With the deadline for our first ever Past Times Prize fast approaching, this month’s craft post is adapted from a workshop in the Flash Focus course all about writing flash stories set in the past.
Our foray into historical flash writing is with author, Sophie Van Llewyn, who was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction with her historical novella-in-flash, Bottled Goods, which is set in 1970s communist Romania. She said this on writing about a past we can't possible know the definitive truth about:
“We know the world we’re writing about by doing our research — by reading books, watching footage, or leafing through pictures. We’re even closer to the past through the stories of the people who lived during those times — and this is the best kind of research, the one tinged with emotions and the nuances of what it meant to live then.”
I think when writing flash we can tend to focus on the speed of it, of getting it written and getting it out there, but I think there is much to be said for taking the time needed to create something nuanced and emotionally resonant. This is especially important when writing stories set in the past and trying to make the readers today connect to them.
You can read one of the flash fiction chapters from Bottled Goods, “Of Gifts of Unknown Providence”, here.
In this flash, even thought it is a part of a bigger story, we know we are in past times from the first line when the narrator, Alina, talks of the typewriter being excitingly modern. Yet the rest of the story has no clear signifiers of the time the story is set in but instead is about the universal fears, hopes and dreams at the heart of the human condition.
Reading
Footprints in Water
Robert Barrett
This story is inspired by the plane that crashed in the Peruvian Rainforest on 24th December 1971 and the sole survivor, Juliane Koepcke, who was seventeen at the time.
There is not much at all to place us firmly in that time though and the story could be set in any era. The only nod to the 1970s is the polyester mini-dress and boiled sweets, which airlines used to hand out to people to suck at take-off and landing.
So rather than feeling like you need to insert historical elements at every chance, less is definitely more when writing historical flash. As with all flash stories, the focus should be the human story at the heart of it.
Things to think about when writing historical flash:
What can the time I am setting this story in bring to the readers understanding of the world as it is today?
Will I create a new story or re-tell an historical event or use a well-known historical figure?
How can I convey the historical era deftly when I have so few words to play with? Do I even need to? Is it relevant?
What imagery can I bring in that brings to life the time and is applicable to the story’s themes?
Writing Prompts
Use one of these real life events from the 1970s to inspire your story.
April 22nd 1970 - the first Earth Day is held in the US.
October 20th 1973 - the Sydney Opera House is completed.
April 30th 1975 - Saigon falls to North Vietnam forces, effectively ending the war.
July 18th 1976 - Romanian gymnast, Nadia Comăneci, is the first to achieve a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event.
16th August 1977 - Elvis Presley dies.
Open Submissions
The new Unpublished Writer Edition closes in early September. If you’ve not yet had a story published anywhere, you’re eligible to send a story.
The deadline for sending stories for the December themed edition is 30th September. Send your micros, flashes and short stories on the theme of IDENTITY.
And submissions are open ongoing for our new feature spots: the weekly Story Sunday for stories up to 1000 words; the monthly Short Story Spotlight for stories up to 5,000 words with author interview; and Flash Focus for stories up to 750 words that will publish twice a month and include an author interview too.
2024 Zoom Workshops
We have workshops scheduled up until the end of the year. More for 2025 will be added soon. These are included with WestWord memberships or you can just book on the ones that take your fancy.
Writing What We Don’t Know
31st August — 11.00-12.30 BST
Wherever we are in the world, whatever ethnicity, gender, age we are, whatever era we live in, we are all going through the same things as humans. Trying to find our truth, love, happiness and peace of mind. And this is at the heart of all stories we tell. Our characters are doing those exact things too.
So as writers, we can trust in our abilities as empathetic humans to be able to tell the stories of people vastly different to us. We can trust in the power of our imaginations to set our stories in the points of view of other people, in places in the world we've never been, and in places that we completely make up. But to do any of it well, we need to be coming from a place of truth and we need to trust ourselves and our characters.
In this workshop we’ll be looking at how we can effectively write what we don’t know.
Weaving Sensuous Spells
29th September - 11.30-13.00 BST
Humans are sensory creatures. Everything we experience comes through our sight, touch, sound, taste and smell, yet often these elements are largely missing in short fiction, with sight and interiority leading the way. While both of these are important elements, this workshop will look at the ways we can weave the senses into our stories to make them fully immersive and reconnect our characters to the world they live in.
We’ll look at how you can bring fresh takes to writing the senses with lots of examples from writers who are weaving great sensuous spells.
Experiments in Story Structure
26th October - 10.30-12.30 BST
The story arc we’ve all been reading and writing has been in place for a very long time, but what if we were to break out of that mould? What could our stories look like if they didn’t have the rising tension, mid-point, falling tension and resolution? How could our characters learn, change and grow, and how would we give our readers a feeling of satisfaction, if we don’t use that structure?
We’ll look at possible shapes our stories can take and how and why we would think of using them. Come have fun and experiment with me!
Creating Complex Characters in Short Stories
30th November - 11.00-13.00 GMT
Characters are who we connect to our stories through in order to write them, and they’re the element our readers remember if we create ones that crackle with life and make them feel something. Even if the narrator is unlikable, and/or unreliable, if we write them with nuance, understanding and compassion then the reader will have an emotional response.
For us to engender an emotional response in our readers, we have to feel those emotions too when we write our stories. So how do we get close enough to these characters that appear in our heads to really feel for them? We get to know them properly.
Bring a character in a story you are already working on to dive deep into who they are, what they desire, what they fear, and why they have come to you to tell their story for them.
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