Flash Fiction 2008
"The Best Three"
The three winning entries - each of whose author receives £200 and a week's writer's retreat/holiday in Talbot House, Poperinge, Belgium - are:
| The Lion Cub | Julie Mayhew | Hertfordshire |
| Vegetable, Mineral | Tania Hershman | Israel |
| Audrey and Maurice Watch Telly | Geoffrey Lowe | Hull |
Click on the authors' names to read the winning stories - and read, below, the judge's comments on how he chose them.
Judge's Comments
Flash Fiction is a fairly new name for a very old short story form that can, arguably, be traced back to Aesop's Fables (c.500 BC). It's hardly likely that Aesop set himself a word-count limitation, but his stories were very short and they did display the four basic elements of plot structure. They are: character::motivation::obstacle::resolution, which together generate that all important power-pack :conflict: Conflict drives a story. You might like to study carefully The Tortoise and the Hare, and The Boy Who Cried Wolf for evidence of that. I refer to Aesop's originals, not subsequent copy-cat titles by contemporary authors. (Did you know that titles cannot be made copyright? The group Wet Wet Wet tried and failed in the High Court to copyright its name, and that judgement set the legal precedent.)
Our team of readers read the (anonymous)155 flash fiction entries and produced a short list of 50. These were handed to me (still anonymous) for final judging. All of them contained the aforementioned elements, they all embraced conflict, and they made a gripping read. My task was to choose three. Finding good stories was easy, there were dozens of them! It was selecting the best of them that proved difficult. I applied critical analysis, dissection of parts, subjective observation, almost all of the bits and bobs I was taught in my MA course way back when (and which now tend to spoil a good read!). Eventually, gut feeling took over, and the three stories that stayed in my mind the longest became my champions.
I chose Vegetable, Mineral for the writer's skilful use of laconic dialogue that effectively controlled the pacing. The enigmatic sub-layered conflict intrigued me. The duel of words bouncing like a ping-pong ball between the two characters fascinated me.
I chose Audrey and Maurice watch telly for very different reasons. There is an absence of dialogue but lots of zany action. While Vegetable, Mineral had a pre-planned feel to it, Audrey and Maurice had a more free-flowing organic craziness about it. And it made me laugh out loud. This writer has a vivid imagination.
The Lion Cub was different again. Here we have a snapshot of life and death in the wild. And a sense of another author that knows his/her job, calculating every word to fit into a design. An incident in the jungle described through the mind of a child. Given the limited word count the writer creates extraordinarily strong three-dimensional characters, and tells a powerful tale that hits the emotions like a kick in the stomach. It reminded me very much of Hemingway's longer short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
So - what's the point of Flash Fiction? Is it just a fun game or maybe a thinly disguised exercise in editing-out, shedding the superfluous? Literary Thatcherism, less doing more, making the work leaner and fitter? It's shorter than short, and by comparison makes the novella look like a tome. If a short story can be read at one sitting, flash fiction can be read on the run. Poe argued that the short story must be "curt, condensed, well digested." If the writer's "very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, he has failed in his first step." Okay, we've got that, but why shorten it still further 'til we end up with Hemingway's oft quoted, "For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." foolishness. (C'mon Ernie, you were not being serious.) Again - what's the point? I'll tell you. I don't know! All I know is, when it works it works well and it reveals itself as a true literary art form. And I happen to find it, well... intellectually satisfying. And that's all I'm saying.
Congratulations to every one of our other writer-entrants; for being such damn good writers. You didn't make the cut this time, and if you're feeling disappointed about that please accept my heartfelt commiserations. But you must keep on believing in yourself, and keep writing. Every story I read, and which the team read, was of an extremely high standard. Thank you for entering the Biscuit Competition. All of you good writers have caused the standards to be raised further.
Brian Lister
