Behind the Scenes of “The Birthday Party”

In case you haven’t seen the latest news, I had another flash fiction piece published this month. It’s called “The Birthday Party,” is available in print/digital and on Kindle, and is my first published romance story. And this is a brief glimpse at how it came to be.

As with all of my stories submitted to Splickety, it started with their theme for the month. Specifically “The ‘Aww’ Factor” for their Spark (romance) imprint. This prompt asked writers to incorporate animals or kids into a romance story—and make it really sweet.

When I started brainstorming, I thought people would be more likely to use animals in their stories, so I decided to try to involve kids (if you check out the issue, you’ll see it turned out to be a 50/50 split). Trying to come up with scenarios that would put a kid and single adult in the same situation eluded me for a while. The college student attending a cousin’s birthday party angle eventually came to me, but my original story had a lot more setup explaining just how reluctantly she came to the party.

With the family relationship established between Julie and Emma, I still needed to come up with a reason for the love interest to attend. Obviously, he couldn’t also be family. Even if he was friend of the family, I thought it would be a stretch for a non-related college student to come to a eight-year-old’s birthday party. I wasn’t sure about going the teacher route because I thought a lot of submissions with kids would use that angle, so I think him technically just being an education major rather than a fully-fledged teacher helped him stand out.

As for the plot, I originally thought the story would be mostly conversation-driven. I expected to have them talk about college, flirt a little, and eventually decide to go out. But when I finally reached the point of them actually meeting, I looked at my word count and thought Um, I don’t have enough space for that.

So I introduced the water fight as a way for a lot to “happen” without having to describe it all. Even with this, it clocked in significantly over the 700 words I usually shoot for. I looked for places to cut, but figured that any cuts would just make the storytelling cut corners. The water fight went through a few iterations before landing on the idea that Julie really wasn’t that jazzed about it, but saw it as a chance to spend more time with Tim.

Writing a satisfying ending was rough, but I’m ultimately happy with how it turned out. Previous submissions to Spark had impressed on me the importance of feeling like the relationship would head somewhere after the story ended. But I also wasn’t sure if an hour hanging out at a kid’s birthday party would realistically feel like a good occasion to ask someone out. Both because of this uncertainty and word restraints, I decided to leave things with a brief, flirty exchange predicated on the time spent with the kids.

Of course, I couldn’t talk about behind the scenes of this story without mentioning editor Leslie McKee. Her comments helped me better understand what readers expect from flash fiction romance—for example, peppering hints of interest throughout the story, and not just toward the end. I was really thankful to have her direction in polishing the story up before publication.

And that’s how I wrote “The Birthday Party!” I hope you liked this glimpse behind the scenes of how it came together. Any other questions on this little romance story? Feel free to drop them in the comments.

“The Birthday Party” Published!

This one almost got away from me—my latest flash fiction story “The Birthday Party” was published in this month’s issue of Spark! I hope you’re ready to see my stab at romance.

That’s right, Spark is Splickety’s romance imprint, and this month’s theme was “The ‘Aww’ Factor.” Think meet-cute, but dialing the cute factor up to 11 with kids and/or animals. I don’t think that romance is my strong suit, so I was super honored to have this story selected for publication (and grateful with my editor’s patience, insight, and guidance in polishing it).

As you may have guessed “The Birthday Party” takes place at a kid’s birthday party. How could love possibly bloom there? You’ll have to read to find out! Check it out along with 13 other cute flash romance pieces in the August issue of Spark.

Hard copy & digital: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1490466

Kindle edition: http://a.co/d/2KG5hoN

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

I recently read Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon. And if you are any type of creator (writer, artist, photographer, blogger, category-breaker, etc.), I highly recommend it.

The book itself is small (6×6 inches) but packed with Kleon’s advice on sharing work in progress and connecting with like-minded people. Given the fact that he’s a New York Times bestselling author and successful speaker on creativity, he knows what he’s talking about. The book lays out ten principles for sharing work, interspersing its primary content with quotes, illustrations, pictures, and his blackout poetry (newspaper pages blacked out except for key words/phrases).

It’s inspiring, but more importantly, it’s actionable. Without prescribing specific courses of action, he talks about how to develop your story, stay motivated, decide what to share on social media, interact with people online, take care of yourself, and treat your creativity like a business. And after making a point or sharing an example, he moves right on to the next concept instead of belaboring it.

