Week 7 Blog

In class this week we read and learned more about Flash Fiction short stories. So far we've been assigned to read short stories on oncourse, online magazine known as Brevity, and the Indiana Review. Not all Flash Fiction stories are layed out the same and a lot of the stories, more than others are far more interesting. For instance, in class we were put into groups and assigned to read a short story and present it. Ours was "Mammalian Observation Project: Subject J" and I thought the set up of this story was very interesting on how it described the main character. J who was the main character was described on his actions and you could get a clear image on what kind of person he was, just based off of his actions. At first I did not like how the story was set up, because it was split into time segments on what J was doing at a certain time. But at the end it made more sense on why it was set up like it was and made it very different from other short stories I have read, which changed my point of view on liking it way better and showed characterization, theme, foreshadowing and plot.

One major task we're asked to do with these short stories is to read them, then interpret them into our own story similar to how to original story was set up. We have to rewrite our own flash fiction story using a different theme, character and point of view, which is some what challenging to me because it has to stay interesting through out the whole story and I'm not that creative. For example, when using scene and summary we have to know the differences and incorporate them when writing our own interpretation. Scene is direct action, direct dialogue and internal monologue, where as summary tells us what happened rather than shows. I find it much easier and more understandable to use descriptive scene images when writing because it isn't so vague and boring like writing a plain summary. Describing images and actions on what characters are doing or what's going to happen next is a example of scene because your showing whats happening, than simple details on what is plainly happening, which is summary.

This week has taught me a lot about fiction and short stories. From reading the different short stories, all the different ways its written shows me different ways characterization, point of view and foreshadowing can be incorporated and understood. Reading the short stories online and then making our own similar to what we read was some what challenging but fun. It was also fun doing the ink plot activity outside and seeing all the different images we can make out of one little splot of ink. That activity was another way of showing us to not overlook simple things, because we could make alot out of something small, which relates to short, flash fiction stories.