Writing Novel Scenes with Flash Form

writing novel scenes

 

I frequently get questions from potential Into the Flash students wondering about the connection between writing a novel and writing flash fiction and how the latter can help with longform prose. Here’s how flash form can, and does, support writing novel scenes:

Learning to write tight — to write flash — prepped me for writing compelling scenes a few years after Flashes of War was published, when an agent approached me about my war stories and asked me to write a novel set in Afghanistan. I couldn’t imagine long, narrated passages of prose. But I could imagine scenes. I could imagine circumstances that outsized believable people facing believable problems. I started there, with what I knew, and later — drafts and drafts later — taught myself how to stitch it all together. These insights caught the attention of the editors at Great Jones Street, who asked me to write a guest article. READ it on Medium via GREAT JONES STREET now.

Into the Flash is my signature, live and online, 5-week course in flash form writing. There is SO much more to this delightful genre than word count and my online course exposes novelists and memoirists, or even short story writers, to tools that help them master scene and learn how to make crucial decisions about what to leave in and what to leave out. This fun, online offering also comes with a healthy dose of community, critique, sample texts, and lectures. Into the Flash only runs in April and is open for Early Bird Registration $290.00 with limited seats available.

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