For example, his third principle, “Share something small every day,” has a section called “Turn your flow into stock.” This one in particular stood out to me. He talks about Robin Sloan adapting the economic concept of “stock and flow” as a metaphor for media. Flow is more ephemeral, like social media posts, while stock lasts longer and is more likely to attract an audience that will also last. Kleon goes on to explain how flow can feed into and offer direction for stock, offering this book as a perfect example of this. That point made, he jumps into the next section.

I’ve read the book four times and still feel like I get something new on each readthrough. But despite the amount of content, it never feels overwhelming. His writing style is super accessible, and the design makes it apparent that he treated it like another piece of art in his portfolio. As much as it can be read in one sustained session, the short sections comprising each chapter also lend themselves to quick bursts for readers looking for a small jolt of inspiration.

Hopefully you’re convinced by this point. No matter where you are along your creativity journey, I think Show Your Work! has something to offer.

Behind the Scenes of “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte”

Last week, The Norwegian American published my short story “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte.” If you haven’t read it yet, head on over to their website and take a look before reading on about how it came to be.

Unlike my previous stories, “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte” didn’t need to match a particular theme. That said, their submission guidelines do say they consider stories of any genre as long as they relate to Norway, or crime/mystery stories (even without Norwegian elements). I decided to hedge my bets with a mystery set in Norway.

For me, the biggest challenge of this was fitting a mystery into 1000 words. When I think of mysteries, I think of crime scenes, clues, witnesses, red herrings, and elaborate explanations revealed at the end. Which would not work as flash fiction. So I had to be very intentional about the story’s structure.

The final result essentially splices together key snippets of the “mystery”—surveying the evidence, collecting clues, piecing them together, etc. Because of this, the story is able to span a much longer timeframe than any of my previous stories. (Up until this one, my stories’ timelines have typically been a few minutes from beginning to end. “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte” spans a few hours.) Even re-reading it now, I’m pleased with how it turned out and kind of surprised at how it works as flash fiction even though it takes so long, timewise.

In terms of plot, I knew I wanted to include a troll even before finalizing the mystery itself. I’m a fantasy writer at heart, and Norwegian folklore is full of recognizable creatures and characters. Originally, I thought I might have the main character come into contact with the trolls (loosely foreshadowed by Berit’s remark about playing with their kids). Unfortunately, as the remaining word count grew slim, I realized I wouldn’t be able to do that scene justice. I’m not sure how many people will read the actual ending as an ambiguous one, but in my head, that troll is totally real.

The hard part was getting to it. While brainstorming ideas for evidence that could incite a mystery, I thought trolls might take issue with people mistreating land. Hence the destroyed backhoe. This ended up working both ways, as it also provided a reason for the absence of trash around the construction site. Just goes to show that when you don’t know how to move forward, sometimes you just need to look backward.

The names throughout the story are courtesy of a pre-reader with far more exposure to Norwegian culture than I have. Nilsson is a common Norwegian surname, and Berit is a common girl’s name. “Morfar,” if you caught it while reading, is the word for a maternal grandfather. On Google Maps, the region around Åmot looked like it had a good amount of forest and mountains, but I learned in the course of writing this that Norway is known considerably more for the latter than the former. The original title was “Trowhoyde” (a variation on the word “troll” and the Norwegian word for “hill,” but my editor suggested “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte” and I liked the sound of it. (As mentioned last week, “kjempehytte” loosely translates to cabin fight).

And that’s a little insight into how I wrote “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte!” I hope you enjoyed both the story and this little glimpse behind the scenes. Have any questions about it that I didn’t address here? Feel free to ask in the comments. Takk!

“Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte” Published!

Hoorah! My latest flash fiction story, “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte,” was published today in The Norwegian American. You can read it in this week’s issue or online. This is also my first story with an illustration, and it’s awesome!

As you’d expect from a story in The Norwegian American, this story draws a few themes from Norwegian culture (though you don’t need to be familiar with the culture to appreciate the story). It follows a detective investigating a destroyed backhoe in the mountains, though the culprit may not turn out to be who—or what—he originally suspects.

But what’s a Kjempehytte? There’s no direct English translation, but it roughly means “cabin fight.” You’ll have to read the story to find out why it’s called that!

Intrigued? Check out “Mr. Nilssen’s Kjempehytte” in The Norwegian American today!