Behind the Scenes of “Salty”

Woohoo! My newest flash fiction story, “Salty,” is available to read for 24 hours on Havok today. It’s a fantasy-comedy about a mermaid whose sunbathing sesh is rudely interrupted by a lovestruck human guy. Curious about how I wrote it? You’ve come to the right place.

This was the first story I wrote for Havok’s new season, “Stories that Sing.” Every month features stories inspired by songs from a different decade — in this case, the 1950s.

I’m not familiar with many 1950s songs. Fortunately, my wife owns a soundtrack from a show that features a ton of songs from that decade. So we listened to it on a roadtrip, and I started imagining which stories would lend themselves to a flash fiction piece. As you may imagine, a lot of them are love songs. And since Havok features genre stories, I knew there needed to be some sort of sci-fi/fantasy element.

Which made “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” so intriguing. The mental image of washing conjured images of water—which led to the sea—which led to a mermaid—boom. A story of a mermaid spurning a human guy’s advances to avoid an inter-species romance. In terms of genre, it seemed like a great candidate for a Wacky Wednesday story.

The next day, I sat down to write. But just to double-check on the decade, I googled “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” . . . and learned it was recorded in 1949! Travesty!

Fortunately, there were plenty of other songs on the soundtrack. I figured I’d already committed myself to this story idea (and the deadline was literally the following day) so I identified a different song that would lend itself to the same story.

Ah yes, speaking of “the deadline was literally the following day,” I’m rather proud to say that I wrote this story in a day. This was the “sit in a coffee shop all day” day of our roadtrip, and I’d say I put it to good use! Starting with only the premise and genre, I sat down and starting pantsing (read: writing without an outline).

I knew the story would start with the guy encountering the mermaid, but I had no idea where it would go or end up. At first, I thought it would begin with her saving him from a shipwreck, but I found the setup for that wasn’t leading to a very interesting conversation. I started over, this time with him interrupting her sunbathing. The interruption made it feel like a much more humorous start (as opposed to, you know, saving someone from dying).

From there, it was just a matter of imagining what would make for a funny conversation. The list of challenges of an inter-species romance was an early idea, but bringing Cthulhu in as a deterrent was something I came up with in the moment. Every now and then, things would veer into territory that would considerably exceed the word count or just start leading the conversation off-track, so it was just a matter of reigning things in and keeping dialogue focused on what they wanted (a date, and space).

All in all, the actual writing portion took me approximately a full afternoon. (I’m very impressed with flash fiction authors who write stories in an hour!) Both my wife and I did a read-through before I submitted, but that was pretty much the extent of my revisions. So I’m very thankful for Lauren and Gen at Havok for seeing through its imperfections and helping it become what you can read today!

I hope you enjoyed both the story and this look at how I wrote it! If you did, or if you have any questions, feel free to post here or on Havok’s website. And if you didn’t get a chance to read it during the 24 hours it was free, you can always become a Havok Horde member. As a member, you’ll get full access to “Salty” and every other story they’ve published, as well as the ability to vote on which stories are selected for anthologies. Thanks for reading!

Behind the Scenes of “When Magic Died”

Happy new year, all! I’m excited to announce that my latest flash fiction story “When Magic Died” has just been published on the new Havok Publishing website. If you’ve already finished it, read on to learn a little about how the story came together. If not, go check it out now — because it’s only available to read for free today (January 2nd)!

Like previous stories submitted to Havok (when it was an imprint of Splickety), I wrote “When Magic Died” specifically for the theme. But this time was a little different. The theme for the whole month of January is rebirth, but I also needed to decide which genre/day to submit to (mystery, sci-fi, humor, thriller, or fantasy). I sat on this decision *for a while*. Then, in late October, I saw them put out a call for submissions for the humor genre. I took that as a sign, and started brainstorming.

Taking the theme very literally, I figured that something would need to die at the beginning of the story. Since fantasy is my preferred genre, I thought about what kinds of things would die in a fantasy story — and pretty quickly thought of chosen heroes’ quests to do something like save the world. I figured the humor part would come from the hero failing their quest right at the beginning, then doing just as bad a job when they’re invited to be part of the rebirth.

I considered having the hero fail a quest to save the world, but I felt that I wouldn’t be able to describe a world-rebuilding scene without ripping off The Neverending Story. The idea of magic dying struck me as a good replacement, so I ran with that. It seemed like it would be fun to write about an adventurer who’s supposed to help rewrite the laws of magic, but ends up doing so in a very unconventional way.

In terms of writing the story, that was the only outline I worked with. Most of my other flash fiction stories are a little more plotted-out before I start writing. But I figured I’d do better at being funny if I took more of a discovery-writing approach. That way, things would feel more natural instead of being forced in a particular direction.

So when I started writing, some things came more easily than others. I wanted to get to a joke as quickly as possible so I could readers’ expectations from the beginning. The set-up “magic was dying … had the nerve to do just that” was an idea that stuck from early on, and (especially in the first draft), it gave me some space to be not-as-funny in describing the opening scene in more detail.

Which felt like a mini-saga of its own. Since I knew most of this piece would be driven by dialogue, I originally wanted to cram so much information right in the first couple paragraphs to make sure readers understood the point of the quest, show how magic died, establish the dragons in the story, etc.

It was all pretty superfluous, which is a recurring theme in most of the early paragraphs of my flash fiction. Thanks to some incisive editing, the final version gets to the meat of things much quicker — and lets me reference the enormous collections of random objects collected by questers (especially in video games). If this story hadn’t already been so close to 1000 words, you can bet that list would’ve been a lot longer and weirder.

As I wrote, I figured a lot of the humor was going to be juxtaposing traditional, almost regal, high fantasy elements with more modern and banal bits. I’m not well-versed enough in comedy theory to understand why, but I just think it’s funny to have a fantasy world where dragons say things like “Missed it by that much,” and “A magic system. You’re supposed to come up with a magic system.”

I was happy with the way Dave (so named because I thought a non-fantasy-sounding name would be funnier) came together as I wrote. My initial thought was that his character would be just shy of competent. Which is funny, but can also become moderately annoying. Fortunately, when I settled on snark and sarcasm being the basis for magic at the end, I realized it would need to be part of his character during the story (instead of just thrown in at the very end). I feel like that gives him some agency earlier on, especially when the dragons are suggesting different magic systems.

Which leads back to the conversation between Dave and the dragons. As mentioned earlier, I tried exercising my discovery-writing (and comedic) muscles with this story. I enjoyed the challenge of balancing things that just seemed funny with beats that would push the story forward. This made it nice to have five different characters playing off one another — no matter who inserted a wry comment or made a joke, there was always someone to steer things back on track. Five characters in a flash fiction story really is madness, but I was fortunate that this one could revel in it.

And, in case the topic comes up, I take zero issue with developed magic systems, haha. It just seemed like a fun thing to play with in the event of one being entirely erased.

Of course, I can’t talk about what went on behind the scenes without mentioning editors Lauren Hildebrand, Gen Gavel, and Andrew Winch. The story is much stronger than the first draft thanks in no small part to their help and insight, and I’m super honored that they selected it as Havok’s inaugural Wacky Wednesday story! Thanks all 🙂

Have any questions or comments about “When Magic Died” — the story itself or how it came together? Feel free to post below or under the story on Havok’s website. And make sure you keep following them on social media or become a member for even more awesome flash fiction stories!