Help! Pulling back focus to core narrative when expanding a flash piece to a short story!

[JamieRae]

Hello! Some of you were lovely enough to critique a 700 word flash piece I did recently. Along with the incredible feedback from yourselves and others, and a desire to expand it to a 2-3k short story, I am struggling with keeping the essence of the story in while trying to expand it out. I've created a new narrative thread to give more meaning to my characters actions, backstory and but every time I read it back I feel like I am slowly moving away from the original idea and 'essence'.

i'd love to know how you keep hold of the core story when expanding, without losing focus. To be frank, I'm not having trouble writing (for once!), the words are coming and the tone of voice still feels authentic - it's more about making sure I keep a nod to the essence of the flash piece, and not just ending up with pointless filler!

Any tips or tricks would be gratefully received - how did you keep the integrity of a shorter piece you expanded into a longer piece? I have started with a written outline of the short story to try and keep me on the straight and narrow...

Thank you!

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Hi Jamie.
Without being able to look at your new plotted structure, I don't think I can give you my opinion on whether you're ending up with 'pointless filler' or not.
But I can tell you something that might help you in your considerations about it. And I'm going to be a bit wordy, so bear with me on this.

This summer I did an 8-week art residency, that was followed by a solo exhibition of the work created during those 8 weeks in the studio.
I arrived not knowing what I was going to do.
The idea I had (driving home on the first day) was that I wanted to look at grieving, depression, disability, and other sorts of invisible pain. I wanted to celebrate the way many of us dealing with those things just get on with it, most of the time. We do the best we can. We make the best of what we have. But the sharp edges of our pain and limitation still cuts.
So I went out and bought as many plastic knives as I could, and loads of paint. I wanted to transform the knives into other things, so you only noticed they were knives on second glance. My first idea was to get loads of different size and shape knives from charity shops, paint them up, and arrange them like a bunch of flowers. So I did that.
Then I started looking at what else I could do with them. They became wing shapes, towers, kaleidoscopic pieces, and hanging sculptures.
When I'd taken the knives as far as they could go, I started working with razor blades - painting them in rainbow colours and arranging them into tessellating patterns. And then I began sticking pins into canvas, making images that resembled the rings of felled trees.
My final pieces were delicate, scattered, pale collections of knives, arranged on canvas in a way that the shadows and negative spaces told stories of their own. They bore very little resemblance to my bouquet of knives.

So why am I telling you this?
Your 700 word piece is my bouquet of painted knives. It's a starting point, a jumping off place.
It might have worked for me to make a huge garden of painted knives - that would have been impressive, certainly. But I let my creativity take me where it was interesting and challenging for me to go, and that is not where it went this time.
I suggest you let go of the idea of having to 'expand' your 700 word piece. It might work well, or you might find your creativity is taking you down other roads.
If it does, let it.
And if your writing suddenly blooms into something extraordinary and unexpected, does it matter where it started, or if it kept the 'essence' of the original?
I think you are more likely to get 'pointless filler' if you get too rigid in deciding what your piece is going to be.
But if you stand back and let your clearly emerging and burgeoning talent start to find its way, you may surprise yourself with the turns it takes.

 

[CageSage]

In my view, a short piece is the sharp end of a story-stick and it has places/events/moments that could be turned into branches to add depth or breadth (length) to the story.
For example, if the short piece is about a person interacting with an animal, walking a dog through the park to get to grandma's place despite the risks of a young woman walking alone through the dark places in life, then to keep it short there would be one incident to startle/shock/block the way. In a longer piece, the things that get in the way expand/expound on the theme of the story (demonstrate what happens when the wrong/right choice is made), so there would be two (for a novella) or three (for a novel). A short story (up to 7,500 words) should stick to one big, emotional kick in the butt moment that demonstrates the purpose/theme of the story.
Short is a sharp stick, longer is a carved walking stick, but more makes it a weapon like a knife or a sword to strike the character with the theme/purpose more than once. The choice is yours (as long as the character keeps their voice and vision).

 

[SarahC]

I agree with @Vagabond Heart in that I don't think you should worry about your flash piece metamorphising of its own accord into something different. Let it happen and see how it looks as its own thing. Nothing is uneditable - darlings are meant to be killed (and then possibly resuscitated should the mood strike you.)

Some of the things I like about writing is that there are no rules, and you have an infinite supply of words to mess around with.

I enjoyed your flash piece and am interested to see where you take it. I'm sure your fellow writers on here will kindly help to identify any "pointless filler" at which point it's the work of a single button to dispose of it, should you agree. By draft 3, it is highly possible you will have something very distinct from your original idea, but that is a normal part of the creative process. (I have just finished re-writing all 80k words of my novel to the point where it bears little resemblance to my original idea but is much better for it.)

