The Serial Bowl Is Empty

Well... here we are at the bottom of the bowl. One bite left and some milk to sip from the bottom.

This whole thing has kind of reminded me of when I was a kid. Every once in a while, we would just have cereal for dinner. It wasn't one of those kinds of things where my mom would just decide not to cook and we just ate whatever we wanted; it was an actual, declared cereal night. Yeah, it seems kind of weird to me, now, too, so I can only imagine those happened because my mom or, possibly, my dad wanted the cereal. Specifically. Like, "I want cereal tonight." Anyway...

When we had cereal nights, my dad always used one of the great, giant salad bowls to have his cereal in. All the rest of us would be using normal bowls, but there would be my dad with this huge bowl that was bigger than all of the other bowls combined. He'd pour in, like, half a box of cereal and something like a quart of milk. Maybe, it was closer to half a gallon? I don't really know. I think I'd probably have to experiment by making a bowl that big, but I'm quite sure I wouldn't be able to eat all of it.

And I could never believe that my dad could eat that much either. It was so much cereal! But he did always eat all of it. Amazingly. It was rather... impressive. At least it was to me when I was eight.

At any rate, the Shadow Spinner serialization has been more than a bit like one of those giant bowls of cereal, and being here at the last chapter is somewhat reminiscent of watching my dad take that last bite and, then, tilting the bowl back and drinking the last of the milk with whatever crumbs were left behind.

I can't believe it's over... but, here we are at the end.

Not that I haven't given my thoughts previously on the whole serial experience, I figured, now that it's actually over, I should probably sum it up or give final thoughts or... something, so here are some final thoughts (but, really, if you want it all broken out by points and stuff, go back and read that other post):

I think one of the things we're going to be seeing as we transition away from traditional publishing (and, yes, we are transitioning away from it, at least as it is in its current iteration) is more shorter works and more frequent publications. Rather than indie authors writing full-blown novels, we'll see series of novelettes and novellas. Sure, there will still be the occasional epic fantasy piece, and long, literary pieces will probably continue as they are for quite a while (they are the most resistant to change), but I think we're moving toward things that people can sit down and finish in a sitting or two. People just like that.

And, no, I have no data to back that up. It's just my feeling of how things are going. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. This will continue our move, culturally, away from physical books, because the expense of printing tiny 20-30,000 word pre-novels will just be too high.

Personally, I've been pretty happy with the experience. It's a lot of work releasing a book chapter by chapter, especially when if you devote a significant amount of time to author's notes the way I do, but I think it was worth it. I know that I brought in a lot of readers and made many connections that I never would have if I had only released Spinner as a single book.

Yes, I have another serialization some time in the future. But that's the future...

For now, here's the last part of Shadow Spinner along with the list of all of today's FREE! offerings.
"Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, October 1)
"Part Thirty-three: Justice"
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate"
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Eighteen: The Angel"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
And that's that. Nine FREE! parts today, which, granted, is not as many as on some days, but, well, I've used up all of my free days for a while. Still... Look for something special coming up round about Halloween. No, I mean it. Something special and not just from me. But that's all you're getting out of me for the moment about that.

For those of you that have been following along with Tib's adventures, I hope this brings this (first) story to a satisfactory conclusion. I'm not saying there will be another story about Tiberius, but there could be. One day. Maybe. Mostly, I'm toying with the idea of the origins of Michael and Edward; I'm just not sure I'll have time to get them down on "paper."

Flash (in the pan) Fiction

Flash fiction is not one of my favorite forms of writing. In fact, you could say that I kind of hate it. I dislike it so much that I've had to restart this post four times for being much too harsh. It's not really the fault of the flash fiction, either; it's those people that write flash fiction. No, not you that have written a short story or three that happen to fall into the "flash fiction" range, but those people that just love "flash fiction" because it's so unique and forces you to do so much with so little and all of that other pretentious hogwash.

And it is. Pretentious. And hogwash.

It's especially pretentious since most (almost all) of what those people write when they're doing all of their flash fiction crap is crap. C. R. A. P.

