Forum / IS SERIAL FICTION REALLY FLASH OR SHORT?

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Aug 07, 09:55am

  THIS is a dilemma I am struggling with myself, having written a nearly seven thousand word story that almost no one read, that i am now in the process of chopping into eight flash fiction self-contained but serial pieces. Truthfully, when I see part one or two or chapter this or except that on fictionaut, I glaze over and skip it, so I can't blame anyone for skipping mine. Still, I feel there has to be a way to make it separate little stories because that's what I believe in, that's my writer identity now and that long story was written long ago. Should there be a separate group for serials and omit them from short ficton groups? I think yes. What do others think?

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Aug 07, 09:29pm

  This topic is excellent. Serial fictions or sequence fictions. Again, poetry (world) has defined these in poetry. It seems okay to borrow from poetic work at delineating craft. Yet I feel fiction is a slightly different or definitely different attitude in composition than poetry. Thrice Fiction published my 1987 novella in 24 parts (numbered) called In a Basket in 2012. The story ran originally 120 pp. My novel workshop professor, who taught by specific method, Larry Woiwode, had asked me to go up to 300 pp. Instead, not only to be contrary, but related also to leaving school and working long hours at a Gannett newspaper, I edited the first draft until it was 50 pp. then 35 pp. Now it's 8,020 words. I call it a bonsai novel.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Aug 07, 10:04pm

  I published XAM: Paragraph Series in 2005 (1998). That is my only prose series.

  Try it as a group. Perhaps others are working in this way (serial or sequence fictions).

• 
  James Claffey

  Aug 08, 02:22pm

  my irish stories account for about 50k words now. a private group would be better i think... and i love ann's "bonsai" novel!

• You must log in to reply to this thread.