Improve your creative writing: (i demonstrated how i created a flash fiction and so will you) - Do you accept the challenge?
Hello crazy/creative people.
I'll translate one really nice of my texts where i SHOW how to make a flash fiction, while giving useful information about creative writing in general, and short tales in particular. After that, ill challenge you to do one. Lets start!
Magic. One strategy to overcome any kind of writer's block. I'll create a short tale infront of your eyes.
Learning any art a practical domain. So lets go directly to practice.
Lets suppose we want to create a short tale about time and life fatality. Then i think: "eehm, i dont really have a original idea to write about that..."
Stop!
What i do for starters is: stop worrying about originality!! There is no such thing as "inventing" or "creating" art. New art, if i may call it that way, is made upon a combination of existing elements. Picasso, Dalí, Dante, Oscar Wilde... every true artist knows about this, thats why we spend so many time observing, reading and decoding other artists technique.
Every topic on literature has already being written: Love, vengeance, incest, regreat, jelousy... vampires, robots, zombies... every character (every topic) has already being interpreted and reinterpreted in the past.
–Even robots?!– you may ask.
Of course. Robots, in its fundament, is one of the most antique topic in human history. Ill give you an example:
In the jewish mythology (5000 years ago), they had the Golem, a creature made of clay which life was given life by the touch of his creator//magician. The Golem was made the obey his master, until one day, he decided to rebel.
Sounds familiar?
The Golem like the Robots serves to one human and primary concern: automatism. In how many cultures humans have worried about: Are humans God's puppet? Or are we Natture puppet's? Or chemestry puppets? So, if so, what if we decide to make a rebellion towards our own creator?
Zombies with some other elements combined, serves to the same purpose but inversed: the lose of human will, and whats happens when we become mindless "robots".
With that clarified, lets return to our concern: Writing a short tale about time fatality.
So, how do i start? Looking for inspiration would help. So i look into other artists work and see how they have done it: i see how they built it, then i found a comun line between them and i make my own strategy.
Here are two examples of nice short tales about time fatality. The translation is mine and i apologyze for any mistakes. As you may have noticed, english is not my first lenguaje (hehe).
DEATH IN THE MARKET (Writer is annonymous)
–Foreman! bring my horse! im going to Gomorra! I saw Death in the morning and it stared at me with threatening eyes"
*The foreman brougth his horse and the landowner left inmediatlly. That afternoon, when the foreman was walking in the market, he saw Death and went to ask about his intention with the landowner.
Death replied:
–Oh, no! it wasn't a threatening look, i was confused! i was supposed to meet him at Gomorra at nigth so it surprised me to see him this far.
Nice, isnt it? Lets see one more example.
THE SUICIDEMAN (Franz Kafka)
The suicideman watch a gollow in the courtyard being prepared from his prison-window, believes wrongly thats meant to him, escapes at nigth from his cell, goes down and hangs himself.
This last is more metaforical, but, lets ask ourselves: Whats the strategic line of these authors to touch this topic? Simple: one character that trying to escape from his destiny, actually makes it happen. So, ill make a more contemporary short tale combining these elements with modern commodities.
THE ALGORYTHM (me is the funny author)
I tried to convince him not to use that website, it scared me to death when it calculated my life-time. I saw him went pale infront of the screen and made any excuse to leave my apartment. An horrible noise came through my windown when i saw him laying in the street, hitten by a car.
Of course, thats not the best short tale ever, but it helps to outline my point: *sometimes the rigth formula is hidden in previous authors. The trick is thinking in how to twist the history to give our own meaning, with our own character, life-expiriences and personal situations. *
Exercise/Challenge!!
Make a flash fiction about time fatality or two realities that imposes.
Here is an example of Tito's Monterroso famous tale The dinosaur:
"When she woke up, the dinosaur was still in there."
Leave your exercise down here, i'll read it and give you some advice. If you like this, don't forget to support the starving writers, haha.
Cheers!
-Daniel Camacho.
SPANISH
My nature lenguage is Spanish, so couple months ago i made an amazing tutorial that expands this knowledge. Actually i just took a small piece a translate in here. I leave it in case someone speak.
AndIf you guys like me to keep translating my content, just let me feel it :D