Writers, who prefer the short route to a story, get your thinking caps on. This weekend online workshop will help you explore ways of writing bite-sized fiction
Representation pic/istock
Flash fiction is a literary genre where less is more. Novelists Ernest Hemingway and Franz Kafka may not have used the term, but have engaged with such forms of prose in their short story collections. Meanwhile, American author Lydia Davis has famously written several single-sentence stories, her shortest comprising four words. This weekend, Mumbai-born writer and poet Aekta Khubchandani plans to conduct an online workshop on fragmented flash fiction, in association with the creative writing outlet Usawa Literary Review. The session is titled Snackables, and aims to give writers an opportunity to explore short pieces of fiction in under 1000 words. “Flash fiction is like a snack — quick, delicious, and at times, it leaves one wanting more,” Khubchandani tells us.
Imagination and memory feed off each other to make this form happen, she elaborates. “The making of a fictional story, especially a fragmented one, is about placing (i.e. structuring) the incomplete puzzle pieces of your story in a way that it makes the reader feel it intensively. The universe of the story can be expansive and immersive. This means we can talk about giraffe hearts, cancer, basketball, and a crochet dress together in the same story with ease and grace.”
Aekta Khubchandani
The session will explore aspects like voice, tone, and narrative choice, as well as how context and subtext shape a story. It’ll also nudge participants to understand character building, plot and story, and impactful endings. The workshop is open to all. Khubchandani believes that if the description makes you curious, then that’s enough. “I’m keen for the participants to take this fragmented form and use it to write the story that they have within themselves,” she says. “In class, all participants will write their first draft together.” They will be provided with prompts, tools, and techniques to write the story.
She recollects attending a flash workshop, conducted by American author Kathy Fish, which got her excited about the form. “I rediscovered how memory and imagination are really, inevitably sticky with each other. Going down the research rabbit hole of memory made me cherish the fragmented form immensely,” she shares. Having seen the impact of flash fiction, she hopes the participants can rummage through their memories and find a space for their emotions at this session too — whether that’s joy, unshakable shame, grief, or heartache. “Using this form of fragmented flash can be healing too,”
she concludes.
ON August 16 and 17; 11 am to 1 pm
REGISTER Aekta.khubchandani@gmail.com
LOG ON TO Zoom
COST Rs 1750 (per session)
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