsoft grammar checker on your toolbar demands, choose the active voice over the passive. How easy it is to say, “The policy was reviewed before implementation,” instead of “The manager reviewed the policy before….” It’s amazing to think how much work gets done by itself!
7. Avoid adjectives. They’re a lazy technique for bringing an idea to life. Instead of writing about a “lonely office after everyone has gone home,” go for the image with something like, “The loudest noise was the cleaning woman’s vacuum cleaner at the far end of the hallway.”
8. Escape prosaic, unimaginative writing that dulls the mind. Rewrite sentences, such as “The performance was so exciting that the audience was stunned when it was over,” with imagery. Substitute “There was a minute of stunned silence before the applause broke out.” Undistinguished writing is the stuff of TV news reporters.
9. Lazy verbiage that searches for the dramatic will always hijack your story. Here’s an example that came from one of Mitt Romney’s highly paid Bain & Co. consultants:
“When you join the Corporation, you also become a member of a very special and very unique team. It’s a worldwide team of over 50,000 men and women whose diverse mix of experience, energy and expertise makes us a true force to be reckoned with in the global marketplace. It’s a team that welcomes the challenges associated with gaining and sustaining competitive advantage in an environment where the rules, technology and players change daily. It’s a motivated and directed team whose hard work and breakthrough thinking will move us into the next century.”
Wow! How mind-numbingly vapid!
10. Computer spell checking won’t do your work for you. In The New York Times [1997], Jerry Gray wrote in a page one article, “Holding the dictionary between them and pouring over its pages, [Senators Dole and Daschle] agreed that the words (shall and will) were synonymous. They agreed on shall.” Unfortunately, Reporter Gray didn’t have his own dictionary over which to pore. Spelling must be absolutely correct. If a person can’t spell the difference between burro and burrow, it’s fair to say he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

 

Walt Giersbach’s fiction has appeared Bewildering Stories, Big Pulp, Every Day Fiction, Everyday Weirdness, Lunch Hour Stories, Mouth Full of Bullets, Mystery Authors, OG Short Fiction, Northwoods Journal, Paradigm Journal, Short Fiction World, Southern Fried Weirdness, The Short Humour Site and Written Word.  Two volumes of short stories, Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, have been published by Wild Child (www.wildchildpublishing.com).  He also served for three decades as director of communications for Fortune 500 companies.

When we think of portraits, we usually think of paintings, family trips to Sears, maybe even Henry James.

Late last year, I was interviewed by Rebecca Givens Rolland, a grad student writing a portrait of Grub Street, a local writing center in Boston, MA. According to Rebecca, portraiture is a method developed by sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot 
to create a complex, vivid picture of a person or organization.”

The experience made me realize that portraiture can be useful in crafting a story, too. Portraiture, in this sense, is less about minute physical detail–the dust on a windowsill, the drooping dendrobium orchid losing blooms in a corner–and more about creating the essence of a person or place. Writers such as Hemingway (“A Clean  Well-Lighted Place”) and Steinbeck (“Cannery Row”) create this sort of portrait, this atmosphere, seamlessly. While we plebs might not quite be up to Hemingway’s snuff, sketching portraits of characters and places might help start us on our way.

How does creating a portrait work? During our interview, Rebecca asked me about my experience with Grub Street, starting with the big stuff.

• What was your first impression of Grub Street?
• Did you feel welcome?
• Was it your first time at a writing center?
• What did you expect?
• Would you go back?

Once we’d settled in, she moved to more detailed questions. While it may seem detailed questions would include drooping dendrobium style minutiae, it was more focused on the day-to-day workings of my classes there and things I took away from the experience.

• What were the classes like?
• Did you get on with the people? The instructor?
• How were the classes set up?
• Was anything particularly useful?
• Are you still in touch with anyone from your class?
• How do you think Grub Street affected you? Your writing?

Start out small
While getting your Steinbeck on may seem like an excellent idea, start with just one portrait. The more time you spend working out the details, the better your story will be. Don’t feel compelled to do a portrait of every character or place in your story–it might result in cluttering things up with too much detail. Weigh the work of creating the portrait against the importance of the person/place in the story, too. Don’t waste time creating a portrait of the guy who serves your main character cake at her best friend’s wedding if he’s only on-page for a few seconds.

1. Take a mental snapshot. Picture your subject (a kitchen, your main character’s ferret) and write down your first impressions. Is the kitchen homey? Are you scared of the ferret’s big bitey teeth? If it helps, collect actual pictures and tack them up near your workspace.
2. Move beyond the Polaroid. Many writers rely on visuals to convey information. Although this can work well, it often ends in what I call the Polaroid effect–the reader is drenched in useless detail (the magazine was bound with PVA, a glue commonly used in print bindings). Instead of describing the snapshot itself, describe the memories it conjures. Use scents, textures, and sounds to put your reader inside the Polaroid.

