How to edit flash fiction
By: Beth Van Der Pol
Tags: Flash Fiction, Editing, Writing, Creativity, Creative Writing

Writer’s Blog

How to edit flash fiction

Make your short story the best it can be.

So I don’t feel right about teaching you flash fiction without providing a real example. The flash fiction used throughout this article is one that I wrote a little while ago. I want to walk you through the editing process with an actual example that you can use to take your first draft from something that needs a lot of work to something that you are happy with.

Right below is the finished version of my flash fiction. Finished for now at least, I try not to play with drafts I have deemed ‘good enough’, but we’ll see, never say never, this might change in the future.

If you want the example feel free to read it and get familiar with the story, you’ll see it a lot more. I’ll try to leave my points and advice a little less specific so that you can use these tips without having to read the story too!

Completed Story

The Date ‘Hey, Lily.’ I smile. ‘You look good.’ I sit down and place the strawberry shortcake between us. I pull two forks out of my pocket and put one on her side, keeping the other in my hand. The cake is a dumb gesture. We shared it on a date, the one when we had our first kiss. The cream from the cake was the perfect opportunity, I never expected her to kiss it off my face. A lot has changed in fifteen years. I made my yearly pilgrimage. It has become a ritual for me, something essential. I eat the cake and tell her about my life. Filling her in on the year, I tell her about my wife, the kids. I have this weird idea that I can force Lily to grow old with me, somehow if she knows about the life that I am living I will be able to share the rest of it with her. Just like we always wanted. They say that grieving is for the living, so I will deal with it my own way. I stand to leave. I can’t help looking again at the shrine, with fresh flowers that share her name. They were placed there by her family. Her parents were also caught up in this custom. I never disturb them, I only visit in the evening, I don’t want to disturb their mourning. I walked there with the cake, and I walk back with nothing.

So that’s the complete story. Now you get to see the first draft.

You’ll notice that the premise is mostly the same, I felt really good about my theme and my direction, so no overhauls in the actual story had to happen, but I did cut things away and add things in, so let’s have a look at where we started.

First Draft

I walked down the road, glancing over, as I usually do at the small cross beside the edge of the road. Fresh flowers had been placed on it today, the same day that it gets fresh flowers every year. The flowers were lilies, as they are every year. They were her favourite flower. I go over to the grave, as I do every year and offer her, her favourite treat. It was the strawberry shortcake from the bakery down the lane. It was the treat we had shared over our first kiss. I visited this place every year, I walked the whole way here, treat in hand, and the whole way back, holding nothing. It had become a ritual for me, something essential. I tried and failed to stop coming, I tried and failed to let her go. I had moved on you know, a wife and kids, fifteen years will do that to a person. Yet still, I come to grieve her loss. To miss her kisses and to share a strawberry shortcake once again, with the woman that I love.

So how did we get from A to B?

The entire drafting process took about seven or eight rewrites. I think that rewriting your story is a valuable part of the editing process, particularly with smaller pieces like this.

Photo by Sylwia Bartyzel on Unsplash

I also set myself up some goals, like keeping the word count below 250 words so I could submit it to a competition. Having some sort of goal in mind is useful. Remember that most flash fiction is under 1000 words, so there is always that if you’re not sure where to start.

The first draft was the first conception of the idea for me, but you don’t have to start there. Think of small details and focus in on those details. For me, it was the grave. I wrote the first draft with the grave as the perspective.

I was happy with that perspective but if you want to try focusing in on something else, or giving more details to specific items go on ahead and try a draft focusing on the plot through a different lens.

You’d be surprised at how much it can change your entire story.

Highlight everything

The first thing I want you to do is to highlight every line that you love, and then try and keep that in your next draft.

The goal here for me was to end up with a draft that was entirely coloured in. It sounds obnoxious, but this is a screenshot of my later drafts.

Screenshot by author

Very colourful.

If you love most of a line but dislike a specific part highlight those parts in a different colour, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Make sure that you are giving each line its best chance.

Then rewrite your story

Can you take things out?

For me, I removed an entire ‘scene’. I didn’t need to talk about how the man in the story walked to the grave because that wasn’t actually important to the story.

What mattered was that he was there and what he was doing.

Line by line, I rewrote my story, finding ways to work in lines that I loved and keep them there. Once I got to a place where I loved all of the individual lines, I played with story structure.

Keep every draft

This one is huge, especially with such a small story.

You might write something that you love and write it out in the next draft. None of these re-writes are your final draft so keep your writing history!

I love to write flash fiction all on the one page, I mark up every draft and write the next one with what I love in mind. I do not edit any given draft until the end, and even then I copy and paste it so that it is its own thing, this prevents losing valuable lines or concepts that you might not want to forget.

It is so easy to lose a sentence, a word or a line that you love. Keep everything, even if you think you hate it because having it there will remind you to use it or discard it.

Don’t delete anything!

Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

Structure

Once you know you like your story, you like every word that you’ve put in there, and all of the words are doing something for your story you need to see your story through yet another lens.

Now I want you to look at the structure, can you do anything that would make the story more interesting? Can you change the way it’s set up?

This was my ‘final draft’ before I played with the structure, I loved all of the lines, but I hadn’t changed anything about the story.

The Date ‘Hey, Lily,’ I smiled, ‘you look good.’ The shrine had been ornamented with fresh flowers of the same name. They were placed there by her family, I smile at the familiarity. Her parents were also caught up in this yearly custom, I always stayed out of their way, only visited in the evening. I didn’t want to disturb their mourning. I sit down and place the strawberry shortcake between myself and the grave. I pull two forks out of my pocket and put one on her side, keeping the other in my hand. The cake is a dumb gesture, we shared it on our first date. I know she can’t eat it, but they say that grieving is for the living, so I will deal with it my own way. I made my yearly pilgrimage. It had become a ritual for me, something essential. I eat the cake and tell her about my life. Filling her in on the year. I tell her about my wife, the kids, that Oliver has started high school. A lot has changed in the last fifteen years. I have this weird idea that I can force Lily to grow old with me, somehow if she knows about the life that I am living I will be able to share the rest of it with her. She has to grow old with me just like we always wanted. I walk there with the cake, and I walk back with nothing.

A very different story from the one with structural work. The final draft focuses on the reader figuring out the story, whereas this one tells the reader what is happening. There is no mystery to this draft. It’s still a very pretty story and one to be proud, but objectively, it’s not as interesting as the final draft.

Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

Are there pieces of information you can remove? Can you make your reader work to figure out the plot?

Is there something interesting you can do by withholding information or allowing false presumptions to be made?

My story reads first as a boy going on a date, then as a man having an affair and then as a man grieving his childhood sweetheart. My story is also under 250 words. With some clever formatting, you can do a lot.

Take your time.

It took me a few days to write this short piece. In writer years that’s not very productive, but I felt it was worth sinking the time into, then again I am a poetry nerd, so I’m used to working with small pieces of art and refining them.

Don’t be afraid to spend an extended amount of time on your story, like I said. I rewrote this way too many times.

The end result? Worth it!

Get advice from friends.

When I was nearing the end of my drafting stage, I send out this story to loved ones and friends. I asked them what they liked, what was working and what wasn’t.

I got some candid, valuable feedback that hurt my feelings.

I implemented that feedback and my story was better for it, less confusing, clearer and altogether better in the end.