Looking forward to reading what you come up with should you decide to share.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I have a tendency to work in the opposite direction--from a longer piece to a shorter one. However, I did take a flash piece and turn it into a 3 book epic fantasy series (LOL!) I did it by thinking about what stories the flash piece sat inside. A bit like an onion, there are rings inside of rings--stories inside of stories. A flash piece is a tiny story nugget, and it sits inside larger stories revolving around the same characters.

 

[LJ Beck]

I am struggling with keeping the essence of the story in while trying to expand it out. I've created a new narrative thread to give more meaning to my characters actions, backstory and but every time I read it back I feel like I am slowly moving away from the original idea and 'essence'.

i'd love to know how you keep hold of the core story when expanding, without losing focus. To be frank, I'm not having trouble writing (for once!), the words are coming and the tone of voice still feels authentic - it's more about making sure I keep a nod to the essence of the flash piece, and not just ending up with pointless filler!

I'm glad to hear that you're turning your story into a bigger piece. And that it's flowing for you! Great stuff!

The book I just finished I originally wrote as a screenplay. So from 120 pages to many, many, many more. lol I know it's not quite the same thing, but I did have to re-examine every aspect of the story to decide how to tell it in a different format. Which was actually super fun to do. I had all this freedom now to decide what to expand and explore. The core story was very solid in my mind and I built around that, expanding out. Deeper char development, more plot, different POV's. I explored the themes myself even further than I had before. Was a really interesting and eye-opening experience for me.

How do you feel about your original idea and the "essence?" (theme/spine/core idea) If this is why you MUST tell this story, the driving force for you, then awesome! You can check that all the elements you're adding speak to that theme or idea in some way, enhancing it or contradicting it, looking at it from a different perspective, etc. If they do that, then they will strengthen your core idea. If your core idea could use some extra umph for a longer story, then you can explore expanding it. I agree with Vagabond Heart - keeping things fluid when exploring ways to express/expand a theme can bring you to some wonderful places. Ultimately, I think having a spine for a story, where all threads weave back to, creates a strong narrative. If you have that, you will probably know if what you're adding is meaningful, or not.

But!!! For a first draft... just write! Write whatever you want. The story will emerge for you. Then in your second draft, you can be more deliberate.

Hope that helped! Good luck with it!

OH! I just saw the date on your original post. This is late to the party for sure. Where does the time go?!

 

[JamieRae]

Hello! Thank you all SO much for your helpful hints, tips and advice. It really has been invaluable as I've spent 2-3 weeks working on extending this original flash piece out. When I started I felt it would be become a rather grotesque short paranormal ghost story, but as I embraced just writing without fear or judgement, it actually became a softer piece around a young persons connection to their parent, in a supernatural drama type setting. I'm happy with that and although I have LOTS to learn and develop, I'm now putting this to bed to begin work on some other story ideas I have. So, thank you again!

If you feel so inclined, you can read the short story here, and any further feedback however constructively good or bad is welcomed with open arms.

Hope you're all having a great week!

 

[LJ Beck]

Hi @JamieRae , I just read your short story and I loved it. It's so charming and spooky-creepy at the same time. I really enjoyed all the extra story elements you added, and I also really enjoyed the narrative of the little girl. The tone and her character come out beautifully in all the details you've added. I found the pace good, it carried me along, keeping my intrigue throughout.

I loved her description of grown-ups, and how she describes her mother. And the note in her backpack, making it so personal. And the drifting in and out of random thoughts when she falls into the water. Also her own little secrets that she has now, after her experience. It's a sweet, but haunting tale.

A few technical details. If you put this into a word doc, I find you can catch the grammar/spelling mistakes more easily. There's not many, but there are a few. I would also suggest that you look at your passive vs active word choices. There are some that can be easily changed, like :

"Dad was sat at the table and he was holding a cup of tea." to Dad sat at the table and held a cup of tea."
"The ring was glimmering" to "The ring glimmered."

and then some that need a more creative change, like:
"I was in bed and I was definitely not feeling well but I was putting it on a bit because I didn’t want to go to school." to "Lying in bed, I definitely did not feel well, but I put it on a bit because I didn't want to go to school."
"I was on the pier again stopping briefly on my way home from school." to "I stopped at the pier on my way home from school."

A bit of a cheat I use in finding passive verbs/sentences is to search for "was" or "were" and try to reword it to give a more immediate feel, or change the verbs to something more descriptive.

Thanks for sharing, it's great to see what you've done with it. Well done!