Delve deeper
Now you’ve got the easy part sorted, it’s time to dig a little deeper. Part of what makes portraiture so fascinating is its use of people–instead of recording only their impressions, a skilled portraitist uses the impressions of others to paint a more complex picture. In real life, this is a matter of interviewing and research. In fiction, it’s pretty much the same thing, except that you have to make up your interviewees.

Consider all the people who interact with your subject. Does Virginia get coffee at Bean Scene everyday? Does the coffee shop have a barista she talks to? Write down a list of everyone involved.

1. Write out a list of questions (try starting with the lists above).
2. Answer the questions. Writing in character isn’t necessary (though go right ahead if it helps)–the point is to find how your characters feel about a certain place/person and why. Does Virginia go to Bean Scene because it gets her out of the house and away from a screaming baby, because she likes the coffee, or because everybody knows her name? Why is it important everybody knows her name?
3. When all’s said and done, put everything aside for a while. Come back to it in a few days, when you’re fresh, and your mind is clear of any preconceptions.
4. Go over your notes. Look for patterns in the text, jot down common ideas and phrases. Use these to paint the broader strokes of your portrait, and go from there.

While it may not work for every story, portraiture is a useful technique for creating atmosphere and giving characters depth. Would you try a portrait? Have you interviewed your characters? How do you create atmosphere in your work? Post examples in the comments!

Peta Jinnath Andersen is a freelance writer and editor in Cambridge, MA. Her flash fiction story, The Jar, will be appearing in an upcoming issue of  Kaleidotrope . She’s currently working on her first novel.

Post Written by DJ Barber

I write every day.  Sometimes all I can squeeze out is a mere sentence. Then there are days I might complete a chapter. But I remember there are good days, days where words just drip from the keyboard, words just flow. 

Stories sometimes fall out of our heads and onto the computer screen, surprising us, filling us with an elation that comes mighty close to other kinds of elations.

Beware the flush of love…I mean, the flush of drafts that are effortless.  Sometimes they really are good.  Sometimes they just FEEL good.  The most important thing to remember is WAIT.  Sleep on it.  Don’t lose your heart on a one night stand.  At least not yet. 

After you’ve cooled down, taken a hot shower, and rested, you may discover that what you’ve written is almost ready to go, but it needs proof-reading, a little polish, it needs to be more than it is.  On the occasion when the Muse has guided you, maybe a proof-read is enough.  But most of the time–I’d say 99% of the time–if it’s that good, it can still be better. 

Taking a piece of writing one more level up can mean the difference to finding a home for a story and not finding a home.

It could be as simple as doublechecking to see if your opening is sharp, seductive, and just as important, prescient.  Does it set up your ending.  If the first sentence, the first paragraph is a scene where siblings fight, then what you have communicated to the reader is that the relationship between this brother and this sister is important enough to start off your story.  I’m basically talking about short stories here, especially flash because the word count is such that nothing can be put into the story because because the author likes it or because that how it started in the head of the writer.  Not good enough. 

That opening paragraph must signal in some way, and yes it can be subtle, what it is this story is about. It should suggest both the main characters “journey and epiphany” without giving away the ending.  It can be done in clear straight forward way or it can be subtle, even metaphorical, but it does need to give the reader a hint to the main conflict, what this story is about on a “plot level” and on a “thematic level.” And yes, good genre writing has a theme just like “lit.”

 Creating the link between the beginning of the story and the end will bring complexity to a story.

Word count is a tool.  It sets up boundaries and when there are boundaries we are pushed to know about them, accomodate them, and break away from them.  Word count forces us to look at our stories under a microscope and to needle away anything that doesn’t do service to the story.There are almost always words and phrases that can be cut or sentences reworded by finding more exact and vivid language.

We all put words and phrases in stories when we are writing drafts and some of them eventually become invisible to us. But many of them become obsolete or unnecessary as we work with the material zeroing in on just what the story is about. 

I am trying to teach myself patience.  Trying to set aside work I think is strong in that first rush to the page, just for a day or two, before deciding if this is the best I can do.  And it never is because when I reread the attachment to the submission I’ve sent off in the afterglow of a good write (and I can never resist), there’s always a flaw in the first paragraph, a misused word, an awkwardness, and I want to haul it back from the ether and have it at least one more time.

Gay Degani has published in journals and anthologies including The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and The Best of Every Day Fiction  TWO (2009).  Her stories online can be read at Smokelong Quarterly, The Battered Suitcase, Night Train, Every Day Fiction as well as other publications.  Pomegranate Stories is a collection of eight stories by Gay. She is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles and blogs at Words in Place.