What happens to our writing when we slow down our reading and think critically about the stories in front of us?
Great flash fiction leaves a very strong impression but the danger is we simply inhale it and move on.
How often do you bring your critical faculties to the reading experience, analysing
what the writer has done, in order to improve our own writing of flash stories?
Do you keep notes (a reading journal) about the flash that pops up daily on your screens? Ask yourself what draws you to a particular story and why?
Is it exciting language, playful or clever structure, metaphor and symbolism, character and story, or (usually) a mixture of these?
Often I find I’m hit by an emotional response and then I go back to see how the writer has
achieved that in terms of craft, rather than topic.
In this class we will read a selection of flash with an analytical eye, looking under the hood if you like, in order to deepen our appreciation of the stories we’ve studied.
About Alison Woodhouse
Alison Woodhouse is a writer and teacher. Her flash fiction and short stories have been
widely published and anthologised, including In the Kitchen (Dahlia Press), With One Eye on the Cows (Ad Hoc Fiction), Leicester Writes 2018 & 2020 (Dahlia Press), The Real Jazz Baby (Reflex Press), A Girl’s Guide to Fishing (Reflex Press), National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies and Life on the Margins (Scottish Arts Trust Story Awards). She has won a number of story competitions including Flash 500, Hastings, HISSAC (flash & short story), NFFD micro, Biffy50, Farnham, Ad Hoc Fiction and Limnisa and been placed in many others.
In 2019 she was awarded an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Bath Spa
University. She is currently studying for a Ph.D on the Polyphonic Novel. Her debut novella-in-flash The House on the Corner was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in October, 2020. Her flash fiction collection, Family Frames was published by V.Press in September, 2021.