New class has started. It is the sister course to the one I’ve done already but is longer established with a more experienced group many of whom are published writers. Unlike the previous course each tutor led session is interspersed with a self-managed session led by one of the more experienced members. This extends the course from 7 to 11 weeks.
One of the topics we will be covering is the writing of a novella-in-flash. I’ve not heard of this before but this article explains it pretty well. It looks as if it will be a format that suites me.
Michael Loveday: Novella-in-Flash 2020 Judge
A flash fiction novella, or novella-in-flash, may be a similar page-length to a novella and generally includes similar features such as a central character (or group of characters), and a sense of story or ‘narrative arc’. But the crucial difference is that the novella-in-flash is broken up into stand-alone sections, each generally functioning as an individual flash fiction – up to the 750 or 1,000 word length that is the typical ceiling for flash fiction, though sometimes as short as only few lines, depending on the type of story.
Each of the novella-in-flash’s stand-alone sections can be a ‘beginning-afresh’ – a new moment in the story, one that’s not necessarily picking up directly from where the previous chapter left off, not in that ‘continuous’ style one gets in traditional fiction. So the novella-in-flash’s sections may restart each time with a different situation, different narrative moment, a different character, or different physical location, say. Often, at the ending of each individual piece, there’s what I call a ‘resonating space’ – some unspoken invitation to pause, reflect and re-read or re-consider. This is exactly as usually happens at end of a one-off flash fiction or with any short story, in fact; but the difference with the novella-in-flash is that overall the individual scenes and moments (and gaps) accumulate into something bigger, something with a suggestion of a single cohesive picture. You can think of it as a process of tapestry and linkage (for both writer and reader), in enabling the individual flash fictions to add up to a whole, even though they can stand on their own too.
