Flash in Five: Joseph V. Velaidum

The story behind the story

Joseph V. Valedium shares the story behind his story, Prediction. Read it here.

IDEA

I was at a dinner party nearly a decade ago now, where my attention was caught by a man who was clearly smitten with one of the other guests. The dinner party was dreary, so I started to daydream about the relationship this man desperately wanted — thinking about those moments when we met someone and immediately imagined an entire future with them before anything really happened. That mix of hope, projection, and (usually) disappointment felt like rich territory for a story.

DEVELOPMENT

Once I had the premise, I wanted a story with a sense of momentum, almost like the character’s thoughts were racing ahead of reality. The quick shifts—him picturing their kitchen, their cat, their entire life together—felt natural because that’s how our minds work when we get carried away. I also wanted to balance humour and heartbreak, so I leaned into small, relatable details (like the “Haha” text with no punctuation) to make his slow realization feel all the more painful. At first, I thought his racing daydream would lead to him asking her for a date at the dinner party, but soon realized that his trajectory from certainty to self-doubt, from excitement to heartbreak, all in his head, would have much more dramatic appeal.

EDITING

The first draft was longer and had more introspection, but I realized the pacing worked best when it was sharp and efficient. I cut anything that slowed it down or over-explained his emotions since so much of the story was already inside his head. I also refined the ending several times—at first, it was more explicit about his feelings, but I found that leaving it with just the sound of her absence made it more powerful.

SUBMITTING

I’m new to submitting my stories for publication. I’ve been writing flash and micro fiction for well over a decade, and I have many hundreds of stories, but I have been shy about publishing until very recently. This is one of my first submissions, and I can’t express how thrilled I am that I’m being published by WestWord!

I found WestWord by reading other flash fiction stories and noticing that some of my favourite writers had been published there. I admired the range of voices they featured and thought my piece might be a good fit. I am also very grateful to have found this publication and its wonderful resources and community support. Submitting was nerve-wracking, and I wavered a few times, but I’m so glad I persisted and overcame my doubts, unlike the main character in my story!

FINAL REFLECTIONS

This story reinforced how much I love exploring the small moments that carry a lot of emotional weight. It also reminded me how much rhythm matters in storytelling—the way a sentence flows can mirror a character’s thought process. And, most of all, it made me appreciate how we all sometimes craft little negative narratives about our lives and our futures, and sometimes this can lead to lost opportunities.

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Author: Joseph V. Velaidum has been writing flash fiction for over a decade, but the impetus for publishing them came from an unlikely source. He was the fortunate (or, perhaps, fated) individual whose near-miss with a meteorite crash in Prince Edward Island (Canada) became a global headline in early 2025. The event was featured in many hundreds of new stories across the world, including all of the major news agencies, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, BBC, CNN etc.).

This life-altering experience—missing a meteorite hit by mere minutes, and it seems by sheer luck— compelled him to reflect and reevaluate his priorities and underscored the urgency of pursuing what truly matters to him: a passion for storytelling. Over the past decade, he has been encouraged to seek publication for his fiction but has been reluctant to do so, until now. He is now in the process of submitting many of his stories for publication.