Here's something I read recently that kind of illustrates the point. It was someone talking about the "grand tradition" of flash fiction and how it goes back decades and decades. Um... no... the term "flash fiction" didn't appear until the early 90's, so it, as a thing, certainly wasn't a thing before that. Which is not to say that short stories under 1000 words didn't exist before then, because they did, and they, at various points, had various other names. But, sometimes, when things are given a "name," they become a "thing," and "flash fiction" has only been a "thing" for two decades (which is, technically, decades, but it's hardly "decades"), and it's only been a "real thing" for, maybe, the last decade or so.

But that's kind of the thing, they are JUST short stories. In fact, on the scale of literary items, so to speak, "flash fiction" doesn't even exist. You have:
short stories -- less than 7500 words
novelettes -- 7500 - 17,500 words
novellas -- 17,500 - 40,000 words
novels -- 40,000+ words
Yeah, I did research on this stuff for my creative class, and that's really the generally accepted breakdown. Something close to that, anyway. No one even mentions flash fiction in terms of publication. Generally speaking, if a magazine (or whoever) wants something that would fall into the "flash fiction" category, they ask for SHORT STORIES at around the 1000 word length.

Yeah, I know a lot of you are probably thinking I'm getting all worked up over nothing, and I can see that, but let me give you a similar example. I thought about speech as a major when I was in college, so I took the requisite intro to speech class. WOW! Now there was a class that was trying too hard. You think psychology tries hard to be recognized as a science, try taking a speech class. One of the things we learned early on is that there are specific "scientific" names for the distances people stand away from you when you talk to them. (and I am completely making these names up, because I don't remember (nor do I care to remember) what the actual names are) So, if someone is standing within 2" of you, he is in your "C" zone. If he is 2-4" away, he is in your "R" zone. If he's 4-8" away, he's in your "A" zone, and, if he's 8-12" away, he's in your "P" zone. Yes, because all of that, also, is CRAP. While it's true that how close to you someone stands is important, because it affects different people in different ways, there are also cultural and personal distinctions about  this stuff, so it's NOT THE SAME for everyone, so giving these arbitrary distances names was just a way to sound all sciency about it, and it didn't mean anything.

And that's how I feel about "flash fiction."

Oh, and I decided not major in speech, because, after that class, I figured it was just going to be a waste of time. Speech, as a major, is like trying to dress a pig in a dress and pass it off as your prom date.

>sigh<

So... flash fiction just tries too hard. It does. It's trying hard to be something more than just a short story, and, the truth is, it is just a short story. Except, mostly, they're very poorly written short stories.
And here's why:

1. Frequently, because the author is trying to stuff, say, a 5000 word story into an artificial 1000 word format, he has to rely on lots of exposition (or Telling) to impart enough of the story to make it make sense, so what we end up with is 500-700 words of the author telling us the background and only a few hundred words of the actual action of the story (the Showing). It's very unsatisfying, and I'm always left feeling like the author should have just written another few thousand words so that we could actually experience more of the story as story rather than as "historical" prologue.

Mostly, people should just write the story that needs to be told without worrying about how long or short it is. Shorter, contrary to popular belief, is not better, as I'm continually telling the kids in my creative writing class, who always want to get away with shorter, and I have to tell them to go back and expand expand expand. Show me the action; don't just tell me what happened. Flash fiction writers need to take this lesson to heart. If half of your flash fiction is Telling, you're writing in the wrong format. Period.

2. I suppose because the format is so short, authors of flash fiction often feel like they need to work in some kind of twist ending. Something unexpected to give us a shock at the end. These things sort of give flash fiction a joke-like quality, like they need some kind of punch line. The twists often feel forced and unnatural, too, which makes them bad jokes. I've not read a single piece of flash fiction with a twist at the end that was worth reading. Especially when the twist is accomplished through some gruesome act for no other reason than to be shocking.

I truly hope this fad of flash fiction passes relatively quickly, because it's reducing story telling to the same level that free verse reduced poetry, which is garbage. None of that is to say there aren't good examples out there, but it's not something just anyone can do with any skill. Learn how to tell a story and use as many words as you need to tell that story. If it happens to fall under 1000 words, great, but, if not, don't force it. It's pretty much the same as cutting off your toes to get your foot into a smaller shoe.