Blending Flash Fiction & Art - NUNUM

Raising the Stakes in Flash Fiction by Melanie Faith

8/30/2018

My writing students are on their last week of the semester. Usually, this would be cause for great celebration, but it so happens that in this last week the university requires a final project that is the culmination of our entire course. The projects are generally 10-12 pages long and worth many more points than their weekly papers. My students are busy applying all of the reading, research, discussions, and suggestions from their practice (read: homework exercises) from the past ten weeks, so understandably I’ve been answering many messages filled with questions and concerns.

To say that this is a fraught week for all of us is an understatement.

Flash Fiction - Belle of the Ball

8/9/2018

Flash fiction is the belle of the ball, the flavour of the moment, the soup of the day and apparently well on its way to mainstream acceptance as a separate and unique form of writing. Recent articles in mainstream publications like O Magazine and MacLean’s had articles and pieces of flash as well, most literary journals now have separate submission categories for flash submissions and there are more and more flash only journals out there now.

So What If You Don't Get Anywhere In A Flash by Amie E. Reilly

7/22/2018

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. -Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

I was cleaning a winter’s worth of debris from the garden beneath my kitchen window, and as I scooped away a pile of withered leaves from between some stones, a garter snake slithered over my hand. It’s possible that I let out a little scream, despite knowing that I was the one who had invaded its space and not the other way around.

Meet NUNUM's Summer 2018 Contributors - Zoe Ballering

6/25/2018

Zoe Ballering is in the midst of completing her MFA at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. She's currently working on her thesis, a collection of short stories of speculative fiction dealing with themes of pain, grief, and the body—and naked mole rats, which is of course what she so kindly gave us for NUNUM's Summer 2018 issue.

Using Imagery and Symbols to Flesh out Flash Scenes by Melanie Faith

6/2/2018

The beauty of flash is that readers fill in much of what’s not written based on the focused details we craft. We flash writers create entire scenes and encapsulate characters’ motivations using just a few well-placed images and symbols.

Use these guidelines to flesh out your flashes succinctly:

Nuts & Bolts Behind the NUNUM Aesthetic Part 11

5/26/2018

The End

The idea of plot or the story itself was mentioned several times previously but never expanded on too much but it is a part of flash fiction just as it is in other forms of fiction. Returning to the example of the man in the airport,

“An inattentive, transient jackass says, – “Check it” – high-pitched, estrogenic sound awkwardly steam from thick, too-big lips covering precarious tan teeth. Mirrored sunglasses sterilize eyes plunging transgressor back to fatigued, faded skin, unkempt hair – a mind of questions, comments, demands, justifications – stayed verbally, exposed physically – “Is there a problem?” Pigments, parchments, binding, images relapse then release ribbed steel, scuffed plastic, relabeled boxes reskinned with tape, twine, and plastic that meld into a horizontal borough in motion, eclectic and naïve to the pigment of deities.

Nuts & Bolts of the NUNUM Aesthetic Part 10

5/9/2018

So then, plot does not matter.

It does, of course, but it gets to it in a different way. The primary focus of flash fiction is to present mental associations through words to the reader that will allow the reader to enter into whatever memory or knowledge they have which mirrors the associations of the character in the story at that moment in the piece of flash fiction.

Use Flash Fiction to Step Outside Your Comfort Zone by Charity Tahmaseb

5/2/2018

Flash fiction is versatile. It might not always be easy to write, but it’s certainly rewarding. Sometimes, it’s even fun. Best of all? You can use flash fiction to push the boundaries of your craft and end up with something surprising.
So step outside your comfort zone and into something new.

Nuts & Bolts of the NUNUM Aesthetic Part 9

4/19/2018

You do not have to try

Going back to the flash fiction example again,

“An inattentive, transient jackass says, – “Check it” – high-pitched, estrogenic sound awkwardly steam from thick, too-big lips covering precarious tan teeth. Mirrored sunglasses sterilize eyes plunging transgressor back to fatigued, faded skin, unkempt hair – a brain of questions, comments, demands, justifications – stayed verbally, exposed physically – “Is there a problem?” Pigments, parchments, binding, images relapse then release ribbed steel, scuffed plastic, relabeled boxes reskinned with tape, twine, and plastic that meld into a horizontal borough in motion, eclectic and naïve to the pigment of deities” (Miller, 2012).

Nuts & Bolts of the NUNUM Aesthetic Part 8

4/3/2018

In flash fiction it is

A reader holds a vast store of knowledge, experiences and memories that are uniquely networked to create a neural lattice-like topography of concept associations in their brain. Many traditional narrative pieces of fiction will introduce a concept within a certain situation, with a certain type of character(s). Then the story will move the reader systematically or connection by connection (association by association) through the narrative arch of the story, all the while providing the reader with the necessary information from which to recreate the reality of the story, the plot, within their brain.