Changes in your Writing Technique

I like writing novel length stories where I can slowly reveal and develop conflicts.  I get a chance to delve right inside my characters and embellish what drives them.  I tend to over-write as I get into my tale.  It then requires tough edits to sharpen disagreements and heighten emotional turmoil, then slow it down so the character has an opportunity to take in the situation.

The writing group I attend have a word of the week and each person is invited to include it in in a piece of flash fiction.  There is no reason to write anything extensive and most people settle for around 100 words. To begin with, my offerings were simply a slice of life and, although anyone in the group recognised it as my work, I have never had a problem with over-writing with these short pieces.


The exercise has served me well.  I am turning out flash fiction worthy of the term now, and look forward to the new challenge each week.  My breakthrough came from the word "cucumber" and I have added it as a taster.

Cucumber

It started simple enough; a bus queue and a forgotten lighter.  I chatted with Silvie all the way into town, so natural and refreshing.  The woes of family life drifted away and I continued with the bus after I got the car back.  It was easy to convince Janet that it saved on the parking.

The cheating grew worse as I took to walking the few streets to Silvie’s house, and running my hands over her soft skin and savouring her flesh.

My father knew how to deal with my lies many years ago.  He took his belt and bruised my back.  One day he chipped a piece of bone from my shoulder blade and I could feel it rubbing under my skin as I cut the lines to his cucumbers. They lay tangled together on the floor for the rest of the season.  With the coming of autumn, my father cut them back until there was nothing left.  Running my fingers over the cold sheet, I’d become accustomed to that feeling.

I suppose people who write short stories and novels have to change their writing style, but I wonder if anyone else agonises over their second draft to the same degree as I do in one specialism, and not in another.